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Karzai Fires Outspoken Afghan Official - Newsweek: World News - MSNBC.com
Retaliation?
The governor of a troubled Afghanistan province spoke out last week about the government’s failure to control the Taliban. This week, he’s out of a job.
Dan Ephron
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
Updated: 44 minutes ago
July 18, 2007 - My short time with Abdul Sattar Murad could not have been more revealing. I had watched the governor of Afghanistan’s Kapisa province interact with U.S. military officers for more than two hours last week, settling on reconstruction projects and slashing through red tape. I had scribbled "knows the game" and "very efficient" in my notebook, as he pressed the Americans to quickly authorize two new roads before the clock ran out on the 2007 budget and the leftover funds reverted back to the government. When it was time for NEWSWEEK’s interview with Murad, he spoke bluntly from the get go, warning of a power vacuum the Taliban and Al Qaeda were exploiting in outlying areas and criticizing the government of Hamid Karzai for failing to deliver on its promises.
Three days later, Karzai fired him.
Officially, government spokesmen pinned the dismissal on incompetence and said it was brewing well before the interview appeared on Newsweek.com last Thursday. "Mr. Murad hasn’t served the people of Kapisa," the interior ministry said in a statement. It also suggested vaguely that Murad had been "misleading the [NATO] coalition" regarding airstrikes on his province. An interior ministry spokesman could not be reached to explain the accusation, and NATO officials did not respond to a request for comment. But during my time in Afghanistan, several U.S. military officials who worked with Murad described him as one of the most capable politicians in the country.
Those officials and others are convinced it was the criticism that did him in. The interview Murad gave NEWSWEEK was quickly picked up by Afghan television and later by the satellite-news network Al-Jazeera. In a follow-up phone conversation, Murad told me he received word that the president’s office was angry and considering its response. By Sunday, three days after the interview first appeared, he was told to vacate his office. "I had the sense there would be retaliation," Murad said by phone on Monday. "But what surprised me was how quickly they came up with these accusations."
For some longtime Karzai watchers, the dismissal was a troubling sign. Beset by a resurgent Taliban and charges of corruption in his government, the Afghani president might have felt that a lack of response on his part would have been perceived as another sign of weakness. "Unfortunately, President Karzai has shown a low degree of tolerance for criticism," said Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.
Murad says he has since tried to speak to Karzai but to no avail. (A spokesman for Karzai couldn’t be reached.) A veteran of the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, Murad later studied in the United States and returned home to serve under Karzai in the Afghan Transitional Administration. In 2004, Karzai appointed him governor of Kapisa, a medium-size province east of Kabul. Parts of Kapisa have seen renewed activity by the Taliban in recent months, and Murad said he had been targeted for assassination by the group. Now, Murad harks back on a line in the original interview and feels it rings more true than ever: "Afghanistan [is] at this critical moment of its history, [and] we don’t have a leadership that can unite the national leaders, which can see the needs of the people and respond to them," he said at the time.
Retaliation?
The governor of a troubled Afghanistan province spoke out last week about the government’s failure to control the Taliban. This week, he’s out of a job.
Dan Ephron
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
Updated: 44 minutes ago
July 18, 2007 - My short time with Abdul Sattar Murad could not have been more revealing. I had watched the governor of Afghanistan’s Kapisa province interact with U.S. military officers for more than two hours last week, settling on reconstruction projects and slashing through red tape. I had scribbled "knows the game" and "very efficient" in my notebook, as he pressed the Americans to quickly authorize two new roads before the clock ran out on the 2007 budget and the leftover funds reverted back to the government. When it was time for NEWSWEEK’s interview with Murad, he spoke bluntly from the get go, warning of a power vacuum the Taliban and Al Qaeda were exploiting in outlying areas and criticizing the government of Hamid Karzai for failing to deliver on its promises.
Three days later, Karzai fired him.
Officially, government spokesmen pinned the dismissal on incompetence and said it was brewing well before the interview appeared on Newsweek.com last Thursday. "Mr. Murad hasn’t served the people of Kapisa," the interior ministry said in a statement. It also suggested vaguely that Murad had been "misleading the [NATO] coalition" regarding airstrikes on his province. An interior ministry spokesman could not be reached to explain the accusation, and NATO officials did not respond to a request for comment. But during my time in Afghanistan, several U.S. military officials who worked with Murad described him as one of the most capable politicians in the country.
Those officials and others are convinced it was the criticism that did him in. The interview Murad gave NEWSWEEK was quickly picked up by Afghan television and later by the satellite-news network Al-Jazeera. In a follow-up phone conversation, Murad told me he received word that the president’s office was angry and considering its response. By Sunday, three days after the interview first appeared, he was told to vacate his office. "I had the sense there would be retaliation," Murad said by phone on Monday. "But what surprised me was how quickly they came up with these accusations."
For some longtime Karzai watchers, the dismissal was a troubling sign. Beset by a resurgent Taliban and charges of corruption in his government, the Afghani president might have felt that a lack of response on his part would have been perceived as another sign of weakness. "Unfortunately, President Karzai has shown a low degree of tolerance for criticism," said Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.
Murad says he has since tried to speak to Karzai but to no avail. (A spokesman for Karzai couldn’t be reached.) A veteran of the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, Murad later studied in the United States and returned home to serve under Karzai in the Afghan Transitional Administration. In 2004, Karzai appointed him governor of Kapisa, a medium-size province east of Kabul. Parts of Kapisa have seen renewed activity by the Taliban in recent months, and Murad said he had been targeted for assassination by the group. Now, Murad harks back on a line in the original interview and feels it rings more true than ever: "Afghanistan [is] at this critical moment of its history, [and] we don’t have a leadership that can unite the national leaders, which can see the needs of the people and respond to them," he said at the time.