BACKGROUND: Afghanistan’s warlords prospered when the Taliban lost power and were rewarded with positions of authority in the interim government led by President Hamid Karzai. President Karzai has since been trying to gradually sideline the warlords, but this has proved difficult in view of the U.S. compulsion to keep them on its side in the unfinished battle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. After his landslide victory in the presidential election last October, Mr. Karzai had promised to take only professionally sound and competent people in his cabinet. There was going to be no place for warlords in the new government. He earned applause both from his foreign supporters and much of the Afghan population when he dropped two prominent warlords, Gul Agha Sherzoi and Sayed Hussain Anwari, from his cabinet. The Western media hailed this as a great step forward to cut the warlords down to size. Commentators largely ignored the fact that some warlords including Ismail Khan, former Governor of Herat, and ex-Governor of Nimruz province, Karim Khan Brahwi, were inducted in the cabinet even though they were neither professionals nor fit for their new jobs. Ismail Khan, who had been removed as Governor of his native Herat earlier to weaken his power, was made minister of energy, a portfolio very different from his life-long experience as a former soldier and mujahideen commander. Brahwi, on the other hand, was given the job of minister of tribes and frontiers. As an ethnic Baloch, his was entrusted with a task that was traditionally handled by someone from the majority Pashtun community. Pashtun warlord Sherzoi was dropped from the cabinet not because he was deemed unacceptable as minister, but because he lacked the university degree required under Afghanistan\'s new constitution for the job. The same principle led to the removal of former Agriculture Minister and ethnic Hazara Shia warlord Anwari. As compensation, Sherzoi was reappointed Governor of his native Kandahar. Anwari was given charge of the gubernatorial office of his home province of Kabul. In fact, both appointments also violated the principle mostly followed by President Karzai during his three-year rule not to appoint natives as governors of their home provinces. Sherzoi had served as Governor of Kandahar for almost two years before his removal and appointment as Minister of Public Works in Karzai\'s interim cabinet. His removal was hailed as a step in the right direction because of his reputation as a ruthless warlord who placed his own supporters in powerful positions and allowed them to indulge in corruption and human rights abuses. His successor Mohammad Yousaf Pashtun, who wasn\'t really a man of the masses, was generally seen as unfit for the demanding job of Governor in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Now the two men have simply switched places. Kabul\'s new Governor Anwari never really ceased to be a warlord. He was a known mujahideen commander in the war against the Soviet occupation troops and operated in areas west of Kabul. Later, he enjoyed power in the disastrous mujahideen government in which in-fighting among warlords destroyed much of Kabul. Anwari was part of the Northern Alliance that joined hands with the U.S.-led coalition to topple the Taliban regime. His reward was a place in the transitional government even though he, like most other warlord ministers, lacked administrative experience and technical expertise to run a ministry. As an important Shi’a warlord, he had to be accommodated in the government after becoming disqualified for the cabinet slot due to the constitutional requirement. The Governor\'s job in Kabul was just right for him, or so the Karzai government thought, because ethnic Hazara Shiittes constitute a productive and sizeable portion of the population in Kabul and its surroundings.

IMPLICATIONS: Most of the governors in Afghanistan\'s 34 provinces are former warlords. The number of non-warlords who have been appointed governors has definitely increased but they too are largely dependent in their provinces on police and security chiefs who happen to be former commanders/warlords. Important provinces in the south, east, west and north of Afghanistan are still run by warlords. These include Ustad Atta Mohammad in Balkh, Juma Khan Hamdard in Baghlan, Haji Din Mohammad in Nangarhar, Bashir Baghlani in Farah, Dr. Ibrahim in Ghor, Asadullah Ghalib in Ghazni, Jan Mohammad Khan in Urozgan, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada in Helmand. Ironically, three warlords formerly part of mujahideen leader Gulbaddin Hekmatyar\'s Hezb-i-Islami were lured to join the Karzai government by gubernatorial appointments. These include Hamdard and Baghlani and the Governor of Kunduz province, Munshi Abdul Majeed. Hekmatyar, it may be added, has been dubbed a \"terrorist\" by the U.S. and is on its most wanted list. The failure of President Karzai, and by implication that of the U.S. government, to weed out the warlords and remove them from positions of authority, has sent the wrong message to all those who have always thrived on the power of the gun. The warlords, and their lesser subordinates, have come to believe that they are indispensable. They know their support is crucial in America\'s war on terror. In fact, it is a quid pro quo with the U.S. not only tolerating but also strengthening the warlords in return for their support to destroy the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The term warlord and their role in post-Taliban Afghanistan has also generated a heated debate between President Karzai\'s supporters and some of his opponents such as Uzbek warlord and defeated presidential candidate General Abdul Rasheed Dostum. Mamoor Hasan, a leader of Dostum\'s Uzbek-based Junbush-i-Islami Afghanistan party, spoke for much of non-Pashtun ethnic minorities recently when he said that those who fought the Soviet occupation forces, al-Qaeda and Taliban were being blamed as warlords. He was critical of President Karzai for announcing amnesty for Taliban and termed it a betrayal of the Afghan people. In fact, the same views have been expressed by many other former mujahideen commanders/warlords, particularly non-Pashtuns, who believe President Karzai being a Pashtun was wooing the Pashtun Taliban to build up his support and reduce dependence on Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmen and others who initially backed his fragile government. The former mujahideen warlords, who were mostly affiliated with fundamentalist Islamic groups during the Afghan jihad, are also worried over the growing influence of the pro-West liberals, royalists and secularists in the Karzai government at the expense of the Islamists. Thus the tussle over the definition and role of the warlords is a divisive issue threatening the uneasy and unnatural alliance between these two camps.

CONCLUSIONS: Twenty-seven years of war and instability has nurtured warlords into a familiar political entity in war-ravaged Afghanistan. They are feared and hated by most Afghans but others hail them as saviors who resisted the Soviet occupation and offered sacrifices for the glory of Islam and Afghanistan. Curtailing their power was never going to be easy, more so in a situation when the U.S. needed their services to fight the resilient al-Qaeda and Taliban. Therefore, a selective approach was adopted while dealing with warlords. Ismail Khan, being pro-Iran and non-cooperative with the Karzai government, had to go. Moves were also made to dilute Dostum\'s power due to his opposition to Karzai, his strong links with Russia, and his ruthless and unsavory past. But the more useful, pro-U.S. warlords were not touched. Cosmetic changes apart, the recent appointments have decreased hopes of a decisive move to reduce the power of the warlords or make them accountable for their past misdeeds. Most warlords are likely to remain relevant in one way or the other as long as the U.S.-led foreign forces stay in Afghanistan and the Taliban resistance is not crushed. The forthcoming parliamentary elections could even institutionalize the power of the warlords and their armed factions and give them a strong representation in the elected bodies. In due course of time we might see the usage of terms like good and bad warlords, just like good (moderate) or bad (extremist) Taliban. There is also the possibility of growing polarization between the former mujahideen warlords grouped under the banner of Northern Alliance and the pro-West politicians led by President Karzai.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Rahimullah Yusufzai is an executive editor of The News International, Pakistan. He is based in Peshawar, North-West Frontier Province, and is also a correspondent for the BBC, ABC News and Time magazine.