But he will also need to overcome tensions he helped foster with his hard-line stance on immigration and his inflammatorywords as interior minister, when, for example, he promised to clean out a crime-ridden housing project with an industrial power hose.
Joseph Dunford has since put U.S.-led forces on heightened alert, warning in an advisory that Mr. Karzai's "inflammatory" words could prompt some Afghans to "lash out" at Western forces, according to an official familiar with the document.