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Karzai turns warlord into potential
ally
By Amin Tarzi
When Afghan President Hamid Karzai
announced his cabinet on December 23, 2004, most
observers hailed it as a technocratic team, mostly
devoid of warlords and other unsavory elements
among Afghanistan's powerful personalities. On the
other hand, human-rights advocates pointed to the
appointment of former Herat province governor
Mohammad Ismail Khan as energy minister as a
disappointment.
The inclusion of Khan in
the cabinet - provided that the former militia
leader concentrates on his current job - can be
viewed as the successful conclusion of one of
Karzai's most daring maneuvers.
Until
September 2004, Khan, the self-styled "amir", or
ruler, of western Afghanistan, was one of the
thorniest obstacles facing Kabul's plans to expand
the central government's sway over the outlying
provinces. While Karzai publicly announced his
policy to rein in various warlords - referred to
by Kabul as "regional commanders" - in May 2003,
he had little success with Khan, who continued to
rule his fiefdom of Herat virtually independently.
While most petty - and some of the more
powerful - warlords could have been regarded as
rather easy targets for a Kabul diplomatic
campaign, since most had very bad human-rights
records and did not have large popular support,
Khan was a very tough target.
Compared to
other warlords who in the years following the fall
of the Taliban regime in late 2001 roamed
Afghanistan as ministers, governors, presidential
candidates, or commanders, Khan's rule arguably
had a positive side. He was not merely interested
in enriching himself and his immediate associates;
unlike most of his peers, there is no hard
evidence that he was involved in the narcotics
industry. Under Khan's dictatorial "emirate",
Herat witnessed a reconstruction boom that
included clean and efficient roads - something
still sorely lacking in Kabul.
While Khan
initially kept from Kabul all - and later at least
a large portion - of the tax revenues generated by
Afghanistan's main border crossing with Iran, he
spent a generous portion of it on public projects
and as such had a substantial popular-support base
in Herat. Lastly, Khan's past was not tainted with
gross human-rights abuses and he maintained his
legendary status as a mujahideen commander during
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
These attributes and his substantial
military power rendered Ismail Khan a tough
challenge for Karzai. Finally, in September,
through several smart political moves and perhaps
some luck, Karzai managed to remove Khan from
power and appointed him minister of mines and
industry in his transitional administration.
Khan opted not to assume his ministerial
post in Kabul and remained in Herat as a "private
citizen". However, and more importantly, he did
not cause any trouble, and tried to help calm the
situation after some of his supporters, angered by
his dismissal, went on a rampage in Herat city.
Karzai's decision to include Khan in his
first postelection cabinet ought to be viewed not
only from the prism of Khan's bad behavior while
ruling Herat, but from the broader picture of the
relative peaceful ending of warlordism throughout
Afghanistan.
The fact that Khan now sits
in the cabinet and takes orders from Karzai is a
significant victory in itself. Regardless of the
fact that he is not an energy expert, if Khan
manages to run his department efficiently, relying
on expert help for technical matters, the decision
to include the decommissioned warlord into the
cabinet may lead to positive repercussions on
ending other warlords' careers.
Of course,
Khan did not choose to be part of Karzai's
cabinet; he simply had no better options. Recent
Afghan history has illustrated that those who rule
with the gun, respect force. Also, history shows
that these figures only fight when cornered with
no other options. Thus, removing the warlords
while leaving them an option to save face, or in
some cases even serving the state, may be the best
available option to Karzai, who has yet to have
anything resembling a military capable of
projecting his orders by force.
Copyright (c) 2004, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty,
1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036 |
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