New York Post Online Edition:

New York Post Online Edition:: "April 22, 2005 -- IN the past few days, Afghan istan's President Hamid Karzai has been the target of attacks in the media in Iran, Pakistan and a number of Arab countries for his demand that the United States forge a long-term defense relationship with his newly liberated nation. Yet Karzai's idea of a strategic alliance with America seems to enjoy massive support in Afghanistan itself.

Karzai first raised the issue in the spring of last year, generating a process of consultation with the country's ethnic, religious and linguistic communities. It soon became clear that, despite reservations from some former leftists, Karzai would encounter little opposition in seeking a long-term U.S. alliance.

Some critics claim Karzai's policy is a break with a two-century-old tradition of Afghan neutrality. But that stance was put to the test in 1979, when the Red Army marched into Kabul to support a puppet Communist regime installed in a coup d'etat two years earlier. The event dealt a blow to the idea of nonalignment in the Afghan consciousness.

The Soviet invasion was followed by two decades of suffering, as Afghanistan became the battleground for a proxy war between the Soviet and American blocs. After the fall of the Soviet empire, Afghanistan was ravaged by another proxy war, this time pitting the Khomeinist regime in Tehran against its Salafist rivals in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But why a long-term military link with the United States? Because Afghanistan is located in a rough neighborhood where despotic regimes hold sway."