Minority leaders leaving Karzai's side over leader's overtures to insurgents

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By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 23, 2010; A01


PANJSHIR VALLEY, AFGHANISTAN -- The man who served as President Hamid Karzai's top intelligence official for six years has launched an urgent campaign to warn Afghans that their leader has lost conviction in the fight against the Taliban and is recklessly pursuing a political deal with insurgents.

In speeches to small groups in Kabul and across northern Afghanistan over the past month, Amarullah Saleh has repeated his belief that Karzai's push for negotiation with insurgents is a fatal mistake and a recipe for civil war. He says Karzai's chosen policy endangers the fitful progress of the past nine years in areas such as democracy and women's rights.

"If I don't raise my voice we are headed towards a crisis," he told a gathering of college students in Kabul.

That view is shared by a growing number of Afghan minority leaders who once participated fully in Karzai's government, but now feel alienated from it. Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek politicians have expressed increasing concern that they are being marginalized by Karzai and his efforts to strike a peace deal with his fellow Pashtuns in the insurgency.

Saleh's warnings come as the United States struggles to formulate its own position on reconciliation with the Taliban. While U.S. officials have supported Afghan government-led talks in theory, they have watched with apprehension as Karzai has pursued his own peace initiatives, seemingly without Western involvement.

NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, cautioned recently that "any political reconciliation process has to be genuinely national and genuinely inclusive. Otherwise we're simply storing up the next set of problems that will break out. And in this country when problems break out, they tend to lead to violence."

Still, with war costs and casualties rising, U.S. policymakers are increasingly looking for a way out, and a power-sharing deal between Karzai and the Taliban may be the best they can hope for. One senior NATO official in Kabul described Saleh as "brilliant." But the official said Saleh's hard-line stance against negotiations does not offer any path to ending the long-running U.S. war.

Saleh, 38 and a Tajik, began his intelligence career in this scenic valley north of Kabul working for the legendary guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. He said he is not motivated by ethnic rivalries with the majority Pashtuns or by a desire to undermine Karzai, whom he describes as a decent man and a patriot.

Rather, Saleh said he wants to use nonviolent, grass-roots organizing to pressure the government into a harder line against the Taliban by showing that Afghans who do not accept the return of the Taliban are a formidable force. Saleh resigned last month as director of the National Directorate of Security after he said he realized that Karzai no longer valued his advice.

"The Taliban have reached the gates of Kabul," Saleh said. "We will not stop this movement even if it costs our blood."

Proceeding carefully

Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar declined to comment on Saleh's analysis. Karzai's government has made reconciliation a top priority, and officials say they are proceeding carefully. Karzai has invited Taliban leaders to talk, but he has said insurgents must accept the constitution, renounce violence and sever their links to foreign terrorists before they can rejoin society.

Those conditions do little to mollify Afghan minority leaders, many of whom had backed Karzai in the past but are now breaking with the president. Some are concerned that a deal between Karzai and the Taliban could spawn the sort of civil war that existed in Afghanistan prior to the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

"The new political path that Karzai has chosen will not only destroy him, it will destroy the country. It's a kind of suicide," said Mohammad Mohaqiq, a Hazara leader and former Karzai ally.

With the defection of Saleh and the transfer of another Tajik, Bismillah Khan, from his position as chief of army staff to interior minister, Karzai critics see an erosion of strong anti-Taliban views within the government. Khan, many argue, was more important to the war effort in his army post than at the interior ministry, which oversees the police.

"Now Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, they are not partners in Karzai's government, they are just employees," said Saleh Mohammad Registani, a Tajik parliament member from the Panjshir. "Karzai wants to use them as symbols."

To spread his message, Saleh has sought out young, educated students and university graduates. Through them he intends to form groups across the country to apply grass-roots political pressure. His aims are nonviolent, he said, and not intended to further ethnic divisions, but he has said they must prepare for the worst.

Saleh was born in the Panjshir Valley before the family moved to Kabul. He joined the armed opposition, or mujahideen, rather than be conscripted into the Afghan army and in 1997 started as an intelligence officer with Massoud's forces.

Saleh was appointed to run Afghanistan's fledgling intelligence service in 2004, and developed a reputation among U.S. officials as one of the most effective and honest cabinet ministers.

In Saleh's view, Karzai's shift from fighting to accommodating the Taliban began last August. The messy aftermath of the presidential election, in which Karzai prevailed but was widely accused of electoral fraud, was taken as a personal insult, Saleh said.

"It was very abrupt, it was not a process," Saleh said of Karzai's changing views. "He thought he was hurt by democracy and by the Americans. He felt he should have won with dignity."

Frayed relations

After the election, Afghan relations with the United States plunged to new lows, as Karzai railed against Western interference in his government and threatened to join the Taliban. Saleh said Karzai believes that the United States and NATO cannot prevail in Afghanistan and will soon depart. For that reason he has shifted his attention to Pakistan, which is thought to hold considerable sway over elements of the insurgency, in an attempt to broker a deal with the Taliban.

"We are heading toward settlement. Democracy is dying," Saleh said. He recalled Karzai saying, "'I've given everybody a chance to defeat the Taliban. It's been nine years. Where is the victory?'"

In his speeches, Saleh recounts Taliban brutalities: busloads of laborers lined up and executed, young men chopped in half with axes, women and children slain before their families. His rhetoric is harshly critical of Pakistan.

"All the goals you have will collapse if the Taliban comes back," he told a gathering of college students under a tent outside his house in Kabul. "I don't want your university to be closed just because of a political deal. It will be closed if we do not raise our voices."

Saleh believes the Taliban will not abide by a peaceful power-sharing deal because they want to regain total authority. Despite a significant U.S. troop buildup this year and major NATO offensives, he estimated that insurgents now control more than 30 percent of Afghanistan. He said the Taliban leadership -- about 200 people, many of them in the Pakistani city of Karachi -- are financed, armed and protected by Pakistan's intelligence agency. "The inner circle is totally under their control," Saleh said. Pakistan has long denied it supports the Taliban.

The second ring of Taliban leadership -- about 1,700 field commanders -- oversees a fighting force of 10,000 to 30,000 people, depending on the season, Saleh said. Under former NATO commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, 700 of these Taliban commanders were captured or killed, Saleh said, only to be replaced by a new crop.

"The factory is not shut," he said. "It keeps producing."

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Kabul Bank's Sherkhan Farnood feeds crony capitalism in Afghanistan

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By Andrew Higgins
Monday, February 22, 2010; A01

KABUL -- Afghanistan's biggest private bank -- founded by the Islamic nation's only world-class poker player -- celebrated its fifth year in business last summer with a lottery for depositors at Paris Palace, a Kabul wedding hall.

Prizes awarded by Kabul Bank included nine apartments in the Afghan capital and cash gifts totaling more than $1 million. The bank trumpeted the event as the biggest prize drawing of its kind in Central Asia.

