“And there are two reasons for that,” he said. “One is I’m exhausted. Really, totally exhausted, and I would like to be retired. And second, why would I ruin my legacy by staying on and taking an opportunity away from Afghanistan to become an institutionalized democracy?”

Elections are scheduled for April, and American and European officials say privately that billions of dollars of aid on which Afghanistan depends will be jeopardized if the vote does not go ahead.

That message has been conveyed to Mr. Karzai, the officials have said, and the Afghan leader has repeatedly sought to dispel talk that he will try to find a way to stay on beyond his constitutionally mandated two five-year terms.

But the rumors have persisted, fueled in part by the reticence of possible contenders to declare their interest in running.

To do so, Afghan politicians and analysts say, would be to acknowledge that Mr. Karzai is a lame duck. With government power highly centralized in the presidency — the president appoints everyone from ministers to district governors, for instance — few top officials are willing to risk angering Mr. Karzai by openly campaigning to fill his job.

Mr. Karzai said he had come to New Delhi with a “wish list” that he hoped India would fill. He and others in his party refused to specify what was on the list. India provides training to Afghan forces, although that training is done entirely in India.

India could provide small arms that are made in India, but those weapons are generally not highly regarded. India has to buy from abroad most of the weapons that Afghanistan might want.

Mr. Karzai’s trip to India was overshadowed by that of the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, who left New Delhi on Tuesday just as Mr. Karzai was ushered in to see Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The two visits, along with the leadership change this month in Pakistan, made for an unusually active week in top-level South Asian political jockeying.

Afghanistan’s outreach to India has long been a source of intense concern in Pakistan, but Mr. Karzai said Wednesday that he needed permission from no one to conduct diplomacy. “Afghanistan is a sovereign country, and like all sovereigns, it has the right to choose its friends,” he said. “But our relations with India will not be at the cost of Pakistan or a cause for worry for Pakistan.”

Mr. Karzai said he welcomed the election of Nawaz Sharif as president in Pakistan, saying he had dined with Mr. Sharif last year in Islamabad. “I found him very much inclined to better relations with India,” Mr. Karzai said. “I found him aware of the dangers of terrorism.”

Mr. Karzai dismissed widespread concerns that his government was deeply corrupt and that members of his family had been among the worst offenders. Most corruption, he said, results from the contracting practices of foreign countries, “especially on the part of the United States.”

The worst corruption centered for years on private security companies, which he finally banned, he said. Beyond that, those who criticize Afghan corruption mostly do so for political reasons, said Mr. Karzai, who late last month acknowledged that the Central Intelligence Agency had for more than a decade financed a presidential slush fund used to buy the support of warlords, lawmakers and other powerful Afghans.

“If Denmark criticizes corruption in Afghanistan, I will see it as meant to improve things,” he said. “But if the United States does it, I will simply laugh at it.”

Mr. Karzai dismissed the idea that Afghanistan might turn as violent and chaotic as Iraq after most foreign troops leave in 2014. “Iraq is a very unfortunate situation,” he said. “We are pained to see the way Iraq is suffering. I can tell you with a strong measure of confidence that Afghanistan will not see that.”

The reason, he said, is that Afghanistan has never suffered the sort of sectarian violence that Iraq has experienced.

The peace process is continuing but can be successful only with the participation of Pakistan, he said, adding: “Pakistan has influence over the Taliban because they have residence there, to put it mildly.”

By Gardiner Harris and Matthew Rosenberg, The New York Times, May 23, 2013

(Photo: Reuters)

The offensive was nearly aborted when a 2,000-pound bomb dropped from a high-altitude American B-52 fell on their position, a friendly fire catastrophe that killed three Green Berets and five Afghan militiamen — and could have ended the life of the future Afghan president.

His hip damaged in the blast, Major Bolduc declined medical evacuation. He tended to the grim task of gathering the remains of the fallen soldiers, and, resuming their advance, Mr. Karzai’s militia and the Army Special Forces advisers swept into Kandahar, routing the Taliban in retaliation for supporting Al Qaeda in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

That campaign sealed the success of the American invasion, an early example of the emerging new way of war in which tiny bands of Special Operations forces successfully trained and organized larger units of local fighters to advance a grander, shared security agenda.

The young major spent five years deployed to Afghanistan after the fall of Kandahar, and is now a brigadier general. But in the more than 11 years since that offensive the war at times shifted to a conventional fight even as it became a sideshow after the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Today, though, as the deputy commander of all Special Operations forces in the country, General Bolduc is reapplying lessons of that first victory, creating a program to train Afghan villagers to protect their homes from insurgents.

“What inspired me was my first rotation here into Afghanistan, where I learned how to use the tribes and other ethnic groups to secure local and rural areas with small numbers of people,” General Bolduc said.

