Hamid Karzai pledged Thursday to use his five-year term as Afghanistan’s first elected president to crack down on warlords and the re-emerging country’s booming drug economy.Accepting his victory in the historic Oct. 9 ballot, he also offered an olive branch to the Taliban, even as an offshoot of the former ruling militia threatened to kill three kidnapped U.N. workers who helped organize the vote. “The Afghan people have placed their trust in us, for which we are very grateful,” Karzai said in the grounds of his bomb-damaged Kabul palace, flanked by his two smiling running-mates and circled by bodyguards. “They voted for a government based on laws and institutions, and that is what we are going to provide.”Full Story