Less publicly, Kabul Bank's boss has been handing out far bigger prizes to his country's U.S.-backed ruling elite: multimillion-dollar loans for the purchase of luxury villas in Dubai by members of President Hamid Karzai's family, his government and his supporters.

The close ties between Kabul Bank and Karzai's circle reflect a defining feature of the shaky post-Taliban order in which Washington has invested more than $40 billion and the lives of more than 900 U.S. service members: a crony capitalism that enriches politically connected insiders and dismays the Afghan populace.

"What I'm doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan," Kabul Bank's founder and chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, said in an interview when asked about the Dubai purchases and why, according to data from the Persian Gulf emirate's Land Department, many of the villas have been registered in his name. "These people don't want to reveal their names."

Afghan laws prohibit hidden overseas lending and require strict accounting of all transactions. But those involved in the Dubai loans, including Kabul Bank's owners, said the cozy flow of cash is not unusual or illegal in a deeply traditional system underpinned more by relationships than laws.

The curious role played by the bank and its unorthodox owners has not previously been reported and was documented by land registration data; public records; and interviews in Kabul, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Moscow.

Many of those involved appear to have gone to considerable lengths to conceal the benefits they have received from Kabul Bank or its owners. Karzai's older brother and his former vice president, for example, both have Dubai villas registered under Farnood's name. Kabul Bank's executives said their books record no loans for these or other Dubai deals financed at least in part by Farnood, including home purchases by Karzai's cousin and the brother of Mohammed Qasim Fahim, his current first vice president and a much-feared warlord who worked closely with U.S. forces to topple the Taliban in 2001.

At a time when Washington is ramping up military pressure on the Taliban, the off-balance-sheet activities of Afghan bankers raise the risk of financial instability that could offset progress on the battlefield. Fewer than 5 percent of Afghans have bank accounts, but among those who do are many soldiers and policemen whose salaries are paid through Kabul Bank.

A U.S. official who monitors Afghan finances, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said banks appear to have plenty of money but noted that in a crisis, Afghan depositors "won't wait in line holding cups of latte" but would be "waving AK-47s."

Kabul Bank executives, in separate interviews, gave different accounts of what the bank is up to with Dubai home buyers. "They are borrowers. They have an account at Kabul Bank," said the bank's chairman, Farnood, a boisterous 46-year-old with a gift for math and money -- and the winner of $120,000 at the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe, held in a London casino.

The bank's chief audit officer, Raja Gopalakrishnan, however, insisted that the loan money didn't come directly from Kabul Bank. He said it was from affiliated but separate entities, notably a money-transfer agency called Shaheen Exchange, which is owned by Farnood, is run by one of Kabul Bank's 16 shareholders and operates in Kabul out of the bank's headquarters.

The audit officer said Farnood "thinks it is one big pot," but the entities are "legally definitely separate."

A new economy

In some ways, Kabul Bank is a symbol of how much has changed in Afghanistan since 2001, when the country had no private banks and no economy to speak of. Kabul Bank has opened more than 60 branches and recently announced that it will open 250 more, and it claims to have more than $1 billion in deposits from more than a million Afghan customers.

Kabul Bank prospers because Afghanistan, though extremely poor, is in places awash with cash, a result of huge infusions of foreign aid, opium revenue and a legal economy that, against the odds, is growing at about 15 percent a year. The vast majority of this money flows into the hands of a tiny minority -- some of it through legitimate profits, some of it through kickbacks and insider deals that bind the country's political, security and business elites.

The result is that, while anchoring a free-market order as Washington had hoped, financial institutions here sometimes serve as piggy banks for their owners and their political friends. Kabul Bank, for example, helps bankroll a money-losing airline owned by Farnood and fellow bank shareholders that flies three times a day between Kabul and Dubai.

Kabul Bank's executives helped finance President Hamid Karzai's fraud-blighted reelection campaign last year, and the bank is partly owned by Mahmoud Karzai, the Afghan president's older brother, and by Haseen Fahim, the brother of Karzai's vice presidential running mate.

Farnood, who now spends most of his time in Dubai, said he wants to do business in a "normal way" and does not receive favors as a result of his official contacts. He said that putting properties in his name means his bank's money is safe despite a slump in the Dubai property market: He can easily repossess if borrowers run short on cash.

A review of Dubai property data and interviews with current and former executives of Kabul Bank indicate that Farnood and his bank partners have at least $150 million invested in Dubai real estate. Most of their property is on Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island in the shape of a palm tree where the cheapest house costs more than $2 million.

Mirwais Azizi, an estranged business associate of Farnood and the founder of the rival Azizi Bank in Kabul, has also poured money into Dubai real estate, with even more uncertain results. A Dubai company he heads, Azizi Investments, has invested heavily in plots of land on Palm Jebel Ali, a stalled property development. Azizi did not respond to interview requests. His son, Farhad, said Mirwais was busy.

Responsibility for bank supervision in Afghanistan lies with the Afghan central bank, whose duties include preventing foreign property speculation. The United States has spent millions of dollars trying to shore up the central bank. But Afghan and U.S. officials say the bank, though increasingly professional, lacks political clout.

The central bank's governor, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, said his staff had "vigorously investigated" what he called "rumors" of Dubai property deals, but "unfortunately, up until now they have not found anything." Fitrat, who used to live in Washington, last month sent a team of inspectors to Kabul Bank as part of a regular review of the bank's accounts. He acknowledged that Afghan loans are "very difficult to verify" because "we don't know who owns what."

Kabul Bank's dealings with Mahmoud Karzai, the president's brother, help explain why this is so. In interviews, Karzai, who has an Afghan restaurant in Baltimore, initially said he rented a $5.5 million Palm Jumeirah mansion, where he now lives with his family. But later he said he had an informal home-loan agreement with Kabul Bank and pays $7,000 a month in interest.

"It is a very peculiar situation. It is hard to comprehend because this is not the usual way of doing business," said Karzai, whose home is in Farnood's name.

Karzai also said he bought a 7.4 percent stake in the bank with $5 million he borrowed from the bank. But Gopalakrishnan, the chief audit officer, said Kabul Bank's books include no loans to the president's brother.

Also in a Palm Jumeirah villa registered in Farnood's name is the family of Ahmad Zia Massoud, Afghanistan's first vice president from 2004 until last November. The house, bought in December 2007 for $2.3 million, was first put in the name of Massoud's wife but was later re-registered to give Farnood formal ownership, property records indicate.

Massoud, brother of the legendary anti-Soviet guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, said that Farnood had always been the owner but let his family use it rent-free for the past two years because he is "my close friend." Massoud added: "We have played football together. We have played chess together." Farnood, however, said that though the "villa is in my name," it belongs to Massoud "in reality."

Haseen Fahim, the brother of Afghanistan's current first vice president, has been another beneficiary of Kabul Bank's largesse. He got money from Farnood to help buy a $6 million villa in Dubai, which, unusually, is under his own name. He borrowed millions more from the bank, which he partly owns, to fund companies he owns in Afghanistan.

