Afghan Council Stalls as Karzai Asserts Authority

Hamid Karzai, the US-backed transitional president of Afghanistan, asserted his authority on June 17 when he told a grand legislative council that it had run out of time to select a cabinet for the country. Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun allied with the Panjshiri Tajik leadership of the former United Front, has promised to unify Afghanistan's various provincial and ethnic constituencies under a strong central authority. As Karzai revealed his intention to assemble his own cabinet, delegates walked out on speeches at Afghanistan's grand legislative council, called a Loya Jirga. Karzai asked the 1,650 delegates at the council to select a handful of representatives from each of the country's nine provinces who would form a commission for creating a legislature. The upshot of this move is unclear: it may produce a smaller voting body, defer the appointment of a cabinet, or simply slow down the Loya Jirga. In any case, it prompted protests by other Afghan politicians.

Burhanuddin Rabbani, an Islamist hard-liner who served as the country's president before the Taliban took over in 1996, reportedly called Karzai's decision undemocratic. In fact, according to Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin, who participated in the December 2001 conference that set up the Loya Jirga, the council was set up to appoint a president and cabinet. By deferring the creation of a cabinet, Karzai confused and angered many delegates, who walked out of the meeting. Rubin, the director of New York University's Center on International Cooperation, stresses that this was not a demonstration of any organized political opposition. "As at many conventions, people went outside to talk to the press," Rubin told EurasiaNet. At the same time, he noted that the day's events proved that "people were very unhappy" with what they perceived as high-handed political dealmaking.

Karzai may be trying to spread cabinet positions among various regional, ethnic, and professional constituencies, and may be reluctant to subject that effort to a potentially divisive vote. In particular, ethnic Pashtuns and Hazaras are likely to passionately seek to promote their own interests. "The difficulty is, he has to keep [Panjshiri General Mohammed Qasim] Fahim" as Defense Minister," Rubin said by way of illustration, "and if delegates get to vote on it he'll lose Fahim." Rubin noted that no written proposal for allocating parliamentary or cabinet seats has circulated since parties began planning for the Loya Jirga in March.