The Afghan government on Saturday announced the removal of the powerful governor of Herat, in western Afghanistan, one of the country's longest-standing warlords. The move appeared to be designed to undercut the governor, one of the major opponents to President Hamid Karzai, before the Oct. 9 presidential elections.
The removal of the governor, Ismail Khan, is momentous for the central government, which has tried without success to reduce his power or remove him for the last two years. After Karzai's removal of the defense minister, Marshall Muhammad Qasim Fahim, from the presidential ticket last month, the action on Saturday was one of the boldest moves by Karzai in nearly three years in office to reduce the power of the warlords.
The government announced the removal as a promotion, saying Khan was being appointed the new minister of mines and industries, but the governor was clearly reluctant to leave and told local radio that he would not accept the ministerial post but would remain in Herat as a private citizen.
Khan has dominated western Afghanistan for more than 20 years -- as a mujahedeen commander fighting the Soviet army and later the Taliban, and as undisputed ruler of Herat for a period in the 1990s and for nearly three years since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. He has resisted any control by the central government and has kept a tight hold on the local political and economic scene.
Weakened by two military attacks against his soldiers this year and the assassination in March of his son, Mirwais Siddiq, the government's minister of Civil Aviation, he finally gave in to government pressure last week.
He told a local radio station on Saturday that he had accepted the government's decision to replace him but probably would not go to Kabul, because it was not a post for which he was qualified, said Muhammadullah Afzali, chief of the government's foreign department in Herat.
"He has said that he will stay where he is right now, not as a governor but as a private citizen, and that he will work for the security and prosperity of Herat," said a Western diplomat, who was in telephone contact with Khan on Saturday. Discussions would continue about a future post, the diplomat said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
RSS