Kabul: The Afghan president ordered on Saturday that only Afghan forces may carry out special operations and night raids, and not NATO troops an effort meant to stymie popular anger over the international troops' nighttime assaults that he said kill civilians.
Hamid Karzai's announcement also said the international coalition should not proceed with any raids that have not been coordinated beforehand with the Afghan side. It wasn't immediately clear what impact, if any, Karzai's orders could have on NATO's actions. The coalition promptly defended the raids as a necessity to flush out insurgents from their hideouts.
"We can achieve the mutual objectives we share with President Karzai only by having night operations as a component of the overall campaign," NATO said in a statement, made available to The Associated Press.
However, NATO indicated there would be a gradual handover, saying that "we know that we must move from Afghan participation in night operations to Afghan forces having responsibility for night operations."
The alliance claims that all such operations are conducted jointly with Afghan forces.
The Afghan public, which has grown increasingly hostile to foreigners as the nearly decade-long war continues, tends to perceive the NATO raids as capturing the wrong people or mistreating civilians during searches of private homes and
compounds.
Karzai repeatedly has criticised the raids, though this was his first tangible effort to stop them.
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