Karzai announces cabinet

Afghanistan's newly elected President Hamid Karzai announced 18 key posts of his cabinet before the concluding session of the Loya Jirga, or grand council, on Wednesday evening on the last day of the nine day long assembly. The Shura-e Nazar faction of the Northern Alliance got the lion's share again by retaining the ministries of defence and foreign affairs, which were retained by Qasim Fahim and Dr Abdullah Abdullah. Taj Muhammd Wardak, an ethnic Pashtun governor of the eastern Paktia Province, replaced the erstwhile interior minister Yunus Qanuni, who was designated as the new minister for education. For the first time Karzai introduced three vice presidents into his cabinet, and these are: Fahim, Haji Abdul Qadir and Karim Khalili, head of the ethnic Hazara Hezb-e Wahdat (Unity Party), which controls the central Bamiyan province. Karzai has drawn many technocrats into his cabinet, including former World Bank employees, Ashraf Ghani and Juma Muhammad Muhammadi as ministers of finance and minister of mines and industries respectively. Masoum Stankzai, an NGO leader, has been awarded the post of minister of communications, while Dr Suhaila Siddiq continues as minister of public health. Mawlawi Fazl-e Hadi Shinwari, Inayatullah Naziri , Sayyed Mustafa Kazimi, Sayyed Hussain Anwari and Haji Muhammad Muhaqqeq have retained their respective positions of chief justice, minister of refugees, minister of trade, minister of agriculture and minister of planning. Arif Khan Nurzai is the new minister for frontiers. Karzai, also announced that he would make public the names of the rest of his cabinet shortly. Reacting to the announcement of the new cabinet, Mohammad Jamal, a Kabul resident, told IRIN that the cabinet was fair, but more specialists should have been included. "Ideally, we should have a cabinet of specialists not of warlords and politicians, as they have failed in the past," Jamal maintained, but added that the new cabinet would be acceptable to most the people. But Abdul Hai, another Kabul resident, disagreed. "We were expecting a balanced cabinet, and the majority of Afghans will not accept this cabinet," he said. The real reaction to the announcement of the new cabinet will come to surface in the coming days and weeks when the Afghans get to know all its members.