Afghan president reshuffles cabinet posts

Under pressure from the United States and its coalition partners to shake up his government and curb high-level corruption, President Hamid Karzai named as his interior minister a former official of Afghanistan's communist-era secret police. The appointment Saturday of Muhammad Hanif Atmar, 40, was part of a cabinet reshuffle that a spokesman for Karzai described as aimed at bringing "positive changes in good governance." Along with the Interior Ministry, the changes included new ministers in four other portfolios in the 26-member cabinet, including the important ministries of agriculture and education. By moving Atmar to the Interior Ministry from his previous post as education minister, Karzai responded to insistent demands for a crackdown on corruption that have come from the Western nations that sustain his government with troops and billions of dollars in aid. The pattern of corruption, senior diplomats in Kabul say, is so pervasive that it has contributed, with deteriorating security conditions, to a collapse in the popular backing for the Karzai government. The diplomats point to the Interior Ministry, responsible for a police force of 80,000, as the most corrupt of all government organizations, with top officials routinely taking bribes for appointing police officers and protecting from arrest a wide array of wrongdoers, including drug traffickers who run Afghanistan's $4-billion-a-year opium trade. The diplomats say that reform at the ministry will require a wholesale clearing out of top officials, and that Atmar is likely to face vigorous, and possibly violent, opposition. He will also take charge of efforts to reform and strengthen the police, who have been identified by American commanders of the 50,000-member international security force here as the weakest link in the battle against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, whose attacks have increased by more than 30 percent in the past year. In much of the Afghan hinterland, the only uniformed presence is in the form of sparsely staffed police stations, and the incidences of desertion, or collaboration with the insurgents, have been high. Atmar is regarded in Western embassies as well prepared for the challenge. He is a Pashtun, the ethnic group from which the Taliban draw most of their fighters. His background during his youth as a member of the KHAD secret police - a bulwark of the Kabul government during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s - gives him ties to a period under President Najibullah, the last Afghan ruler of that era, which is regarded by many Afghans as a time of relative security in cities like Kabul. Under Karzai, he gained wide respect for overseeing rural development programs in his first ministerial post, and he followed that with what diplomats say was a strong performance as education minister, responsible for the rebuilding of the country's shattered school system. According to diplomats, Karzai also intended other cabinet appointments to send a message that he plans to act decisively, after seven years in power, to bring new levels of competence to a government that is now widely disparaged across the country. American and other NATO commanders here say that plans to rework their war strategy will mean little unless the Karzai government begins to rebuild its popular support. Apart from the change at the Interior Ministry, where the incumbent, Zarar Ahmad Muqbil, was appointed minister of refugees, the most closely watched changes were at the agriculture and education ministries. Some controversy surrounded Karzai's appointment of Asadullah Khaled, a former provincial governor of Kandahar, to the parliamentary affairs portfolio. Western officials here said that during Khaled's tenure in Kandahar there were widespread allegations of corruption against him, leading to his removal by Karzai. The new agriculture minister, Muhammad Asif Rahimi, takes over at a time when the United Nations and other aid agencies are concerned by the possibility of several million Afghans facing possible starvation this winter after years of drought that have decimated grain crops. The new education minister, Ghulam Farook Wardak, is a former parliamentary affairs minister and is regarded by diplomats as one of the more competent officials in Karzai's government. Scores of militants killed Taliban militants carried out a surprise attack on a key southern Afghan city Sunday, inciting a battle that killed some 60 insurgents, The Associated Press reported from Kandahar, Afghanistan, citing an Afghan official. Other clashes in the region left 40 militants dead. Taliban fighters used rockets and heavy weapons to attack Afghan forces on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, said Daud Ahmadi, the spokesman for Helmand's governor. Militants attacked the city from three sides just after midnight, and were pushed back only after a battle that involved airstrikes, Ahmadi said. Rockets landed in different parts of the city, but there were no civilian casualties, he said.