Karzai turns to United States to fill Afghan security gap

Halima Kazem 7/24/02

Correction: EurasiaNet erroneously reported that former Public Works Minister Abdul Khaliq Fazel is Tajik. He is in fact Pashtun.

In response to concerns over his safety, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called in American troops to act as personal guards and provide more security for his administration. By July 21, United States soldiers had moved inside the Presidential Palace gates in downtown Kabul replacing a palace detail that had never received much training in anti-assassination techniques and whose loyalties some observers had begun to question. In light of these complexities, the question now is how long the Americans will occupy this sensitive role.

Presidential spokesman Said Fazel Akbar says the US detail is "just temporary" and assured EurasiaNet that Afghan guards would rejoin the president by winter. "They will get the proper training," Akbar said, "and in a few months they will take over." But many observers believe that the Afghans need much more extensive security training. "Upon entering the palace gates visitors went through several checkpoints, but security personnel didn't know what they were looking for," said a foreign journalist who did not want to be named. "Cameras are easy ways to hide explosives or weapons, but the Afghan guards were not trained in how to search equipment."

Several high-profile assassinations have rocked Afghan politics within the past year. Most recently, gunmen killed Haji Qadir, a vice president in the Afghan transitional government, on July 6. The assassination with potentially the most profound political ramifications for the country occurred last September 9, when two men posing as television reporters killed Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud in an incident that many link to the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Some observers, citing Qadir's death, have expressed concern over the role that ethnic loyalties play in providing security for leaders of the transitional government. The majority of Karzai's palace guards are former Northern Alliance soldiers, Tajiks like Massoud; a fact that sets them apart from President Karzai, who is Pashtun. In a country shaped by protracted fights for tribal honor, some observers fear that ethnic ties could possibly trump national allegiances under certain circumstances.

Some suspect that ethnic animosities played a role in the murder of Qadir, a Pashtun. Officials say that the only people in custody in connection with his murder are ten guards loyal to former Public Works Minister Abdul Khaliq Fazel. Fazel's guards have been accused of standing by and not responding to the armed gunmen who reportedly fired 39 rounds at Qadir, killing him and his son-in-law. Fazel is an ethnic Pashtun but his guards were mostly Tajiks, who have dominated the city of Kabul since the defeat of the Taliban late last year.

Some considered Qadir the second-most influential Pashtun, after Karzai, in Afghanistan's transitional government. Hours after his death, many government officials feared an attack on Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, a Pashtun educated in the West, and a conspiracy against Pashtuns in Karzai's cabinet. Qadir was the second government minister killed in Kabul in six months. Abdul Rahman, the minister of aviation and tourism, was killed in February at the Kabul airport. In this context, many worried that Karzai had become an assassination target.

In addition to recruiting American protection, Karzai has taken steps to protect his fragile cabinet.

Karzai also recently accepted a proposal from Interior Minister Taj Mohammed Wardak regarding security personnel for government ministers and high-level officials. This will allow ministers who feel they need extra security to request guards from a special department in the Afghan intelligence. Kabul's Chief of Police, General Basir Salangi, says the guards would come from a group that receives special training and has no official connection to a specific ethnicity or political party. "This proposal is not meant for old-timers like [Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim] Fahim," he told EurasiaNet. "It is meant for ministers who have returned from exile, who don't have any guards or security personnel." Fahim, a former Northern Alliance leader, survived an assassination attempt in April and travels with a mostly Tajik and entirely armed entourage. Salangi says the new detail would serve Ghani, Wardak, and Minister of Information and Culture Saeed Makhdoom Rahin, all of whom lived in exile in the United States during the Taliban's five-year rule.

With or without special protection, Defense Minister Fahim is charged with building a multiethnic national army. France and the US are helping develop this army, but it remains small at fewer than 12,000 trainees and inexperienced compared with the private militias that warlords manage in the provinces. Until the army becomes more impressive, cabinet-level details figure to become more common. Qadir had been known for refusing personal bodyguards. His close friends recall conversations just days before his death, in which Qadir, a former warrior and provincial governor, decried ministers who couldn't "walk with their own people". But Salangi says those days are over. "I have a feeling more ministers are going to request personal security."

Despite some misgivings about the sight of American soldiers so close to the Afghan president, Karzai's security arrangement is expected to persist. As long as questions of competence and concerns over ethnic loyalty undermine confidence in the president's security, Karzai's American guard may be less temporary than officials suggest.

Posted July 24, 2002 © Eurasianet