KABUL—Hamid Karzai appealed to the Taliban on Tuesday to stop inconveniencing people coming to see him, noting that he had called the movement “brothers” for years and had therefore earned the basic Afghan courtesy of receiving guests before everyone began asking whose son they were.
Karzai said several visitors were delayed at checkpoints, forcing him to refill the cups of those who arrived on time and tell the same story about the loya jirga twice. “A brother may seize the country,” he said, “but he should not make an elder pour a third tea while the biscuits go soft.”
Taliban officials offered to create a special lane for Karzai’s visitors, provided he submit their names, fathers’ names, grandfathers’ villages and reason for preferring tea without sugar. Karzai rejected the proposal as intrusive, then privately sent the details through a cousin who knew a cousin at the checkpoint.
Karzai later confessed that even Ashraf Ghani, despite Karzai antagonizing him and rallying people against him, had always shown him the courtesy due an ex-president and an elder. “He respected my age, my office and my right to criticize him from a comfortable chair,” Karzai said. “He never searched my guests before tea. At most, he made them listen to a presentation.”