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Press TV has conducted an interview with Tighe Barry, activist with CODEPINK, about the increasing tension between Kabul and Washington as Afghan President Hamid Karzai delays signing a security pact with the United States, setting new conditions.

- Do you think that all parties here including Karzai and Washington are essentially playing politics with this security pact at this point?

- Well absolutely they are playing politics. This has been the longest war in the American history. There was never a bilateral interest in these negotiations.

The United States has tried to further its hegemony in South Asia and Central Asia. This is now just another bullying, blackmailing tactic that they go in there and say hey, we are going to pull all our troops out of here unless you give in and you allow us to be in your country without the rule of law.

The United States calls itself an exceptional country because they want exceptions to the rule of law. They want to be held to a different standard. If they commit a violent act such as Raymond Davis who killed, murdered two people in Pakistan and wanted to be treated different and we paid a ransom for him to come back to the United States. He was not held to the rule of law. There was no justice in that case.

It is the same situation. Private contractors in Afghanistan have been committing murder, of American, US military forces have been committing murder in that country. Nobody is held accountable. The President too is not trusted. The United States does not trust President Karzai and President Karzai does not trust the United States.

Under this negotiation there can be no real, real action that is for the benefit of the Afghan people. And as we see, when Karzai and the Taliban were trying to get some kind of negotiations, the US used its drones to murder those who were moderate, so-called moderate Taliban and the whole condition in Afghanistan is a mess just like the mess that was created in Iraq that we are seeing today, that is just causing the deaths of so much innocent people in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

- In your opinion then, what does Afghanistan look post 2014 after this “withdrawal”?

- Well … we in the peace community hope the United States does the right thing. What a real American would do in this condition is to pull their troops out, provide the economic base for Afghans to get a free and fair election, to provide the basis for talks with the Taliban, real talks with Taliban treating everybody with respect and openness, providing Afghanistan with the economic relief that it will need for twenty years or more.

Cleaning up the mess that we have created in both Iraq and Afghanistan is an important thing for the United States to continue and not be labeled as an imperialist hegemonic country that it has become.