Finally Towards a Complete Afghan Cabinet? the Next 16 Minister Nominees and Their Bios (Amended)
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Finally Towards a Complete Afghan Cabinet? The next 16 minister nominees and their bios (amended) Author : AAN Team Published: 24 March 2015 Downloaded: 4 September 2018 Download URL: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/finally-a-complete-afghan-cabinet-the-next-16-minister-nominees-and-their- biographies/?format=pdf Six months after the inauguration of the National Unity Government and two months after the last attempt to introduce cabinet members to the parliament, there is now a new list of nominees. It contains 16 names for almost all remaining cabinet positions. AAN’s Christine Roehrs, Qayoom Suroush, Naheed Esar, Ehsan Qaane and Obaid Ali have gathered biographic details about these new candidates, as we did for the previous nominees and approved candidates. It is again a list from which ‘big names’ are missing, there are again many new faces – and quite a few of the candidates are rather young. Second Vice President Sarwar Danesh has today, 1 April, officially introduced them to the parliament. Allowing for internal consultations of the MPs, we could see more ministers by the end of the following week. However, the voting could also, like in the last round in January, take much longer. 1 / 9 (Biographical information and analysis will be added to as we learn more, particularly on some of the lesser known new candidates.) ‘Spring cleaning’ ahead of the Washington trip Nawruz is the time of spring-cleaning. The bokharis are put away, the flowers pots are brought from the gul khana out into the open, and all that is broken gets fixed. President Ghani and his quasi-prime minister (or chief executive) Dr Abdullah have started the new year of 1394 with some house keeping as well. On the evening of the first day of the new Afghan year, Saturday 21 March, they published a list of another 16 cabinet nominees to be introduced to the parliament where they have to be approved. Since his inauguration in September 2014, Ghani had ruled with a rudimentary set up, with no ministers for four months (keeping the former ministers and then the deputies as caretakers to handle affairs). When he finally introduced his lists of candidates in January 2015, eight ministers (and the new head of the NDS) were approved by parliament, ten were rejected, and eight candidates were dropped from of the process for of a variety of reasons, including allegations of dual citizenship, criminal prosecution and incomplete educational documents. On 21 March, president Ghani also established a 15-member electoral reform commision headed by Kabul MP Shukria Barakzai - a move which had also been long overdue (see AAN reporting here). The commision further includes Sediqullah Tawhidi, Chief Executive Officer of Nai, an Afghan media watchdog, as deputy as well as prominent civil society activist Azizullah Rafi and women’s rights activist Wazhma Frogh (secretariat; see the full list of the 15 members here, in Persian). Tadamichi Yamamoto, deputy head of the UNAMA mission, a Japanese, has been appointed as the foreign member of the committee. The release of the cabinet list and the establishment of the electoral reform commission was likely linked to the wish to show progress ahead of the president's and CEO’s visit to Washington, starting the next day, on Sunday 23 March. The waiting for a full cabinet may well continue, though, as it is not clear whether the parliament will approve the candidates, or how long they will take to study the nominees’ documents and hear their plans. The list is, moreover, not complete, with the nominee for the key Ministry of Defence still missing. It seems to have been difficult to find an eligible candidate, which may have been complicated by the discussions to, for the first time in Afghan history, give the position to a civilian. It is again a list from which ‘big names’ are missing. The most well known, at first glance, are Gulab Mangal for Border and Tribal Affairs, who was governor in Laghman, Paktika and Helmand; Satar Murad for Economy, former governor of Kapisa and prominent member of Jamiat; Sayed Sadat Naderi for Urban Development, businessman and son of Afghanistan’s most well-known Ismaili leader; and Abdul Bari Jahani for Information and Culture, who is a well known poet. The list also contains the promised four women candidates (after last time none of the three female appointees were approved by parliament): for Women’s Affairs, Higher Education, Labour and Social Affairs and, interestingly, Counter-Narcotics. Also interesting is that quite some of the candidates are rather young, in their fourties or even late thirties, among 2 / 9 them Sayed Naderi for Urban Development, Assadullah Zamir for Agriculture, Mahmud Baligh for Public Works, Salamat Azimi for Counter-Narcotics, Abdul Razaq Wahidi for Telecommunication, Ali Ahmad Osmani for Water and Energy, and Humayun Rasa for Trade and Industries. However, there seem to be no “political only” appointments of obviously unqualified people, although many (about half of them) do not have any experience working in the government and others not in the field their are supposed to work in. The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs sent this list to the parliament on Monday, 23 March. Tuesday, 24 March, the komite ruassa, the heads of all 18 parliamentary committees, decided that President Ghani – or one of his deputies – shall come in and officially introduce the candidates on Wednesday, 1 April. After today's introduction, the MPs will need – at least - three or four working days to vote for or against the nominees (which could mean that we see more Afghan ministers by the end of next week). However, in the last round in January, it took them two weeks. The candidates’ biographies 1. Mr Abdul Bari Jahani (Ministry of Culture and Information) (AG) Jahani, who is in his sixties, is a well-regarded writer, journalist and Pashto poet, who wrote the lyrics for Afghanistan’s current national anthem. Born in Kandahar, he went to Mirwais Nika High School and then to Kabul University where he studied Pashto literature and history (1972/3). Later (no date given), he became a researcher at the Pashto Tolana (now named the Academy of Sciences). In 2012, Jahani told Al Jazeera that he had been against both Parcham and Khalq wings of the PDPA, describing how they “issued orders that clashed with people's beliefs and traditions. Everything became one-party: only they could speak logic and no one else could be listened to. As if authority was only their right.” After he fled to Pakistan in 1981, he expressed his criticism of what he found there: I crossed the border into Pakistan only for jihad. I wanted to see if I could help in any way with my pen, or with my understanding of Urdu and English. I wanted to see if I could use those skills to help in the media and fight for the struggle. But there, I found the situation just like Kabul and actually, worse and more dangerous. The Parcham [sect of communists] in Kabul had slowly bettered their behaviour. At least, they had gone to school and studied abroad and understood arguments. Those in Peshawar just did not get it. They were mostly a crowd of Mullahs in mosques. For them, every teacher was a kaafir [infidel], for them every military officer was a kaafir. For them, the entire Afghanistan, particularly Kabul, was a battlefield, and they openly said all this. They were such narrow-minded people, that I completely avoided their offices and camps, and rented house for myself away from it all, until I got depressed and left for Europe. In 1983, I moved to the US. In America, he worked with the Pashto section of Voice of America Radio for two decades, hosting poetry programmes, anchoring political debates and working as a journalist and editor. After his potential candidacy had been floated earlier, criticism of his poetry surfaced, with some 3 / 9 of his detractors accusing him of being Pashtunist and of justifying suicide attacks. The criticism particularly focused on a poetic dialogue (in Pashto here) between a woman and her son who wants to be a suicide attacker. However, the parts of the poem that have been translated, rather seem critical of suicide bombings and those who promote it. The accusations against Jahani were countered by expressions of support (see more of the discussion here and here). 2. Mr Assadullah Zamir, Agriculture (AG) Assadullah Zamir, an ethnic Tajik in his late thirties, was born in Kabul. He has two Master degrees, one in Economy from the University of California and one in Management from Preston University in Pakistan. He is also one of the co-founders of "Fourteenhundred / 1400", a group of young(ish) Afghans interested in influencing policies. The Facebook page that was created after his nomination also details three “certificates,” although it is not clear whether these were for short courses, trainings or whole courses of study (Strategic Management from the Management Institute of England, Natural Resources Management from Oxford University, Strategic Economy from the American Management Association). His Linkedin profile, that AAN, in most parts, could confirm with other sources, claims extensive experience working with Afghan ministries – including in the field of agriculture. He has worked as finance advisor with the Ministry of Rural Development (January 2003 to June 2004), also with the Ministry of Education (senior advisor from April 2007 to July 2009) and with the Ministry of Mines where he was Senior Policy and Program Advisor to the minister from August 2012 to October 2013. In the ministry he is supposed to head, the Ministry of Agriculture, he was Director General of Programs from July 2009 to July 2012.