KABUL, 18 June 2003 — Afghan leader Hamid Karzai is preparing to take on the biggest challenge of his presidency — cutting warlords and their personal armies down to size and reforming the powerful but unwieldy Defense Ministry. A year has passed since the urbane 46-year-old came to power in the war-torn state of 28 million, and there is a year to go before elections are held. Karzai knows time is not on his side.
In a wide-ranging interview with Reuters yesterday at his palace in Kabul, where he is followed by a phalanx of heavily armed US security guards wherever he goes, he did not try to hide the sense of urgency. “I have to bring some more reforms in addition to the reform on the revenue system, and those reforms must be done in the coming few months,” he said.
Much of the country is unsafe to travel, and personal militia led by warlords and governors numbering several thousand fighters dwarf the fledgling National Army. Karzai explained that in order to disarm private armies controlling swathes of the country he first needed to push through reforms closer to home — in the Defense Ministry.
