KABUL, 28 May 2006 — Afghanistan’s Parliament yesterday rejected President Hamid Karzai’s nomination for the post of chief justice, an Islamist figure who has held the job for four years. The appointment of Fazel Hadi Shinwari, who took the post soon after the Taleban government was removed in 2001, was defeated by 117 votes to 77 and after a long debate in the five-month-old assembly. The reasons included his advanced age and lack of formal education, and the pervasive corruption in the Afghan judiciary, parliamentarians said.
With the vote the Parliament had “drawn a clear line” under the past, legislator Shukria Barikzai said afterward. They had “proved they want to end fundamentalism and that they want the judiciary to be separate from political games,” she told AFP, with Shinwari’s defeat free of the usual political wrangling. “Congratulations to the whole Afghan nation,” Barikzai said.
Shinwari’s appointment in 2002 alarmed some human rights groups because he was known for being almost as fundamentalist as the ousted Taleban government which imposed a harsh version of Islamic Shariah law that included amputations for theft. But the well-known figure, who is widely respected in conservative religious circles, has on occasion stood up to the Taleban condemning as “un-Islamic” aspects of their insurgency including the burning of schools and attacks on foreign aid workers.
The Parliament has approved only two out of nine nominations to the Supreme Court, rejecting three because they have dual citizenship. The president will have to present other nominations to Parliament. The Supreme Court is an extremely influential body in Afghanistan, especially in regard to a struggle between reformists and moderates over how much influence Islam should have in government and society.
The results of the vote were announced by deputy parliamentary Speaker Mohammed Arif Nurzai in a televised session of the assembly. Speaking to The Associated Press earlier this week, Karzai’s chief of staff, Jawed Ludin, said, “We are pinning a lot of hope on this vote.” “Mr. Shinwari is a very respectful personality in Afghanistan,” he said. “A lot of people feel confident the judiciary will be in good hands.” Western observers have accused Karzai of backing Shinwari to shore up his support among the country’s religious conservatives at a time when the Taleban rebels are making a resurgence.
Meanwhile, a US-led coalition strike on a militant training facility in Afghanistan’s borderlands with Pakistan killed five suspected extremists, including senior Taleban leaders, the US military said yesterday. The military said that “key senior leaders of the Taleban network” were among the five dead in the late Friday strike on the site at the remote Qala Sak village, in Helmand province. No identities or precise numbers of the Taleban leaders killed were released.
Lt. Tamara Lawrence, a US military spokeswoman, declined to identify any of the militants killed. Coalition forces said there were no civilian casualties in the strike and added that ground troops destroyed war materiel at the scene, including machine guns and explosives.