In an interview at Kabul Bank's headquarters, Khalilullah Fruzi, who as chief executive heads the bank's day-to-day operations, said he didn't know how much bank money has ended up in Dubai. If Karzai's relatives and others buy homes "in Dubai, or Germany or America . . . that is their own affair," Fruzi said, adding that the bank "doesn't give loans directly for Dubai."

Fruzi, a former gem trader, said Kabul Bank is in robust health, makes a profit and has about $400 million in liquid assets deposited with the Afghan central bank and other institutions. Kabul Bank is so flush, he added, that it is building a $30 million headquarters, a cluster of shimmering towers of bulletproof glass.

The bank is also spending millions to hire gunmen from a company called Khurasan Security Services, which, according to registration documents, used to be controlled by Fruzi and is now run by his brother.

The roots of Kabul Bank stretch back to the Soviet Union. Both Fruzi and Farnood got their education and their start in business there after Moscow invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

While in Moscow, Farnood set up a successful hawala money-transfer outfit to move funds between Russia and Kabul. Russian court documents show that 10 of Farnood's employees were arrested in 1998 and later convicted of illegal banking activity. Fearful of arrest in Russia and also in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Farnood shifted his focus to Dubai.

In 2004, three years after the fall of the Taliban regime, he got a license to open Kabul Bank. His Dubai-registered hawala, Shaheen Exchange, moved in upstairs and started moving cash for bank clients. It last year shifted $250 million to $300 million to Dubai, said the chief audit officer.

The bank began to take in new, politically connected shareholders, among them the president's brother, Mahmoud, and Fahim, brother of the vice president, who registered his stake in the name of his teenage son.

Fahim said two of his companies have borrowed $70 million from Kabul Bank. Insider borrowing, he said, is unavoidable and even desirable in Afghanistan because, in the absence of a solid legal system, business revolves around trust, not formal contracts. "Afghanistan is not America or Europe. Afghanistan is starting from zero," he said.

Fahim's business has boomed, thanks largely to subcontracting work on foreign-funded projects, including a new U.S. Embassy annex and various buildings at CIA sites across the country, among them a remote base in Khost where seven Americans were killed in a December suicide attack by a Jordanian jihadiist. "I have good opportunities to get profit," Fahim said.

'Like wild horses'

Kabul Bank also plunged into the airline business, providing loans to Pamir Airways, an Afghan carrier now owned by Farnood, Fruzi and Fahim. Pamir spent $46 million on four used Boeing 737-400s and hired Hashim Karzai, the president's cousin, formerly of Silver Spring, as a "senior adviser."

Farnood said he also provided a "little bit" of money to help Hashim Karzai buy a house on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. Karzai, in brief telephone interviews, said that the property was an investment and that he had borrowed some money from Farnood. He said he couldn't recall details and would "have to check with my accountant."

Noor Delawari, governor of the central bank during Kabul Bank's rise, said Farnood and his lieutenants "were like wild horses" and "never paid attention to the rules and regulations." Delawari said he didn't know about any property deals by Kabul Bank in Dubai. He said that he, too, bought a home in the emirate, for about $200,000.

Fitrat, the current central bank governor, has tried to take a tougher line against Kabul Bank and its rivals, with little luck. Before last year's presidential election, the central bank sent a stern letter to bankers, complaining that they squander too much money on "security guards and bulletproof vehicles" and "expend large-scale monetary assistance to politicians." The letter ordered them to remain "politically neutral."

Kabul Bank did the opposite: Fruzi, its chief executive, joined Karzai's campaign in Kabul while Farnood, its poker-playing chairman, organized fundraising events for Karzai in Dubai. One of these was held at the Palm Jumeirah house of Karzai's brother.

The government has returned the favor. The ministries of defense, interior and education now pay many soldiers, police and teachers through Kabul Bank. This means that tens of millions of dollars' worth of public money sloshes through the bank, an unusual arrangement, as governments generally don't pump so much through a single private bank.

Soon after his November inauguration for a second term, President Karzai spoke at an anti-corruption conference in Kabul, criticizing officials who "after one or two years work for the government get rich and buy houses in Dubai." Last month, he flew to London for a conference on Afghanistan, attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other leaders, and again promised an end to the murky deals that have so tarnished his rule.

Also in London for the conference were Farnood, who now has an Afghan diplomatic passport, and Fruzi, who served as a financial adviser to Karzai's reelection campaign and also owns a house in Dubai. "If there is no Kabul Bank, there will be no Karzai, no government," Fruzi said.

Correspondent Joshua Partlow in Kabul and special correspondent Anna Masterova in Moscow contributed to this report.

As Holbrooke bolsters Karzai, parliament again rejects many of his cabinet picks

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By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 17, 2010; A18

KABUL -- Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Saturday that it is time to "move on" from last year's fraud-marred presidential election and any lingering questions about the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai's government.

But just minutes before Holbrooke met with reporters at the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy compound here, the newly assertive Afghan parliament delivered Karzai another political setback by voting to reject more than half of his second slate of cabinet nominees.

The parliament had earlier rejected 70 percent of the president's cabinet choices, deeming many of them either too closely aligned with Afghanistan's former guerrilla commanders, or warlords, or not sufficiently qualified to lead the ministries for which they were nominated.

In the latest vote, the parliament rejected 10 of Karzai's picks while approving seven, thus leaving about a third of the 24 cabinet jobs unfilled. Among those rejected were two of three female nominees.

Holbrooke, arriving from Pakistan on his sixth visit to the region as special representative, dismissed the development as "an internal matter" and called the nominees who were confirmed "excellent." He was in time for the vote approving Zalmay Rassoul for the post of foreign minister and was among the first to shake his hand.

"This is a government we can work with, and look forward to working with," Holbrooke said.

He also disputed the suggestion that last year's election, in which Karzai's closest challenger withdrew from a planned runoff amid widespread charges of voting irregularities, had left a cloud over the president's legitimacy.

"The government is legitimate," Holbrooke said, calling Karzai "the legitimately chosen, legitimate leader of this country."

"I honestly believe it's time to move on, and get on with why we're here," he added, noting that much of 2009 had been consumed by the election and by the deteriorating security situation, which prompted President Obama to launch a wide-ranging review of the United States' Afghanistan policy. The review culminated in a December announcement that 30,000 additional U.S. troops and more civilian aid workers would be sent to the country.

"The troops have begun to arrive," Holbrooke said. "It's a very important symbol of our commitment." He also said the civilian surge was an equally important, if often underreported, part of the new policy.

But the continuing instability in Afghanistan was underscored by fresh reports of violence in the south, particularly in the volatile Helmand province, where the U.S. troop surge is concentrated. Two British soldiers were reported killed by an explosion in Helmand on Friday while on foot patrol. On Saturday, NATO and Afghan troops came under fire from Taliban insurgents attacking from two positions; the foreign troops called for air support and said a missile was fired at a Taliban position.

