President Hamid Karzai met Afghanistan's most powerful governor in his western stronghold Monday and delivered a tough message on disarming local militias and deploying government troops to unruly regions. Ismail Khan, the self-styled "emir of Herat," has criticized government plans to disarm tens of thousands of factional fighters in the coming weeks, saying this would leave a power vacuum while the national army remained weak. Karzai played down his differences with Khan, who is viewed by Western diplomats as a major obstacle to disarmament and to government attempts to extend its authority beyond Kabul, but said there would be no rolling back of policies. "There is only a procedural matter, that some consider to give (disarmament) some time, some consider (it) to be done quickly," he told reporters shortly before leaving Herat. "We have not discussed these issues today because there is no need to discuss them. There is an agreement already, a decision on it already."
Karzai was uncompromising when asked about the mixed reception to Afghan National Army (ANA) forces being stationed in what is probably Afghanistan's most stable city. "Kabul is part of Afghanistan, Herat is part of Afghanistan, Khost is part of Afghanistan, Paktika is part of Afghanistan, and the ANA can go wherever it wants." The government wants to disarm 40,000 factional fighters out of 100,000 nationwide by the end of June, a target that U.N. envoy to Afghanistan Jean Arnault said was in jeopardy due to resistance by leading commanders. In an interview with Reuters on the eve of Karzai's visit, Khan questioned why 1,500 national army troops had been sent to Herat after a clash in March in which his son, Civil Aviation Minister Mirwais Sadiq, was slain. Fears are growing that regional power brokers could flex their military muscle and influence landmark presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
| They'd better do it soon, then. Quite to my surprise, Karzai seems to have outmaneuvered them. Somehow. I'm not sure how... |
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