Afgans wary of Karzi dealings

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Afghans wary of Karzai dealings

President Karzai is alleged to have given cabinet posts to warlords in exchange for support in upcoming vote.

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The elections in Afghanistan are still months off, but recent dealings between top power brokers have fed a growing perception among ordinary Afghans and Western diplomats alike that the result is a foregone conclusion.
Over the past few weeks, President Hamid Karzai - lauded by the US government as a defender of democracy - has held a series of meetings with top military commanders famous for their defeat of Soviet forces and for running a murderous four-year government after that. Presidential spokesmen call the talks an effort at ensuring a stable election process, free of intimidation. Critics - and even the commanders themselves - say the talks were about something else, a deal to promise key cabinet posts to warlords in exchange for their support of President Karzai's candidacy.

The unwitting appearance of an inside deal with hated warlords is bringing back old cynicism here about politics, and is sending signals that Afghanistan may not be heading toward a peaceful, progressive future after all.

"People will regard this as a hidden deal, and a hidden deal at this juncture would not be good for the country," says Wali Masood, brother of the former Northern Alliance supreme commander Ahmed Shah Masood. "If you want to start a democracy, you go to the public with a team and an agenda, and let's see if the people vote for you or not."

Free elections had been touted as the turning point where ordinary Afghans could start to map their own future. That was the idea at least when Afghan leaders and UN mediators met in Bonn in December 2001 to decide on a political blueprint for the war-torn nation

http://csmonitor.com/2004/0601/p06s02-wosc.html

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1. Just another Lakhdar Brahimi (The Dictator Maker) success story

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1593430.stm

Profile: Lakhdar Brahimi

During more than 40 years of service, he has been called upon to help make or keep the peace in countries including Lebanon, South Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan and now Iraq.

As United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy, he has the task of shaping the caretaker administration that will run Iraq until elections can be held in early 2005.

He came to the task straight from a tough two-year assignment, also for the UN, helping Afghans to thrash out a post-Taleban constitution for their country.

Mr Brahimi's plan for Iraq has been gratefully received by a US administration weary of post-war nation-building efforts in the face of fierce resistance by insurgents.

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