Also in Helmand, NATO reported that an overnight raid Friday in Nad Ali district killed 11 insurgents and led to the discovery of a weapons cache, a trove of black tar opium and equipment used to make roadside bombs.

Insurgents, meanwhile, fired a rocket into Kabul on Friday night. It landed near the German Embassy, injuring a security guard.

On Saturday, NATO said a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan earlier in the day killed one of its soldiers, but the alliance gave no details.

Holbrooke said one of the United States' key goals is to aggressively support Karzai's initiative to open talks with moderate Taliban elements in hopes of drawing them away from the insurgency.

"There is no vehicle for them to come in from the cold right now," Holbrooke said, adding: "This has got to be an Afghan-led program, but we're ready to support it."

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• Afghan parliament to recess without confirming cabinet (windsorstar.com)

New Afghan Cabinet Picks Still Generate Resistance

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SANGAR RAHIMI

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai made a second effort to fill his cabinet on Saturday, nominating 16 new ministers a week after Parliament had rejected most of his first choices.

But several Parliament members said they were as unimpressed by the new slate, which included many political unknowns, as they were with the first one. Their displeasure could prolong the stalemate that has left Afghanistan without a fully functional government since the widely criticized presidential election last summer.

Also on Saturday, Afghan officials signed an agreement that will allow the American military to begin the process of transferring responsibility for the notorious prison at Bagram Air Base to Afghan control.

When Parliament rejected 17 of Mr. Karzai’s first batch of 24 nominees, the move was hailed by some analysts as a sign of the legislature’s newfound independence.

The legislators asked that Mr. Karzai choose more technocrats who had expertise in the work of the ministries they were nominated to lead.

The new slate includes a number of highly educated nominees and three women, an increase over the first list and a point praised by several Parliament members. But they said the new list still depended too heavily on political ties to Mr. Karzai and not enough on competence.

“This is the same as the previous list,” said Mir Ahmed Joyenda, an independent Parliament member from Kabul, whose views echoed those of several Parliament members interviewed. “It is like a limited company and those people who have supported Mr. Karzai, they each have a share.

“They introduced new names, maybe they have higher education, but are not known to the people and do not have expertise in their ministries,” he said.

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Another Parliament member, Daoud Sultanzoi from Ghazni, a predominantly Pashtun area, also cited a lack of substantive expertise. “In Afghanistan we need more than political confidants in these jobs, we need people who can build those ministries.”

He cited Mr. Karzai’s nominee for transportation minister, who he said was a hydroelectric engineer. “This is a ministry where we cannot afford to lose time,” he said. “We’re losing a lot of revenue in that ministry, aviation is a shambles, road transport is a shambles, so we need someone who can do that job, who knows about those specific areas.”

In contrast, the main Uzbek party, Junbish-e-Milli, which is allied with the former commander Abdul Rashid Dostum, said it was satisfied with the new list and hoped that it would be approved.

“All the tribes living in Afghanistan can see their presence in this list,” said Sayed Noorullah Sadat, a leader of Mr. Dostum’s party.

“We are happy with the ethnic distribution of posts; however, we were happy with the previous cabinet as well, but unfortunately they couldn’t get the vote of confidence,” he said.

Two Hazara members of Parliament agreed that the ethnic mix was representative, but that many of the nominees were unknown. “Still they are better than the old portraits who now hold the posts,” said Abbas Nooyan from Kabul.

The agreement on Bagram, signed by the Afghan ministries of Defense and Justice, clears the way for the American military to begin a program of training and preparation for the Afghans to take charge of the prison, which houses more than 700 detainees captured by the American military.

Initially, the Defense Ministry will run the center, but it will eventually be handed over to the Justice Ministry, which oversees jails and prisons, said Col. Stephen Clutter, the spokesman for American detainee operations in Afghanistan.

The prison was notorious for its conditions in the early years of the war, with hundreds of detainees held in cages and subjected to abuse and harsh conditions. A new prison was opened two months ago, improving conditions, although detainees there still have no right to a lawyer and can be held indefinitely without charge.

Three NATO service members were killed in the last two days, according to a NATO spokesman. One, who had been wounded by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, died Saturday. The other two died Friday, one when he was struck by a bomb in southern Afghanistan and the other from injuries from a vehicle accident.

In Herat, insurgents attacked a building on Saturday that was recently acquired by the United States government as a consular office. They fired at least one rocket that damaged the third floor.

A major raid by NATO troops in a rural district of Kandahar Province captured more than three tons of illegal drugs in a truck, including more than 5,300 pounds of processed opium, more than 1,000 pounds of wet opium paste and about 50 pounds of heroin, according to a NATO spokesman in Kabul.

Karzai Choices for Afghan Cabinet Are Mostly Rejected

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — In a clear signal to President Hamid Karzai that he cannot count on Parliament for support, lawmakers resoundingly rejected most of his nominees for cabinet posts and expressed discontent with the candidates’ competence.

Of Mr. Karzai’s 24 cabinet nominees, 17 were rejected and 7 approved. Of those who received votes of confidence, all but one are currently cabinet ministers.

The president’s office had no comment on Saturday’s vote; the deputy spokesman, Hamid Elmi, said a news conference would be held on Sunday.

After being declared the winner of an election tainted by fraud, Mr. Karzai has been under pressure from Western leaders and Afghan opposition figures to help make things right by choosing cabinet officials not linked to corruption or incompetence. Parliament’s action on Saturday made it clear that they felt he had not met those requirements.

In particular, they said that they were not consulted enough during the nomination process and that many cabinet nominees lacked the professional backgrounds necessary to do their jobs. However, ethnic politics were also in play, raising questions about whether lawmakers were primarily interested in being partisan defenders of their own ethnic constituencies, though many denied that that was a factor.

“The members of the Parliament cast their vote based on merit, not based on tribal or ideology or factional interests,” said Kabir Rangbar, an independent member from Kabul. “This is a reaction against Karzai’s choices.”

The effects of the move were difficult to predict, since it is possible that Mr. Karzai will try to make recess appointments once Parliament leaves for its winter break. But over all, it suggested a deepening divide between the president and Parliament. And it could also leave a number of ministries adrift, under the uncertain leadership of deputy ministers who lack political power.

“The significance of the rejection has to do with politics and Karzai’s failure to build a cabinet that spoke to a wide enough spectrum of people, and also with the weakening of his political machine,” said Alex Thier, the director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan program at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington-based research group.

Of those confirmed, four were Pashtuns, one Tajik, one Uzbek and one Sadat. The only woman to be nominated was turned down, as were a Turkmen and three Hazara candidates. In all, seven ministers who were nominated for second terms were voted down, including the ministers of public health, telecommunications and counternarcotics.

Five of the most prominent and successful ministers during Mr. Karzai’s first term, the defense, interior, finance, education and agriculture ministers, were endorsed for second terms. They were also the ministers, with one exception, who had strong American backing, according to people close to the process.

