EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Surprise Deals Muled at Afghan Council

EURASIA INSIGHT

SURPRISE DEALS MULED AT AFGHAN COUNCIL
Camelia Entekhabi-Fard 6/18/02

On the day that Afghanistan’s grand legislative council, the Emergency Loya Jirga, was supposed to end, it produced new questions. Marshal Mohammed Fahim, the Northern Alliance commander who has served as Defense Minister since December, indicated that he was prepared to give up his post. His fellow Panjshiri Tajik, Yunus Qanooni, appears headed for the Finance Ministry. And President Hamid Karzai continues to struggle to assemble a cabinet and hold onto popular support.

Karzai relented from his controversial June 17 proposal that he name a cabinet after the Loya Jirga closed, but pleaded for one extra day in session. He promised to present a cabinet on June 19, after the roughly 1,600 delegates at the fractious council had taken a "rest." Karzai’s earlier maneuver still drew criticism today. "One of the elements of democracy in the world is having a government which believes in the rules of democracy, including the separation of powers," former President Burhanuddin Rabbani told EurasiaNet. Many delegates were visibly angry at Karzai’s June 17 assertion. When some of them left the big tent, the shouting and yelling outside resembled a political demonstration. At times, Loya Jirga commission chairman Ismael Qasimyar lost control of angry delegates who seized the microphone. Karzai had held firm through this impasse, saying that he intended to name his own cabinet. Late today for a few seconds, he took the podium and urged delegates to return for one more day, until 5 p.m. on June 19. Presumably, that is when Karzai intends to announce his cabinet.

Assembling a cabinet will be very difficult for Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun linked to Tajiks like Fahim. Many Pashtuns suspect that Fahim and other former Northern Alliance leaders will not faithfully serve all the country’s constituencies. Yet Fahim has strong contacts with American and European leaders, as well as experience. As Karzai tries to assemble a strong central government and reclaim power from provincial warlords, he needs a Defense Minister who can persuade warlords and their minions to serve a central army.

Nonetheless, according to Fahim, someone else will probably emerge as a candidate for Defense Minister on June 19. "I am leaving my job," Fahim told me this afternoon. "We’ll have major changes at the cabinet level. From 30 ministries we are heading to 21 mostly specialized and non-controversial ministers. We will also have some reform at the security sections, and Qanooni would be going to the finance ministry." None of these changes are official. Qanooni served as Interior Minister until early June. [For further information, see the EurasiaNet Q&A archive].

Dealmaking happens at dizzying rates in Afghanistan, and misunderstandings at the Loya Jirga have produced inaccurate predictions about when Karzai would be elected and who would chair the commission. Nonetheless, Karzai seems to have developed the outlines of a deal to assemble a cabinet acceptable to the majority of delegates. As a tentative step, Karzai had proposed that each of the country’s nine provinces send five members to participate in talks on forming a parliament after the Loya Jirga. For some that step didn’t go far enough."People are right," Fahim told EurasiaNet. "They come from very far-off places to talk about problems of peace and stability in their areas. They want to see some concrete decisions made before they go back."

If Fahim does resign his post, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah would be the only Panjshiri to hold onto his job since a Bonn conference produced an interim government in late December. Though they formed the backbone of anti-Taliban resistance after the death of United Front leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Panjshiris have come under increasing pressure to share power since the Taliban fell. If Fahim withdraws and Qanooni shifts from controlling security to controlling finances, Karzai may be able to more convincingly claim that he is spreading power and influence around the country.

Karzai has also promised to keep Islamist extremism from affecting his agenda. In the VIP section of the Loya Jirga tent, tellingly, two figures were visibly absent today. Rabbani and Wahabbi leader Abdul Rasul Sayaff sat all day together in another part of the tent. Rabbani, who proposed extending the Loya Jirga on June 17, again made himself the center of attention. Now he is the unofficial head of what looks like an opposition bloc in formation, which could include up to half of all those present.

After seven days of at-times confusing debate, individual stances are finally crystallizing into tangible political positions. One factor that remains unclear, though, is how former king Mohammed Zahir Shah � whom many Afghans had considered an alternative to Karzai � will influence the new government. "Karzai offered to give me the ministry of Civil Aviation," said Hamid Sadiq, Zahir Shah’s spokesman. "But I told Karzai, I am not interested. I prefer to stay at my present position with the king. We will see what�s going on."

If Sadiq really did turn down an offer of a cabinet post, it may be because that cabinet may shake up more than once in the near future. After asking for another day, Karzai moved to the VIP section, where important ministers and governors and warlords usually sit. Among the luminaries there were United States special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who had talked to reporters about the importance of naming a cabinet at the Loya Jirga, and ambassadors from the United States and India. Mazar-e-Sharif strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum, who controls the country’s northern Uzbek population, sat in the VIP section. So did Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat, who effectively controls customs revenue flowing into the country from Iran. Zahir Shah’s youngest son and grandsons also met Karzai in the VIP section. Whatever cabinet the president announces on June 19, it will have to placate each of these personalities without granting any of them excessive influence.

The cabinet announcement will test the depth of Karzai’s support, and of his political acumen. "Rabbani is right," a delegate from Kabul told EurasiaNet. "We are from the Northern Alliance, which, together with Dostum, [ethnic Hazara leader Karim] Khalili and Ismail Khan and others, collected more than 1,000 votes for Karzai. He has to be everyone’s leader and not just the Pashtuns. He cannot act like a dictator and ignore our vote. We want a parliament. It doesn’t matter how many more days it might take; we need to air our views."

"We had lots of issues to raise during these [few] days," Rabbani told EurasiaNet. "First we had talked about the cabinet and the shape of the parliament, then we moved to the electricity and water problems in the provinces."

Because Afghans’ problems run so broad and deep, delegates will probably insist on debating whatever cabinet slate Karzai submits. "Don’t waste our time, coming and saying goodbye to us," warned a delegate who had taken the microphone. "One of the few benefits of 23 years of war for us is that people are not easily duped by political tricks anymore."

Editor�s Note: Camelia Entekhabi-Fard is a journalist who specializes in Afghan and Iranian affairs. She is currently in Afghanistan reporting for EurasiaNet.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the position of the Open Society Institute and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.