“I saw the power of this culture in protecting itself at the local level, which I believe is the secret to security in Afghanistan — at the district level and below,” General Bolduc said. “You can be very effective, but in a way that is traditional, and congruent with how they have protected themselves for hundreds of years.”

Critics say the initiative, called Afghan Local Police and now with a roster of 22,150 in 55 village districts across the country, risks creating rogue militias that could turn against the central government. And some local policemen indeed have been responsible for atrocities.

But supporters, including senior Afghan Interior Ministry officials and some high-profile provincial governors, say the program is the key to a long-term security strategy that requires building layer upon layer of defense from the borders inward to Kabul, and from the village up to the provincial capitals. But they demand that it fall under strict government control.

General Bolduc is quick to point out that despite early misgiving by the leadership in Kabul, the Afghan Local Police program is officially approved in a lengthy order — 9 chapters and 49 articles — signed in April by the Afghan government.

And he says that any successes are a tribute to what he learned about “Afghan mud-hut diplomacy” from Mr. Karzai and from Gul Agha Shirzai, the first governor of liberated Kandahar, as well as to the continuing ongoing efforts by the more than 50 small teams of Marines, Navy SEALs and Green Berets now in the field training local police units.

But as General Bolduc prepares to leave Afghanistan after his ninth tour, the Afghan Local Police program will be his legacy. “Don Bolduc is the godfather of the A.L.P.,” said Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas, the senior Special Operations commander here.

Statistics compiled by the Special Operations headquarters show an unexpected resilience within the Afghan Local Police force, which had higher casualty rates but lower attrition last year than the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.

But, like those larger security organizations, it has been found guilty of gross misbehavior. The most horrific was a case in which four members of a local police unit in the insurgent-contested province of Kunduz were convicted in November in the rape of a shepherd’s 18-year-old daughter.

General Bolduc said 96 allegations of misconduct by Afghan Local Police members had been investigated, with 77 found valid, resulting in administration release from the program or jail time. The International Committee of the Red Cross is now deeply involved in the 21-day training program for recruits, conducting programs in human rights as well as first aid.

From the capital to the provinces, senior officials now embrace the Afghan Local Police program, with the caveat that it must remain folded under the authorities of the official Interior Ministry police forces.

In an interview at his Kabul headquarters, Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahman, the Afghan deputy interior minister, described the Afghan Local Police program as “the most beautiful ingredient” in the emerging, multilayered security architecture for the nation. And out in the far west, the governor of Herat Province, Daud Shah Saba, said, “The A.L.P. will be ‘the’ solution, so long as the police department supports the program and remains in firm control over its activities.”

General Bolduc agrees that oversight of the A.L.P. is “a valid concern.”

“We don’t want to put guns in the hands of people and not have them accountable,” he added. He said the whole program was expected to report to the government through the Ministry of the Interior.

“We’ve moved through different periods of this war, applying different types of combat power,” General Bolduc said. “But it wasn’t until we came to grips with the fact that this was a counterinsurgency, it was rural based, that we had to start thinking about the center of gravity, which is the populace, and conducting operations that complement each other.”

General Bolduc acknowledges there is a “back to the future” feel to the Afghan Local Police effort, not only because it draws on the lessons from the initial offensive to topple the Taliban but also because it is related to a traditional core mission of Army Special Forces; since their founding, the Green Berets have specialized in training partnerships with indigenous security forces. That has been a shared effort of General Bolduc and his two brothers, raised on a maple syrup farm in New England: One brother was also among the Green Beret units to first land in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the other continues to serve as a Special Forces officer.

As he prepares to depart for a senior assignment with the military’s Africa Command, General Bolduc is most concerned about ensuring the Afghan Local Police effort becomes what is termed a “program of record” with long-term support from the central government.

“Some of the mistakes we’ve made over here is that we have created things they can’t sustain,” General Bolduc said. “The A.L.P. is a program they can manage over time by themselves.”

By THOM SHANKER

May 20, 2013

Photo: Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan-

The comments follow a weekend report by the Times of India that said Afghanistan’s ambassador to India had said the country needs India’s help with “equipment and weapons to fight.” The Press Trust of India later quoted a spokesman for New Delhi’s Foreign Ministry as saying the country is ready to meet any such request.

“Yes, we will ask for assistance for the strengthening of our security forces,” Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said in a briefing ahead of the trip. He did not comment on the Indian reports.

Karzai’s visit could irk Pakistan, especially if any arms deal materializes. Pakistan considers Afghanistan its own backyard and suspects rival India of seeking greater influence there as a strategy to hem in the country from both sides. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since they were divided into two countries when they gained independence from Britain in 1947.

