Hamid Karzai, the interim Afghan leader who announced his candidacy for president Wednesday during a high-profile speaking tour of the United States and Britain, has returned home to confront an open political revolt by powerful rivals in his fragile coalition government.
Leaders of the Northern Alliance, the predominantly ethnic Tajik Islamic militia movement that includes the defense minister and a half-dozen regional militia bosses, held an unusual meeting here last week during Karzai's absence. Over the past three days, several spokesmen said the group has decided not to support Karzai's run for the presidency and to field its own candidate instead.
The threatened internal defection from Karzai comes at a critical time for Afghanistan's troubled transition to democracy, already a source of concern to the Bush administration, which strongly backs Karzai.
"There was discussion of cutting political ties with Karzai, finding another candidate and creating a new political party," Hafiz Mansour, publisher of a weekly magazine that represents Northern Alliance views, said of last week's meeting. "It is too early to say the results, but what is clear is that from now on, Karzai will be isolated."
Siddiq Chakari, a spokesman for former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, said the group would nominate Rabbani, an elderly Islamic scholar and ethnic Tajik who headed the Northern Alliance government of the early 1990s. But other sources said the movement was seeking an alternative candidate from Karzai's Pashtun ethnic group, the country's largest.
Karzai reacted angrily to the reports, saying he was fed up with coalition government and that the Islamic militias had "destroyed the results" of their struggle against Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Speaking on BBC Afghan-language radio today, he said he had no objection to anyone running against him, but that if the Northern Alliance leaders sought to disrupt order, he would act against them.
"Anyone can be a candidate against me, but no party can have military force, no military men can form a party, and no one can write on a tank or an artillery piece that it belongs to this or that party," he warned. The country's new political parties law expressly prohibits military or armed parties.
Afghanistan's turn toward democracy began when the United Nations established a transitional postwar government in December 2001. The U.N. plan, which placed key former militia leaders in prominent posts, laid out a two-year process leading to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2004.
Many aspects of the plan have been slipping lately. A draft constitution was completed recently, but a national assembly to debate and approve the charter has been postponed from this month to December. The most controversial issue to be debated is whether Afghanistan should have a strong presidential system, which would presumably favor Karzai, or a strong parliament with some veto powers over the executive.
Karzai said last week that national elections, scheduled for June, might have to be postponed by several months because of delays in beginning voter registration. This week, reports are circulating that U.N. officials might also consider limiting the election to a presidential contest because provincial parliamentary voting might be too difficult to arrange and too dangerous to protect.
Meanwhile, a long-stalled program to disarm and demobilize regional militias is due to begin in three weeks, but Northern Alliance militia leaders are now objecting on the grounds that Afghans need to defend themselves from resurgent forces of the former Taliban rulers and that their own fighters need more assurances of official support before turning over their weapons.
The Bush administration is concerned about the slow pace of progress in Afghanistan and its poor reflection on U.S. efforts to help. As a result, it has recently committed an extra $1.2 billion in aid and announced plans to help "accelerate" political and economic reforms by sending an assertive new ambassador and placing advisers in key ministries.
Mansour and others associated with the Northern Alliance said the group has no intention of threatening violence against Karzai or of disrupting national elections, whenever they are held. But they said several recent moves by Karzai to weaken their power had made them "rethink" their support for his government.
Before leaving for the West two weeks ago, Karzai suddenly announced a flurry of reforms that challenged the power of his internal opponents. First, he made official the long-planned shuffle of 22 senior posts in the Defense Ministry, aimed at creating more ethnic balance and professionalism in an institution dominated by the minister and his ethnic militia coterie.
Second, in the wake of an embarrassing land-grab scandal that implicated numerous senior officials, Karzai unexpectedly announced that no government vice presidents or deputies could take official actions in his absence. Over the past several months, he had moved to rein in individual provincial militia bosses.
"Karzai did these things to show he was powerful to the international community and to weaken" the Northern Alliance, Mansour said, suggesting that the moves had provoked the group's leaders to respond. "It is certain there will be no military action against him," he added, "but the lack of cooperation by government leaders and military officials could inflict fatal damage on him."
Some Afghan and foreign observers, however, said the Northern Alliance threat would have little political impact because its leaders are widely discredited and enjoy little public support. They noted that Karzai's previous concessions to the militia leaders had alienated many of his supporters and that his recent efforts to limit their power have won wide public approval.
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47787-2003Oct5?language=printerE-mail this article