KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan leader Hamid Karzai adopted a risky political strategy Wednesday with his decision to include several warlords in his inner circle and retain several key ethnic Tajiks in top government posts.
Karzai was inaugurated as the nation's transitional president later Wednesday and the nine-day grand council, or "loya jirga," drew to a close.
The Cabinet was approved by a show of hands among the more than 1,500 delegates but many seemed more resigned than genuinely pleased.
"We are satisfied but not very much," said Mohammed Hakim, an ethnic Pashtun from the region around Gardez, of Karzai's choices. "The nation has not been given the right to select the Cabinet, particularly the key ministries."
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Pashtuns, who make up the largest of the nation's many ethnic groups, have felt shortchanged in the power structure Karzai has put in place in his six months as interim prime minister.
Although Karzai is a Pashtun, his initial government was dominated by ethnic Tajiks from the Northern Alliance, the army that helped defeat the Taliban last fall. Karzai could not afford to alienate them, in part because they still control significant parts of the country.
On Wednesday, Karzai retained Mohammed Qassim Fahim, a former Northern Alliance commander, as defense minister and Abdullah, a longtime Northern Alliance spokes- man who goes by one name, as foreign minister.
Karzai also brought Fahim into his inner circle as one of three vice presidents. The other two also are prominent commanders: Haji Abdul Qadir, the Pashtun governor of Jalalabad province, and Karim Khalili, an ethnic Hazara commander.
Notably missing from the group was Gen. Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek commander from Northern Afghanistan. People close to the warlord said he had been invited to be a vice president but had declined because he did not want to move to Kabul, the capital.
Karzai did elevate a Pashtun to the Interior Ministry, naming Taj Mohamad Wardak, a California resident for 15 years before returning to Afghanistan this year, to the post.
Also appointed to Karzai's Cabinet was one woman, Suhaila Seddiqi, who will head the Public Health Ministry, and a Hazara, Mohammed Mohaqiq, who will continue to serve as head of the Planning Ministry.
The risk for Karzai is that once inside the tent, the warlords, rather than turning away from regional concerns and working for the new government, will use their influence to hoard jobs for their friends and perpetuate a system that relies on guns and money to exercise power rather than merit.
"It was not a good idea to bring commanders into these positions because the idea that they will come to Kabul and lose power outside is not the case," said Halayat Amin Arsala, the outgoing finance minister.
'All Afghans'
In an effort to downplay any impulse to count the number of slots that went to each ethnic group, Karzai exhorted delegates to think of every one as an Afghan, rather than a member of an ethnic group. "We are all connected to each other, we all belong to Afghanistan; we are proud of it. Our feelings for the nation's development are equal."
With the end of the loya jirga, the delegates will scatter to towns and villages across Afghanistan, bringing home with them their impressions and frustrations over the country's first experiment with democracy in more than 30 years.
By the most generous of readings, the council left many delegates disappointed. While they may have had unrealistic expectations coming in, given the difficulties of having such a large group take a hands-on role in choosing a Cabinet, they appeared to be leaving with a sense of having been cheated of their main job of designing the new government.
They had little say in the Cabinet's composition and left without having agreed on the shape of a national assembly, a crucial body for those who want to ensure that the executive branch's power can be kept in check.
Much of the focus Wednesday was on the Cabinet because it will shape the policies and set the tone of the government. Karzai's new government will be judged as much on whether the ethnically diverse Afghans perceive it as fair as on its achievements. Including warlords is particularly problematic in terms of his credibility as a new kind of leader.
"It gives the impression to the people that the warlords are running things," said Arsala.
Arsala is being replaced by Ashref Ghani. Ghani is one of the few appointees with expertise in his field: He is a former official with the World Bank.
Karzai appeared sensitive to the potential accusation that he was embracing "warlordism" and went out of his way to justify his choices, attempting to distinguish between warlords and mujahideen, fighters who struggled to free Afghanistan from Russian dominance.
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