Can we trust Karzai ?

As the eighth year with Karzai as the head of Afghanistan is coming to a close this December, we are entitled to wonder if he’s really an effective leader and if our presence in this country, which is likely to significantly increase in the near future, shouldn’t be drastically reconsidered in relation to his leadership. According to most reports, the majority of the Afghan population sees him as an American puppet and outside of Kabul, his authority is extremely limited. It appears to me that Hamid Karzai plays both sides of the field and it’s quite notorious that the head of state has had associations with the Taliban in the past and was trying to negotiate with them. He also attempted to negotiate with former Prime Minister of Afghanistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, but the offer was rejected by Hizb spokesman, Haroon Zarghoon. The latter claims that until there is a, "clear date for pullout of foreign troops" there can be no deal with the Afghanistan government.
Hamid Karzai has also been criticized for protecting Pashtun drug lords and poppy farmers in southern Afghanistan, where his political base lies as well as for blocking poppy crop aerial eradication efforts. His younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai is said to be one of the country’s largest drug dealer. According to a December 6, 2001 article of the French newspaper Le Monde, Karzai has also provided consulting services to the infamous Union Oil Company of California (Unocal) a now defunct company. Spokesmen for both Unocal and Karzai have denied any such relationship, although Unocal could not speak for all companies involved in the consortium. So the big question remain, can we trust a man with such a checkered past in view of our growing involvement with that country and, most importantly, are we working on a plan “B”?