KABUL- Afghanistan has been dealing with dire security instability foryears, with the situation becoming sharply worse in recent months, as theTaliban has been carrying out offensives on major cities.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that Russia was the onlyforcelink>thatcould help Afghanistan fight terrorism.

“I understand perfectly well that if you [Russia] build new relationswith Pakistan and Afghanistan, you can help us. Not the Britons as wekicked them out of the country several times, not the Americans as they’vebeen killing us for 17 years, but Russia only. We [Afghanistan] are thelast barrier from terrorists. We’ve been fighting continuously for acentury and a half,” Karzai toldthe Russian NTV TV channel.

“Moscow has always helped us, even when its forces invaded Afghanistanat the invitation of then-president Babrak Karmal. We surely fought eachother at those times, but you [Russia] used to build schools and hospitalsin Afghanistan. Americans lie when they say that al-Qaeda emerged as theresult of your invasion. They wanted to be the only superpower and theydid it. The USSR collapsed and one of the reasons was the Afghan war,”Karzai said.

The former president noted that, when the US had declared war against theTaliban, he had told Russian President Vladimir Putin that “something wrongbegan to emerge.”

“The Americans deceived everyone again at that time. What kind of warwith terrorism is it? The Taliban has more and more weapons…and we can’thandle them without Russia’s help, ” Karzai noted.

According to the official, the US firstly allegedly pumped billionsinto Pakistanlink>andthen declared there were no special relations with the country as the Asiannation failed the US.

For all requests to explain its actions, the US answered with neutralphrases, like “in order to defend stability in the region,” Karzaiexplained, adding that he had decided to resign after he had come up withthe idea that Afghanistan was just being used.

“People used to come to me continuously from four different provinces,saying that foreigners had come by unidentified choppers to kick themout of their building and kill them….The foreigners are much moredangerous, they called themselves ‘the caliphate.’ There are severalthousands of them now in Afghanistan,” the ex-president said.

At the same time, Karzai noted that Afghanistan’s airspace was “fullycontrolled by the Americans.”

“Nothing flies without their permission. They have mercenariesin Afghanistan with their own army, aviation and security service. I triedto kick them out of the country, but I failed,” Karzai concluded.

Afghanistan has long sufferedlink>from political,social and security-related instability because of simmering insurgencies,including by the Taliban and Daesh. The US and the Kabul government havebeen fighting a war with the Taliban since 2001. Before that, the countryfaced nearly two decades of civil war, remaining divided into severalwarlord-controlled regions throughout much of the 1990s.