A spokeswoman for the American Embassy issued a noncommittal statement supporting Parliament’s right to vet candidates, but did not make detailed comments on specific candidates.

Shukria Barakzai, a member of Parliament from Kabul, said she observed opposition to nominees who represented political parties. She noted that Ismail Khan, a powerful member of the Jamiat Party and a former commander from the western province of Herat, was rejected, while the former commerce minister Mohammed Sharwani, an Uzbek, who is viewed as an independent, was confirmed as the minister of mines. Similarly, the finance minister, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, who is viewed as independent, was endorsed for a second term.

“Those who came as a representative of a group, they failed,” Ms. Barakzai said. “I hope it will be a good lesson for President Karzai that when the issue of reform comes, he is not alone; the members of Parliament really want reform. It was the moderates and the technocrats who got the vote of confidence.”

Fatima Aziz, a Tajik who represents the northern province of Kunduz, differed from her colleagues in saying that she thought ethnicity had played a part in the votes. She said she was disappointed that several nominees from minorities had not done well.

Of the 246 Parliament members, 232 were present, which meant that each minister had to get at least 117 votes to win approval. The voting was by secret ballot. Notably, none of the ministers received ringing endorsements; not one received even two-thirds of the votes, and some were confirmed by barely a handful of votes.

Several lawmakers said that over all, they thought the voting and the rejection represented a new era for Parliament and one in which they were better representing their constituents.

“It’s very essential to bring or to make a balance between the power of the president and the power of the Parliament,” Mr. Rangbar said. “The voice of the people had been widely ignored before, but today Parliament members showed with full confidence they are speaking for their constituents.”

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.

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Attack Puts Afghan Leader and NATO at Odds

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan — The killing of at least nine men in a remote valley of eastern Afghanistan by a joint operation of Afghan and American forces put President Hamid Karzai and senior NATO officials at odds on Monday over whether those killed had been civilians or Taliban insurgents.

In a statement e-mailed to the news media, Mr. Karzai condemned the weekend attack and said the dead had been civilians, eight of them schoolboys. He called for an investigation.

Local officials, including the governor and members of Parliament from Kunar Province, where the deaths occurred, confirmed the reports. But the Kunar police chief, Khalilullah Ziayee, cautioned that his office was still investigating the killings and that outstanding questions remained, including why the eight young men had been in the same house at the time.

“There are still questions to be answered, like why these students were together and what they were doing on that night,” Mr. Ziayee said.

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A senior NATO official with knowledge of the operation said that the raid had been carried out by a joint Afghan-American force and that its target was a group of men who were known Taliban members and smugglers of homemade bombs, which the American and NATO forces call improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s.

According to the NATO official, nine men were killed. “These were people who had a well-established network, they were I.E.D. smugglers and also were responsible for direct attacks on Afghan security and coalition forces in those area,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue.

“When the raid took place they were armed and had material for making I.E.D.’s,” the official added.

Senior American military officials cautioned that such episodes tended to be complex and that because of the anger about civilian casualties, Mr. Karzai was under enormous pressure to speak out quickly, sometimes before investigations were complete. NATO will investigate the killings in conjunction with Mr. Karzai’s staff, the official said.

But the conflicting accounts and Mr. Karzai’s public statements underlined the tensions over civilian casualties that have become among the most contentious between the Afghan president and his international backers, as well as one of the most politically fraught for Afghans.

Several members of Parliament from Kunar, as well as neighboring Nangahar and Laghman Provinces, walked out of a parliamentary session on Monday to show their anger over the deaths. They said that 10 people had been killed and that all were civilians.

“When this story first broke, the local officials were adamant that they were all Taliban” until several members of Parliament from the area called President Karzai, the NATO official said.

The deaths occurred in the village of Ghazi Khan, in the rugged Narang Valley, a rural area difficult to reach. The Taliban are active in much of the province, along with numerous wood and arms smugglers and gem traders.

While some conventional American forces are deployed in Kunar, in the more remote areas most operations are carried out by Special Forces.

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The governor of Kunar, Fazullah Wahidi, said that “the coalition claimed they were enemy fighters,” but that elders in the district and a delegation sent to the remote area had found that “10 people were killed and all of them were civilians.”

A NATO spokesman had no comment on the killings and said that no NATO forces were operating in the area.

Attacks using homemade bombs killed one American service member on Friday and another on Saturday in southern Afghanistan.

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Afghan Killing Bares a Karzai Family Feud

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — On Oct. 16, four sport utility vehicles barreled into Karz, Afghanistan, the hometown of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, and pulled up to the home of one of his cousins, Yar Mohammad Karzai.

Teams of armed guards blocked the street and herded passers-by into a nearby mosque while seizing their cellphones, then removed the front door of the house, according to Karzai family members and several people from the mosque. A man in traditional white Afghan robes, accompanied by two security guards, walked inside and found two of Yar Mohammad Karzai’s children, 18-year-old Waheed and his 12-year-old sister, Sona, doing their schoolwork in their bedroom.

The girl later said that she remembered the robed man raising a pistol and shooting Waheed three times as she shouted: “Don’t kill my brother! Don’t kill my brother!”

As the intruders fled, firing their weapons, a cousin, Zalal Karzai, 25, came running from elsewhere in the house and saw Waheed stagger from the bedroom. “What happened to you?” Zalal Karzai recalled asking.

“ ‘Hashmat shot me!’ ” he said the youth screamed back.

Waheed Karzai, who relatives say provided the same account to other family members before dying two days later at an American military hospital in Kandahar, was referring to Hashmat Karzai, 40, a first cousin of President Karzai and the owner of a private security company that has close ties to the Afghan government and millions of dollars in contracts with the United States military.

The murder in Karz, the identity of the man accused of being the killer and the fact that the episode involves Afghanistan’s most prominent family make for a dramatic — and divisive — tale, one that has not been previously reported. The killing has set off a bitter split within the family in Afghanistan and the United States, with charges, countercharges and claims of a cover-up by Afghan officials.

Some relatives said they believed that the death was vengeance for an “honor killing” of Hashmat Karzai’s father nearly 30 years ago by Yar Mohammad Karzai. For his part, Hashmat Karzai denies any role in Waheed’s death, instead saying that the boy was shot by drug dealers intending to harm someone else.

“They mixed up the houses and killed the boy by mistake,” Hashmat Karzai said in a telephone interview from Dubai, where he is staying with his family. “I had nothing to do with it.”

There has been no investigation of the shooting by the Afghan government nor any mention of it in the press. The F.B.I. questioned Hashmat Karzai a month ago, he acknowledged, but it is not clear whether American investigators are pursuing the matter. An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment.

While some family members accuse the Karzai government of stonewalling, they do not claim that the president played an active role in blocking an investigation. Instead, they blame several of his brothers, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, the political boss of Kandahar and southern Afghanistan, for trying to hush up relatives and forestall an official inquiry, perhaps with the president’s knowledge.

