KABUL, 25 December 2004 — President Hamid Karzai faces a big hurdle in getting his reform-minded Cabinet approved by a Parliament likely to be filled with figures from Afghanistan’s war- and drugs-tainted past, analysts say.
Karzai, elected in Afghanistan’s first democratic presidential election in October, announced the Cabinet Thursday, sidelining warlords, appointing aides and including two women, rare in this conservative Muslim country. But the new line-up still needs the backing of Parliament, which is scheduled to be elected in April.
The new legislature is likely to be packed with former Mujahedeen fighters, figures linked with the drugs trade and politicians with ethnic biases, analysts said. And they will have a veto over all the president’s choices of ministers — putting his crusade to tackle Afghanistan’s booming opium production and myriad social and ethnic problems in jeopardy.
A key challenge could come from two generals from the Northern Alliance, which helped to topple the hard-line Taleban government in 2001, who were dropped from Karzai’s Cabinet and replaced with technocrats likely to please Western donors. Former Dense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim was replaced by his deputy and former US resident Abdul Rahim Wardak. Also pushed out was Fahim’s ally Yunus Qanooni, who earlier stepped down as education minister to run against Karzai for president. “The Cabinet as it stands does not signal a unification of the country,” said former finance minister and academic Hamidullah Tarzi. “Fahim is a strong figure in the political scenario. He is out and Qanooni is out, so there may be a reaction,” he said.
Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik, warlord Mohammed Mohaqeq from the Hazara faction and Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum all won big showings in October and could cause havoc in Parliament for Karzai, whose heritage is Pashtun. They could use ethnic divisions, a major factor in the country’s bloody civil war in the early 1990s, to put pressure the president, a Kabul diplomat said. “We will have to see what the ethnic balance of the Parliament is and whether they form an alliance — if they do, they could very well force Karzai to put their people in the Cabinet,” said the diplomat, who did not want to be identified.
Karazai’s choice of ministers likely to please Western donors anxious to see the country rebuilt after 25 years of war could also hamper the government’s work, said Vikram Parekh, an Afghan analyst with the International Crisis Group. Many of the choices were “very much dependent on foreign backing so the question will be how much will that affect their ability to get things done. Will they need to make compromises?” Parekh said.
Karzai faces the arduous task of stemming Afghanistan’s surging poppy cultivation — which produces 87 percent of the world’s opium — and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. On the surface, the Cabinet looks set to drive reform and build up the country’s fledgling security forces but much will depend on who Karzai appoints as deputy ministers and advisors behind the scenes. Figures like former Urban Affairs minister Gul Agha Shirzai and Border Affairs Minister Arif Noorzai — both dropped for lack of a higher education — could still play a part. Meanwhile the effectiveness of reformers such as Wardak at defense and Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish could be curbed by their deputies, said Parekh.
“Sarwar Danish is a credible figure. He can be expected to take a reform-oriented approach but you also have to see who is the chief justice. If the chief justice is very conservative, then the impact might be more limited,” he said.
And the new Cabinet is unlikely to seen an end to the regional divisions that characterize the country, said regional analyst Kamal Matinuddin, a former Pakistani ambassador. “Afghanistan never had a central authority and traditionally local tribal chiefs had their own hold in the provinces. This will continue,” the retired general said.
