Everyone Hates Karzai

Afghanistan's leader since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, President Hamid Karzai rode into office with strong US support and became a popular figure in the international press. Now up for re-election, Karzai faces increased skepticism both among the voters and among American and international officials, who are upset over rampant corruption, out of control heroin growth, and the president's inability to broaden the central government's reach outside Kabul. And when Vice President Joe Biden was a senator, Karzai so infuriated him at a dinner in Afghanistan—by flatly denying that corruption existed in his country—that Biden walked out of the room.