“Not a single soul has come to investigate,” Yar Mohammad Karzai, 62, said in a recent telephone interview. “I told one local official, what do you want me to do, knock on Obama’s door?”

Noor Karzai, 40, a cousin who lives in Maryland, expressed similar disappointment. “They are protecting Hashmat,” he said. “He is sitting in Kabul getting money from the U.S. government. No one will touch him. We are sending billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to Afghanistan, and this is how the government operates.”

A spokesman for the Afghan president said that the case was a criminal matter and denied that the president sought to interfere. Reached by telephone on Saturday, Ahmed Wali Karzai declined to comment on the matter, as did officials at the United States Embassy in Kabul.

Frustrated by the seeming inaction on the killing, nearly a dozen family members agreed to be interviewed for this article. Some, including Yar Mohammad Karzai, Sona Karzai and Zalal Karzai, who witnessed aspects of the shooting or its immediate aftermath, also provided documents about the killing. They include a complaint that Yar Mohammad Karzai filed with the Dand district police in Kandahar Province naming Hashmat Karzai as Waheed’s assailant, the boy’s hospital records and a death certificate stating that he died of gunshot wounds.

Other family members, saying they feared retribution, agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, as did three witnesses from the Karz mosque. All three said they heard the shooting across the street; one identified Hashmat Karzai as the robed man he saw exiting the house.

The death of Waheed Karzai came after the Afghan election in August, in which President Karzai’s government was widely accused of electoral fraud and attacked for corruption.

The activities of the president’s family have fed some of the criticism. Afghan and American officials, for example, have said that Ahmed Wali Karzai has been involved in or benefited from drug trafficking, while another brother, Mahmoud, has been accused of exploiting his family name to get lucrative business deals. Some relatives said they believed that news of the fatal Karzai family feud would have been an embarrassment for the president.

According to family members, the roots of the dispute go back to when Yar Mohammad Karzai was about 5, and his father arranged a marriage between him and another Karzai cousin. But when the girl grew up, she left Karz, became a teacher, married another man and eventually settled in the United States.

Relatives say Yar Mohammad Karzai was angered by the woman’s rejection and her family’s failure to make amends by offering a formal divorce or an apology. To punish her family, relatives said, Yar Mohammad Karzai fatally shot Khalil Lula Karzai, the girl’s brother, in 1982 or 1983 in Quetta, Pakistan, where both men were then living.

In an interview, Yar Mohammad Karzai declined to say whether he had killed Khalil Karzai, who was Hashmat’s father. He was never charged in the death, though he said he was briefly arrested in 1997 or 1998 when Hashmat Karzai pressed the Taliban government to detain him. Because the crime occurred in Pakistan, however, the Taliban soon released him. Both men went to Quetta, where family members pressed Hashmat to drop the matter and mediated a peace deal between the men.

But, Yar Mohammad Karzai said, he knew it was not over.

“I never felt comfortable with the closing of this story,” he said. “And neither did Hashmat.”

Hashmat Karzai disputes that. “The father killed my father, we captured him more than 10 years ago and brought him to Pakistan, and we chose to have forgiveness,” he said. “In Islam, I have the right to kill him, but I chose not to do so.”

After Khalil Karzai’s murder, his family moved to the United States and settled in Maryland. Hashmat, the oldest son, became an American citizen, and until 2007 worked at a Toyota dealership in Virginia.

He returned to Afghanistan, where his younger brother, Hekmat, 36, runs the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies, a Kabul-based research organization that supports the Karzai government. Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Hekmat was a student and worked in restaurants in the Washington area.

After the American invasion of Afghanistan, he served as a political officer at the Afghan Embassy in Washington. In 2006, he moved back to Kabul to start his research group. He said he briefed American military officials on his research. Several family members described him as an informal adviser to President Karzai and said they believed that his influence helped his brother’s rise in Kabul.

Soon after arriving in Kabul, Hashmat Karzai took over the Asia Security Group, a company that now employs 500 to 600 guards, he said. In recent months, Asia Security has been awarded $16.2 million in five contracts with the United States military to provide security for five American bases in Afghanistan, according to Col. Wayne M. Shanks, an American military spokesman.

According to its Web site, Asia Security also has other major American customers in Afghanistan, including DynCorp International, a Virginia-based firm with large contracts with the American government in Afghanistan. Hekmat’s Karzai’s research center is also an Asia Security client, the Web site said.

This year, Hashmat Karzai began building a large house in Karz, near Yar Mohammad Karzai’s home. Some relatives say they believe that Waheed Karzai was singled out as a way to inflict deep pain on his father.

“If he had killed Yar Mohammad Karzai, it would have been wrong, but we would have understood,” said Mohammad Karzai, a cousin from Maryland. “The family would have been silent about it. But instead, he killed an 18-year-old boy who had nothing to do with this feud.”

Hashmat Karzai agrees that Waheed was an innocent victim, but he attributed his death to drug dealers. He said that Yar Mohammad Karzai and his brothers were involved in the drug trade — an allegation that Yar Mohammad rejects — and that one brother cheated some dealers. Intending to kill that man’s son, they mistakenly shot Waheed, Hashmat Karzai said.

He said he told President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai that he played no part in the crime. He added: “Why would I do a killing there, right where I am building a house? That would be stupidity.”

The village of Karz is in Kandahar Province, about three miles outside the city of Kandahar, where Ahmed Wali Karzai, one of the president’s brothers, wields enormous political power. But after Waheed’s killing, government officials in the Kandahar area were strangely unhelpful, according to Yar Mohammad Karzai and other family members.

Immediately after the shooting, Yar Mohammad Karzai said, he called the nearest police station. But no one answered the phone, he recalled. He soon realized that the convoy had come to the shooting scene and gone without having to stop at a police checkpoint on the road into Karz.

Frantic to get help, Zalal Karzai said he called a friend working for President Karzai in Kabul, who gave him a private number for Ahmed Wali Karzai in Kandahar. Reaching someone in that office, he reported the killing. Later that night, some police officials went to the scene of the shooting, collected some shell casings and left. Yar Mohammad Karzai said they had not returned since then.

Meanwhile, at least three of President Karzai’s brothers — Ahmed Wali, Mahmoud and Qayum — have been urging family members to allow relatives to deal with the killing privately without bringing in the police, said Noor and Mohammad Karzai, the brothers from Maryland.

“My mom talks to Qayum and Ahmed Wali every day,” said another family member in the United States, who asked not to be identified. “They have both told her, ‘Why don’t you keep quiet and we will take care of it?’ ”

Yar Mohammad Karzai said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had come to his house to offer his condolences. “But he never mentioned what had happened or who did it,” he said. “Later, when a family member asked him about the killing, he said, ‘You know who did this, why do you need to hear it from me?’ ”

Some family members in the United States have become so Americanized that they are unwilling to abide by Afghan traditions and have gone to the United States authorities about the case. Mohammad Karzai said he contacted the F.B.I. Later, he said he got an angry call from Hashmat Karzai, who reported that an F.B.I. agent had interviewed him. Hekmat Karzai, who also said his brother did not kill Waheed, acknowledged that he was questioned by the F.B.I. as well.

