Hamid Karzai might be one of the few Afghans about whom former US president George W Bush has regrets, dpa reported.
Bush was Karzai's constant sponsor and protector although criticism of the Afghan president rose steadily in the past several years from abroad as well as at home.
Karzai's more than seven-year tenure is dismal in many areas: Poppy cultivation and corruption are booming, and the security situation is at its lowest point since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. That point was brought home Wednesday when Taliban suicide bombers attacked three government buildings in central Kabul, killing at least 26 people.
The attacks occurred a day before US special envoy Richard Holbrooke, appointed by Bush's successor, Barack Obama, arrived in Afghanistan on a fact-finding tour to discuss strategies in the fight against the Taliban.
�As a man known for not mincing words, Holbrooke was expected to make it clear to Karzai that the winds in Washington have changed.
An incident that The New York Times reported indicated that the once harmonious relationship with the Bush administration would become substantially more stormy under Obama.
US Vice President Joe Biden, then a US senator, questioned Karzai about corruption in his government along with two other American senators while dining a year ago at the Presidential Palace in Kabul.
Karzai told the three legislators that there was no graft in Afghanistan and he was not at fault, after which Biden announced, "This dinner is over," and walked out, according to an unnamed person at the dinner cited by the Times.
After seven years of Karzai's leadership, Afghanistan ranks 176 on Transparency International's corruption list of 180 countries. On other lists, it has held the worst spot for years.
Obama has called Karzai ineffective, and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said he sits at the helm of a "narco-state."
Indeed, Afghanistan is the world's top producer of raw opium, which is used to make heroin, and the Taliban has filled its war chests with income from poppy cultivation and drug trafficking. Thousands of militants have been killed since the Taliban's ouster from power, but the fundamentalist Islamist group continues to grow in strength - as have casualties among Afghan government and foreign forces.
Last year, nearly 300 foreign troops were killed in the Hindu Kush - more than four times as many as in 2002, the first year of their deployment.
More than 70,000 soldiers from more than 40 countries are stationed in the country, but still, clashes with militants there occur almost daily.
Another problem that the troops have been unable to take in hand is civilian casualties. Holbrooke was reportedly appalled that a clash between Australian soldiers and Taliban militants caused the deaths of five children in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the day he arrived in the country.
The increasing number of civilian deaths has fed the Taliban's propoganda machine, which portrays the foreign troops as occupiers.
In European countries like Germany as well as Canada, criticism is growing among the public against their countries' military deployments in Afghanistan while the United States has plans to substantially increase its troop strength there as Obama seeks to shift the US military focus from the war in Iraq to Afghanistan.
Among the Afghan population, faith in the government has dwindled not only because it has failed to ensure its people's safety but also because drug barons and warlords are allowed to build swank villas in Kabul and poverty continues to rise. The West's promised reconstruction of Afghanistan has also proceeded haltingly.
Considerable progress has been made in education and health care, but it is not sufficient to stabilize Afghanistan.
However, Karzai, who is seeking re-election in voting planned in August, is not alone responsible for Afghanistan's sad state of affairs. James Jones, Obama's national security adviser and the top US military commander in NATO until 2006, admitted this past week that the United States had made mistakes.
The extent of the country's problems had long been underestimated, the buildup of the police and judicial system neglected, and drug production too inadequately combated, he said, while adding that too much effort has been concentrated on the military portion of the Afghanistan mission.
Long neglected have also been the problems across the border in Pakistan. Islamabad is increasingly losing control over its tribal areas on the border, from which the Taliban carry out attacks in Afghanistan. The stabilization of Afghanistan appears impossible without the militancy in Pakistan being addressed.
Holbrooke, the special envoy for both countries, visited Pakistan this past week before flying in Afghanistan. He said he planned to "listen and learn" on his trip and has refrained from commenting publicly while on his tour.
"We are still in the process of digging our way into the debris," he said in an interview ahead of his trip. "We've inherited an extraordinarily dysfunctional situation in which the very objectives have to be reviewed."