Instead, they are either running for office themselves or supporting other candidates. Are the main warlords supporting Karzai in the presidential election? In a July 12 interview with The New York Times, he called warlords the greatest threat to Afghanistan’s security-more dangerous than the remnants of the Taliban regime. Karzai has also stepped up his anti-warlord rhetoric. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. very courageous," says Kathy Gannon, Associated Press bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan and the 2003-04 Edward R. Many experts saw that moves as a sign of Karzai’s willingness to challenge the warlords. In July, Karzai dropped a powerful warlord who also serves as first vice president and defense minister, Mohammed Qasim Fahim, from his presidential ticket. Ismail Khan was offered the post of minister of mines and ministry in Kabul. Some experts say Karzai and the Americans who advise the army capitalized on the unrest to force out Ismail Khan, a powerful regional leader who had ruled Herat as his personal fiefdom since the Taliban’s fall in 2001. A series of attacks against Herat in August led by rival warlord Amanullah Khan forced Ismail Khan to call in the Afghan National Army for help. The new governor will be Sayeed Mohammed Khairkhwa, the former Afghan ambassador to Ukraine. He dismissed Ismail Khan, the governor of the western Herat province, on September 11. What has Karzai done to exert control over the warlords? Instead, the warlords have largely used their official positions to cement their own authority in the regions they control and have resisted attempts to disarm their personal militias or meld them into the national army. But that plan hasn’t succeeded, experts say. Karzai and the international organizers of Afghanistan’s political transition hoped that including the warlords would spur them to support the establishment of a strong central government. Why were warlords given government posts? This arrangement is part of a power-sharing agreement worked out at a Bonn conference after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in 2001 and later at a nationwide loya jirga, or grand council, in June 2002. Some have held-or continue to hold-significant posts, including first vice president, defense minister, education minister, and as governors of several important provinces. Do warlords participate in the current government? Efforts to disarm the militias controlled by the warlords have been largely ineffective. ![]() Rubin, director of studies at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. ![]() Karzai’s appointed government rules Kabul, the capital, but "the warlords are the main power-holders in most of Afghanistan," says Barnett R. They say the October 9 vote, the first direct presidential election in Afghanistan’s history, is the latest round of the ongoing power struggle between interim president Hamid Karzai and the regional strongmen known as warlords who control most of the country. Many experts say it is directly related to the upcoming presidential election. What’s at stake in the government’s confrontation with warlords?
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