The shooting has left the family badly shaken, especially Sona, Waheed’s sister.

“I can’t sleep in my room anymore,” she said in a telephone interview from Karz. “I sleep with my parents now.”

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai sworn in for second term - washingtonpost.com

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Afghan leader's focus on security, corruption matches U.S. aims

By Joshua Partlow
Friday, November 20, 2009

KABUL -- President Hamid Karzai set two ambitious goals in his inauguration speech Thursday: to have Afghan soldiers and police take full responsibility for security within the next five years and to root out the pervasive corruption that hobbled his first administration.

In many ways, Karzai's words dovetailed precisely with the aims of the Obama administration. Both Afghanistan and the United States want to reduce the presence of foreign troops on the battlefield and in the prison system. And both now concede that bribery and misspent funding are among the most serious obstacles to progress in Afghanistan.

But many here doubt whether such goals can be achieved as the Taliban gains strength, and there has been little action to date in stemming corruption.

The electoral process itself left little reason for optimism. Karzai initially had a majority of the votes in the Aug. 20 election, but widespread ballot-stuffing erased his lead and set up a second round. His challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the race in protest, saying the system that allowed the initial fraud had not been reformed.

"I don't think Karzai will be able to do the things he says. Afghans do not trust him anymore," said Hamidullah Tokhi, a parliament member from Zabul province. "All the things he promised when he took an oath in the last inauguration have not been fulfilled."

In a 30-minute speech in the presidential palace, Karzai repeated many of his themes from the campaign. He said reconciliation with the Taliban would be his top priority. He invited fighters to lay down their arms and said he would convene a council of Afghan leaders to try to reach peace through negotiation.

"To put an end to the three decades of war is what most Afghans want," he said, adding that "peace and security cannot be achieved only militarily."

But Afghan-led efforts at dialogue with insurgents have achieved little, and experts say funds devoted to encouraging fighters to give up their cause have been squandered.

Karzai spoke in front of about 800 people, including foreign dignitaries such as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

In addition to Afghan security forces taking over from NATO troops within five years, Karzai called for all operations by private security companies to cease within two years and for Afghans to control their own detention system.

"Afghans want to take the lead on security and no longer depend on foreign forces," Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said. "It is our strong commitment that we have to grow our own national security forces to defend our country."

After Karzai took the oath of office and kissed the Koran, his two vice presidents, Mohammed Fahim and Karim Khalili, were sworn in.

Clinton, making her first trip to Afghanistan as secretary of state, described Karzai's goals as ambitious but worthy.

"We want to assist him and the military and police leadership in Afghanistan to move as quickly as they can, to stand up and deploy a professional, motivated, effective force," she said at a news conference. "We're going to work with the president to try to work toward the goal he set."

But U.S. officials seemed more enthusiastic about Karzai's statements on corruption, including his vow to push for a law requiring all senior officials to declare their property and assets. He promised to convene a conference to generate ideas for fighting corruption and said his new cabinet would include "expert ministers" who could lead with integrity.

"The government of Afghanistan is committed to end the culture of impunity and violation of law and bring to justice those involved in spreading corruption and abuse of public property," Karzai said.

Clinton said she was pleased with the level of detail in Karzai's speech about steps to tackle corruption. "We think that the issue now is to ensure that it is implemented, that we see results," she said.

Clinton said she was under no illusions about the difficulty of turning around an increasingly deadly war. On Thursday, two U.S. service members were killed in a bombing in southern Afghanistan, and a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a market in Uruzgan province, killing at least 10 people, officials said.

"The road ahead is fraught with challenges and imperfect choices, setbacks are inevitable, and we have to be realistic about what we can accomplish," Clinton said.

President Obama said Wednesday that he is close to deciding whether to send thousands of additional troops into the war, but senior aides said Thursday that he will meet at least once more with his advisers on the topic and that no decision will be announced before Thanksgiving.

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Powerful Afghan Governor Challenges President - WSJ.com

Defiant Former Warlord With Popular Backing and Armed Supporters Demands a Say for Karzai's Defeated Rival Abdullah

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan -- An escalating quarrel between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a powerful governor is stoking fears of bloodshed in one of the country's more peaceful and prosperous provinces.

During this year's presidential election, Balkh Gov. Atta Mohammad Noor was alone among Afghanistan's 34 governors -- all of whom were appointed by Mr. Karzai -- to openly back challenger Abdullah Abdullah.

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Adam Ferguson for The Wall Street Journal

Afghan National Police searched cars at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, Wednesday.

Mr. Karzai's victory last week, declared by an election commission after months of controversy, has Mr. Atta steaming, and tensions rising over the prospect that Kabul will try to reassert central authority in this province of two million people.

"Karzai is a thief of people's votes. Democracy has been buried in Afghanistan. He's not a lawful president," Mr. Atta said in an interview in his vast rococo-styled office, as turbaned supplicants lined up to petition for his help in resolving court cases and disputes with local authorities.

Mr. Karzai was declared the winner after Dr. Abdullah withdrew from the race, claiming that the election commission was biased. Dr. Abdullah has yet to concede defeat, and is seeking a broad say in policy making.

The governor, whose personal bodyguard militia lines city streets in the mornings, with rocket-propelled grenades poking out from their backpacks, hinted at what could happen if Dr. Abdullah's demands aren't met.

"We do not want to use violence to further our demands -- but the people have the right to defend themselves if democratic norms are violated," he said.

Mr. Atta didn't rule out reconciling with Mr. Karzai. He said such a deal would involve giving key ministries to the Abdullah team -- and must include Mr. Karzai embracing the challenger's agenda for a decentralized, corruption-free government.

The governor's control of this vital province, on the crossroads of North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply routes from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, serves as Dr. Abdullah's strongest card in trying to wring postelection concessions from Mr. Karzai.

But Mr. Atta's defiance of Kabul is also stoking fears that Mr. Karzai could seek to replace the province's police chief -- who is a presidential appointee but loyal to Mr. Atta -- and even fire the governor himself.

That, some say, could bring a repeat of the carnage inflicted by feuding mujahedeen commanders in the 1990s. "We have dark memories about the civil war in the past, and we fear that such days are again in our future," says S.M. Taher Roshanzada, a prominent businessman who heads the Balkh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Mr. Atta is genuinely popular here, and any movement against him is likely to spark unrest. "All the people of Mazar will be in the streets if Atta is removed -- and some will bring the weapons with them," said Munir Ahmad, a 21-year-old student in Mazar-e-Sharif, the provincial capital and the bustling economic hub of northern Afghanistan.

Maj. Gen. Murad Ali, the regional Afghan army corps commander based in Mazar-e-Sharif, says he is seeing intelligence suggesting that some of Mr. Atta's supporters are arming themselves in expectation of a showdown.

