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.
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