Afghanistan and India signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2011 that has included Indian military training of Afghan security forces. Faizi indicated in Saturday’s briefing that Karzai would seek to expand that cooperation. “Whatever our Afghan security forces would need for assistance and help, India would help us,” he said.

Afghan analyst Wadir Safi, a political science professor at Kabul University, says the timing of Karzai’s India trip is likely related to recent border skirmishes with Pakistan.

Each side has been accusing the other of firing across the mountainous border region for months, including a skirmish earlier this month that killed an Afghan border policeman. Both countries have also accused each other of providing shelter for insurgents fighting on the other side of the border.

Afghan accusations that Pakistan is allegedly trying to torpedo efforts to start peace talks with the Taliban have also contributed to deteriorating relations. Pakistan is considered crucial to nudging Taliban leaders, many of which are in hiding in Pakistan, to the table — a key goal of the United States and its allies ahead of the final pullout of foreign combat forces by the end of next year.

Karzai has long been deeply suspicious of the motives of Pakistan’s government and military, which backed the Taliban regime before it was toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led intervention and has since seemed unable or unwilling to go after militant leaders taking refuge inside its borders. The killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in Pakistan only strengthened Afghan wariness of his neighbor.

Any increased military cooperation with India would likely only contribute to tensions, Safi warned. Afghanistan had been a proxy battleground for Pakistan and India during the war between the Pakistani-backed Taliban regime and the India-supported Northern Alliance.

Another Afghan analyst, Hamidullah Farooqi, said he thinks the reports of India supplying weapons are simply brinkmanship and, at most, India might agree to help Afghanistan upgrade old Soviet-era weaponry.

“An arms deal with India would not be helpful for regional stability or for the balance that Afghanistan needs between India and Pakistan,” Farooqi said. “This is just a political game. I don’t think there will be an arms deal.”

Aside from regional strategic rivalries, Karzai is expected to discuss economic issues and will visit an engineering university where he will receive an honorary degree, Faizi said.

India has invested more than $2 billion in Afghan infrastructure, including highways and hospitals and rural electricity projects. New Delhi is hoping to gain some influence in the country after 2014, when Afghan forces become responsible for the entire country’s security.

Karzai, who earned his college degree in India, has visited New Delhi more than a half dozen times in the past few years, most recently in November 2012.

By KAY JOHNSON Associated Press

President Hamid Karzai approved the law by decree in 2009 and parliament’s endorsement was required. But a rift between conservative and more secular members of the assembly resulted in debate being deferred to a later date.

Religious members objected to at least eight articles in the legislation, including keeping the legal age for women to marry at 16, the existence of shelters for domestic abuse victims and the halving of the number of wives permitted to two.

“Today, the parliamentarians who oppose women’s development, women’s rights and the success of women… made their voices loud and clear,” Fawzia Koofi, head of parliament’s women’s commission, told Reuters.

Women have won back the hard-fought right to education and work since the Taliban was toppled 12 years ago, but there are fears these freedoms could shrink once NATO-led forces leave Afghanistan by the end of next year.

Increasing insecurity is deterring some women from seeking work outside the home, and rights workers accuse the government of doing too little to protect women – allegations rejected by Karzai’s administration.

“2014 is coming, change is coming, and the future of women in this country is uncertain. A new president will come and if he doesn’t take women’s rights seriously he can change the decree,” Koofi said of the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law, which goes by the acronym EVAL.

The election for a new president is expected to be held in April 2014. The constitution bars Karzai from running again.

After almost two hours of clashes between Koofi and the more religious members of the 244-member parliament, speaker Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi said the assembly would consider the law again at a later date, but declined to say when.

Some members sought amendments, such as longer prison terms for crimes committed against women, such as beating and rape.

Many lawmakers, most of them male, cited violations of Islamic, or Sharia law.

“It is wrong that a woman and man cannot marry off their child until she is 16,” said Obaidullah Barekzai, a member from southeast Uruzgan province, where female literacy rates are among the lowest in the country.

An Afghan man must be at least 18 years old to marry.

Barekzai argued against all age limits for women, citing historical figure Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq, a close companion of the Prophet Mohammad, who married off his daughter at age seven.

At least eight other lawmakers, mostly from the Ulema Council, a government-appointed body of clerics, joined him in decrying the EVAL as un-Islamic.

Abdul Sattar Khawasi, member for Kapisa province, called women’s shelters “morally corrupt”. Justice Minister Habibullah Ghaleb last year dismissed them as houses of “prostitution and immorality”, provoking fierce condemnation from women’s groups.

By Miriam Arghandiwal and Ibrahimi Aziz, Reuters, May 18, 2013

(Photo: Ahmad Masood/Reuters)