Kabul authorities shouldn't be afraid of confronting the governor, adds the general, who is a Karzai appointee loyal to the president. "If a president cannot even replace a governor, what kind of government is this?" he wondered. "How can people trust it?"

Mazar-e-Sharif and the surrounding province of Balkh have been ruled by Mr. Atta with an iron hand since 2004. Like Dr. Abdullah, Mr. Atta -- identified as "Full-rank General" on his business cards, though he usually wears charcoal banker suits -- is a former comrade-in-arms of Ahmad Shah Masoud, a Tajik warlord assassinated by al Qaeda in 2001.

Campaign banners with portraits of Dr. Abdullah and Mr. Atta hang all over Mazar-e-Sharif, proclaiming that the two men "come from the same trench" -- marking the city as solid opposition territory.

While corrupt officials stuffed nearly a million fraudulent ballots for Mr. Karzai elsewhere in Afghanistan during the election's first round in August, here in Balkh the falsification occurred to Dr. Abdullah's advantage, according to the United Nations-led election watchdog.

Many of Mr. Karzai's supporters, especially from the ethnic Hazara and Uzbek communities, want the Afghan president to fire Balkh's mutinous governor. "He's been in power for too many years -- and if water stands still, it turns into a cesspool," says Sardar Mohammad Saeedi, the deputy head of Mr. Karzai's re-election campaign in the north and regional chief for the mostly Hazara Hezb-e-Wahdat party.

Yet such moves are likely to be discouraged by the U.S. and Western allies, diplomats say. Balkh, under Mr. Atta's rule, has been largely insulated from the Taliban insurgency that spread over the past year through other formerly peaceful provinces of northern Afghanistan.

Famous for its medieval tiled mosque where Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law is believed to be buried, Mazar-e-Sharif is a remarkably relaxed city by Afghan standards, with few of the razor wire barriers, cement blocks and Hesco fortifications that give Kabul or Kandahar the look of a military camp under siege.

Mr. Atta "is the son of this province -- he's been here during the jihad, he's been here fighting the Taliban, he knows everyone here and everyone knows him -- which is why he was able to play a big role in making this province secure," says the Balkh chief of Afghan National Police, Gen. Sardar Mohammad Sultani.

In a sign of how safe this part of Afghanistan is perceived to be, the foreign troops responsible for security in Balkh and three adjoining provinces consist of a few hundred soldiers from neutral Sweden and Finland.

The contingent's acting commander, Finnish Army Lt. Col. Tommi Härkönen, says he doesn't foresee much trouble because of Mr. Atta's fallout with Kabul. "There could be some demonstrations or crowds gathering, but we don't expect a major problem," he says.

Interviews with many Mazar-e-Sharif residents, however, suggest a more alarming picture. "People trust and respect [Atta]," said Hamid, a 25-year-old businessman who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. "But if he's gone, they will turn to backing the Taliban, as it happened in other provinces."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Obama Warns Karzai to Focus on Tackling Corruption - NYTimes.com

Image by IntangibleArts via Flickr

By JEFF ZELENY and ALISSA J. RUBIN

WASHINGTON — President Hamid Karzai was assured of a new term as president of Afghanistan on Monday, but he embarks on it not with warm congratulations from Washington but with an admonition from President Obama to undertake “a much more serious effort” to eradicate corruption in the Kabul government.

Mr. Obama placed a congratulatory call and, he said in the Oval Office, urged Mr. Karzai “to write a new chapter” in the legitimacy of his government. Mr. Obama said he noted that the election had been "messy," but said that the United States accepted the decision because it was “determined by Afghan law.”

Mr. Obama placed his call not long after the Independent Election Commission in Kabul cleared the last obstacle to a second term for Mr. Karzai, announcing that there was no need for a runoff now that his only competitor had withdrawn from the race.

While this was the outcome the international community had lobbied for, it was only the beginning of a new set of problems both for Mr. Karzai, who has been weakened by the election debacle, and for the western governments who have been supporting him.

The Obama administration wants Mr. Karzai and the Afghan government to put into place an anticorruption commission to establish strict accountability for government officials at both the national and provincial levels, senior administration officials said Monday.

In addition, the United States and its European allies are seeking a symbolic gesture from Mr. Karzai, and pressuring the Afghan leader to make a few high-profile arrests of what one administration official called "the more blatantly corrupt" people in the Afghan government.

“I did emphasize to President Karzai that the American people and the international community as a whole want to continue to partner with him and his government in achieving prosperity and security in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said.

“But I emphasized that this has to be a point in time in which we begin to write a new chapter based on improved governance, a much more serious effort to eradicate corruption, joint efforts to accelerate the training of Afghan security forces, so that the Afghan people can provide for their own security,” the president said.

Mr. Obama said Mr. Karzai had assured him that he understood “the importance of this moment.”

“But as I indicated to him, the proof is not going to be in words; it’s going to be in deeds,” Mr. Obama said. “And we are looking forward to consulting closely with his government in the weeks and months to come, to assure that the Afghan people are actually seeing progress on the ground.”

A senior member of Mr. Karzai’s re-election campaign, Arsala Jamal, acknowledged in Kabul that the president’s victory was marred by the cases of fraud and the months it took to reach a result.

“Three months after the Aug. 20 election, this has not been a good experience for the people,” he said.

“It was damaged because of fraud, because of stupid friends,” he said, explaining that overeager supporters had committed fraud unnecessarily for the president.

“The delay was part of it, the opposition too,” he said, adding that Mr. Karzai’s main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, had damaged the process by denouncing the first round of the election publicly before the election commission had completed its investigations.

Mr. Abdullah withdrew Sunday from the runoff slated for Saturday and the Independent Election Commission, citing concerns about security and the expense of holding an election when there was only one candidate, declared Mr. Karzai the winner on Monday.

The international community and the United Nations congratulated Mr. Karzai and urged him to set about unifying the country, but the way ahead was foggy at best. While there was little doubt that Mr. Karzai would be embraced internationally as the legitimate leader, many serious questions have been raised about the legitimacy of his government.

There had been talk of forming a unity government, but there is little popular support in Afghanistan for that option. For many Afghans a coalition government brings to mind the chaotic period in the 1990s when competing warlords theoretically controlled the country, but in fact no one controlled it and armed strongmen competed for turf in bloody battles that killed many Afghan civilians and destroyed large sections of Kabul.

Afghan political analysts as well as some ordinary people said, the election had undermined Afghans’ faith in democracy and strengthened the leverage of international players — although no one seemed to know how they would be better able to influence Mr. Karzai.

“This massive fraud has detracted from his authority and prestige,” said Hamidullah Tarzi, an Afghan political analyst who served as a minister in two previous governments and said he likes Mr. Karzai.

Jeff Zeleny reported from Washington and Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul. Reporting was contributed by Taimoor Shah and Sangar Rahimi from Kabul, and Alan Cowell from Paris.