The Afghan government on Saturday announced the removal of the powerful governor of Herat, in western Afghanistan, one of the country's longest-standing warlords. The move appeared to be designed to undercut the governor, one of the major opponents to President Hamid Karzai, before the Oct. 9 presidential elections.
The removal of the governor, Ismail Khan, is momentous for the central government, which has tried without success to reduce his power or remove him for the last two years. After Karzai's removal of the defense minister, Marshall Muhammad Qasim Fahim, from the presidential ticket last month, the action on Saturday was one of the boldest moves by Karzai in nearly three years in office to reduce the power of the warlords.
The government announced the removal as a promotion, saying Khan was being appointed the new minister of mines and industries, but the governor was clearly reluctant to leave and told local radio that he would not accept the ministerial post but would remain in Herat as a private citizen.
Khan has dominated western Afghanistan for more than 20 years -- as a mujahedeen commander fighting the Soviet army and later the Taliban, and as undisputed ruler of Herat for a period in the 1990s and for nearly three years since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. He has resisted any control by the central government and has kept a tight hold on the local political and economic scene.
Weakened by two military attacks against his soldiers this year and the assassination in March of his son, Mirwais Siddiq, the government's minister of Civil Aviation, he finally gave in to government pressure last week.
He told a local radio station on Saturday that he had accepted the government's decision to replace him but probably would not go to Kabul, because it was not a post for which he was qualified, said Muhammadullah Afzali, chief of the government's foreign department in Herat.
"He has said that he will stay where he is right now, not as a governor but as a private citizen, and that he will work for the security and prosperity of Herat," said a Western diplomat, who was in telephone contact with Khan on Saturday. Discussions would continue about a future post, the diplomat said.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS