Young Technocrats Taking Over: Who Are the New Afghan Governors and What Can They Achieve?
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Young Technocrats Taking Over: Who are the new Afghan governors and what can they achieve? Author : Christine Roehrs Published: 18 September 2015 Downloaded: 6 September 2018 Download URL: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/young-technocrats-taking-over-who-are-the-new-afghan-governors-and-what-can- they-achieve/?format=pdf Nearly one year into Ashraf Ghani’s presidency, about a quarter of the state’s highest representatives in the provinces are still missing – nine of 34 governors. So why the hold- up? AAN’s Christine Roehrs and Qayoom Suroush have been looking into the mechanisms of the process and found that the government seems to be able to tackle only one ‘appointment project’ at a time instead of solving them simultaneously – with an odd tendency to prioritise other appointments over governors. They have also been looking into who the new governors are (see their biographies in the annex) and found that the unity government, particularly the president’s side, seems to be trying to ‘juvenate’ sub-national governance. Many governors have ‘modern’ skill-sets and assets, they are younger, and also lacking in one of the main credentials of the past: fighting experience. The latter, however, may not play out in their favour. We will add to the bios and the analysis as more information becomes available, particularly on 1 / 19 the lesser-known appointees. The twenty-ninth of September 2015 will mark Ashraf Ghani’s first year in power as Afghanistan’s president. However, he and his unity government have still not managed to appoint about a quarter of the state’s highest provincial representatives. On 3 September, Amanullah Hamimi for Ghazni and Jamaluddin Eshaq for Badghis became the latest additions to the painfully slowly, growing list of governors. So far, 25 of 34 Afghan provinces have new governors. Still missing are the ones for the provinces of Badakhshan, Baghlan, Balkh, Takhar, Sar-e Pul, Faryab, Kabul, Nuristan and Uruzgan. It is conspicuous that most of these are to be appointed by CEO Abdullah’s camp (or, being his immediate spheres of influence, would need his blessing), according to an internal agreement between President and CEO; more on this later. It remains blurry, though as to where the process is stuck. AAN has heard it both ways: that the CEO’s side is not coming up with “good enough” candidates fast enough (as claimed by the president’s side) or that the president’s side keeps rejecting candidates as not eligible (as claimed by the CEO’s side). At any rate, for different reasons these are also difficult positions to fill. Badakhshan, Nuristan, Uruzgan and Faryab are currently particularly hotly contested between insurgents and national security forces. Balkh remains politically sensitive. CEO Abdullah insists on keeping the current governor, his powerful if not most important ally Muhammad Atta Nur, who is also a contender to lead the political party Abdullah is also member of, Jamiat-e Islami. President Ghani on the other hand used to be keen on getting rid of this influential power broker and political enemy. However, with other provinces of the north mired increasingly in conflict, he now may feel forced to keep Nur on as someone capable of keeping the insurgency in Balkh at bay. (He may even be thinking of utilising Nur’s forces in the wider area; Nur, who is currently also the head of Jamiat-e Islami north section, has certainly offered – or threatened? – to do so.) Similar tussles have meant most of the new governors (21 of 25) have only been appointed over the past five months, leaving the majority of provinces with ‘lame duck’ governors – demoted to caretakers – for many long months. Having governors who are not allowed to hire or fire or sign contracts (and are possibly feeling humiliated and listless) has not helped the government to deal with the steep decrease in security since the end of the presidential election. Making many appointments in the hottest phase of the fighting season also meant that new governors had to take a running start, trying to find their – vaguely described – roles, in between locals demanding they lobby on their behalf in Kabul and national security forces who do not answer to governors. What is the hold up? So, what are the reasons for the sluggishness of the process? For one, as AAN was told by someone involved in the negotiations, it was only in the first week of May 2015 that the unity government finally agreed about which camp would appoint governors for which province. Until then, the two sides of the government had only managed to appoint four governors, struggling 2 / 19 over appointments endlessly – and then putting them aside as the parliament kept shooting down minister candidates and more rounds of finding acceptable cabinet nominees were needed first. Obviously, the unity government has been able to tackle only one ‘appointment project’ at a time instead of solving them simultaneously. And most other appointments seem to have been prioritised over the governors. After the cabinet issue was solved (except the still-pending defence minister nomination), “other issues got in the way,” as one staffer from the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG), the state body most involved in the appointment process, told this author. “Peace talks, the fighting in the north, the president’s leg injury . .” Particularly time consuming was the never- ending story of setting up an electoral reform commission (see AAN analysis here https://www.a fghanistan-analysts.org/elections-in-hibernation-afghanistans-stalled-electoral-reform/). The first commission, appointed in March 2015, never started working, as the Abdullah camp objected to the appointment of Ghani ally Shukria Barakzai as head of the commission. The second commission came into existence only in July. Currently, AAN was told, the struggle over who shall be attorney general seems to be taking precedence. This ‘morsel by morsel’ approach to ruling shows the heaviness of an administration that basically needs to go through all decision-making processes not only twice – once on each side of the unity government in the heterogeneous camps around the president and CEO – but then a third time: with each other. At the same time, there has been little international urging to get on with it. The attention of donor governments seems to have shifted away from sub-national governance issues. “The pressure is off,” an international expert told AAN. “Local governance has become somewhat of a special interest topic. I remember when we used to have weekly coordination meetings among the donors and with the Afghan government – but now, with fewer staff in country and a faster rotation of staff, there is little knowledge left, and colleagues tend to view subnational governance as an unimportant side of things – the odds and ends of governing Afghanistan.” “Everyone wants a say in everything, and no one wants to agree on anything” In addition, new routines for making appointments had to be developed to satisfy a new double structure of top government. Governors are political appointees. In the past, it was the president who usually chose them (consulting, though, with allies, sometimes also opponents, and trying to create an unofficial power balance by affording them positions). There were few criteria to follow or institutions to involve, except for the occasional vetting commission nominated by the president himself. The lack of independent oversight was – and still is today – helped by the fact that official regulations on how state officials, particularly provincial and district governors, are to be appointed are blurry, if not contradictory. (1) For the 2015 governor appointments, there is still no independent panel. The IDLG, headless for long months and more or less powerless until Jailani Popal (the IDLG’s first director general from 2007 to 2010) was re-appointed in April, has been “giving suggestions and help with the background checks. But it is still the 3 / 19 president who decides,” as one IDLG member told AAN. With the position of CEO added into the picture and the need to share appointments, President Ghani set up a few more ground rules, saying that appointees should be at least 35 years old, have a bachelor’s degree and should not hail from the province they are supposed to govern. These new rules have never been made official, though. The May agreement, then, according to observers close to the camps, gave Ghani and his camp the right to appoint 18 governors and the Abdullah camp the right to choose 16 governors. How exactly the provinces have been divided is unclear. This is also because for provinces where capitals are also ‘regional centres’ (such as Kandahar, Herat, Balkh, Nangarhar, Khost, Bamyan and Kabul), both camps have to agree. This, apparently, included not only the two leaders but their wider political groups as well, that is, key allies like power brokers Abdul Rabb Rassul Sayyaf, Haji Din Muhammad and Yunus Qanuni who already had an unofficial say on provincial governors under Karzai. Karzai himself would also have been consulted. Of course, this procedure rendered the decision-making process even more complex and time- consuming – along the way also watering down the concept of choosing candidates based on merit (as Ghani had promised during his campaign) and not because of their political relations. Despite the agreement, some decisions still caused trouble, such as when CEO Abdullah, on 20 May, complained that President Ghani had appointed the governors for Helmand, Bamyan, Paktika and Nimruz without the consent of his side. “Everyone wants a say in everything, and no one wants to agree on anything,” someone involved in the process said. “I cannot count how many emergency meetings we have had over governors.” Who are the new governors? As with the recently appointed ministers (see AAN bios here), the list is again dominated by surprisingly young appointees.