KABUL, Afghanistan, 28 September 2005 — One of the most prominent faces in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet, Ahmad Ali Jalali, who had struggled to shake up the Interior Ministry and combat Afghanistan’s booming drugs trade, announced his resignation yesterday. Karzai’s office played down the significance of Jalali’s decision to quit, ostensibly to pursue an academic career in the United States. The president’s chief of staff, Jawed Ludin, denied Jalali had disagreements with Karzai on fighting narcotics.
“It’s a fight the president is solidly committed to,” Ludin told The Associated Press. Jalali, a 63-year-old former journalist, has been popular with Western governments since his appointment in January 2003, although there was disappointment that he failed to push reforms of the police and provincial administrations. He told Afghan television yesterday there were “various reasons” for his resignation, primarily a desire for the “more relaxed” life as an academic.
“This is something I’ve worked on all my life,” he told private Tolo network. An Interior Ministry statement quoted him as denying conflicts with Karzai and praising the president. But Jalali had expressed frustration about the alleged involvement of influential people in the drugs trade, even as the government has stepped up a campaign over the past year to crack down on the world’s largest narcotics industry.
Jalali’s concerns were echoed in June by Counternarcotics Minister Habibullah Qaderi, who told AP that some provincial governors and police chiefs are suspected of involvement in the drugs trade, but none are being investigated because of a “lack of evidence.” He declined to name names.
Meanwhile, unidentified attackers chased and killed yesterday a candidate in the elections, police said. Parliamentary candidate Mohammad Ashraf Ramazan and his bodyguard were gunned down in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sarif, the city’s police spokesman Sher Jan Durani told AFP.
Ramazan became the first candidate to be killed since the election. Seven of the nearly 5,800 candidates were killed before the polls in attacks mostly blamed on militants from the ousted Taleban government.
He had been traveling in a minibus with three other people when men in another car began chasing them, eventually opening fire, Durani said.
“The candidate and one of his bodyguards were killed on the spot and the two other people traveling with them were wounded. We don’t know who carried out the attack but a massive investigation has been launched,” he said.
