June 24, 2002	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 12, 1423

KABUL: The future of Afghanistan’s newly-elected President Hamid Karzai and of this country itself hangs on a thin reed: words.

As a leader who won power without the backing of an army, Karzai is betting on his not inconsiderable ability to use moral persuasion to make Afghanistan into “a country of laws, of institution,” he says.

His first effort to rely on such invisible force appears to have worked. A two-day protest by soldiers and police employees at the Interior Ministry over Karzai’s appointment of a new minister from the Pakhtoon ethnic group rather than the Tajiks, ended peacefully on Saturday.

The strike stopped after Karzai said publicly that it was both unpatriotic and a firing offence to refuse to accept the newly appointed minister.

In an interview in the presidential palace the day before, as he was putting the final touches on his Cabinet, Karzai talked passionately about the difficult task ahead to end what is known in this region as warlordism, and about his desire to create a working central government. Wearing his trademark sheepskin cap and a simple grey shalwar kameez, he seemed completely engaged in his effort to rally all the forces in Afghanistan to forge the nation’s future.

“I am planning to deliver to the Afghan people what they asked of me. And they have asked of me, clearly, security all over the country, an end to gun running and force against them, an end to separate stretches of power in Afghanistan,” Karzai said.

That will be no mean feat. Western diplomats say that Karzai had to make difficult choices in the formation of his Cabinet and that he has more difficult choices ahead if he is to bring the warlords to heel.

Moreover, his only way of achieving his democratic goals is through force of personality and some limited political manoeuvring. For instance, if a warlord in a distant region refused to send customs duties to Kabul, Karzai could threaten to take away his governorship, but such threats have credibility only if they can be enforced. Afghanistan has no army under central government control and only a limited police force.

“To do the job of controlling the warlords may eventually require force, and at present that doesn’t exist in the central government. These are the limitations he has to work with,” said one Western diplomat.

Karzai seemed aware of these limitations, but attempted to sketch out ways of coping with the hand he has been dealt.

His original plan — to bring all the powerful warlords into his Cabinet in order to loosen their hold on the provinces — was undermined when two of them declined his offer. Karzai ended up with two warlords in and three out.

In completing the Cabinet on Saturday, he attempted to tie in most of the missing warlords by including Mirwais Sadeq, whose father is Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat province, as well as several close allies of Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum.

For Karzai, the warlords separate armies foster an atmosphere of instability and the constant spectre of renewed fighting among commanders from different regions and ethnic groups, which makes it difficult for him to build a power base in Kabul. He seemed concerned to repeatedly make clear that, although he is attempting to bring the warlords to Kabul, he is not adopting their methods.

If the warlords refuse to disband their militias, Karzai said, he is prepared to “ask the international community” to intervene. But he is hoping it will not come to that.

—Dawn/The LAT/WP News Service.