Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai calls al Qaeda 'a myth'

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Hamid Karzai called al Qaeda a "myth" and would not say if he thought Osama bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The full interview will be released Friday, but Al Jazeera shared part of it on Thursday, the eve of the 14th anniversary of 9/11. The former president of Afghanistan told Mehdi Hasan that he never received a report from any Afghan source about al Qaeda or what they were doing in his country. "We don't see them," he said. "We cannot visualize them. For us, they don't exist. I have come across the Taliban, I have come across other groups.... I don't know if al Qaeda existed or if they exist. For me, it's a myth. I have to feel tangible about it before I can say they are there."

Mehdi asked Karzai if this made him a conspiracy theorist. "Saying something does not exist does not mean a conspiracy," Karzai responded. "It's my judgment, it's my feeling." Later, Mehdi asked if he believed that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks and had plotted them from Afghanistan. "That is what I have heard from our Western friends," Karzai said. "There is no doubt that an operation, a terrorist operation, was conducted in New York and Washington. The tragedy of Sept. 11 is a true one, caused casualties to the American people, to civilians.... I can tell you for a fact that operation was neither conducted from Afghanistan nor were the Afghan people responsible for that."

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