Afghan President Hamid Karzai unveils cabinet choices

KABUL -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai unveiled his new cabinet Saturday, presenting a list that satisfied Western backers who had warned him against stacking the government with reward-seeking power brokers or graft-tainted politicians.

But if Karzai's choices mollified international unease, they provoked dismay among many Afghan observers, who said the retention of about half the previous ministers would bring five more years of inefficient and fractured governance.

Since winning reelection in a fraud-riddled poll, Karzai has been under Western pressure to build a cleaner, more competent government as more than 30,000 U.S. and international troops prepare to deploy to Afghanistan. But he is also indebted to a vast network of supporters -- some of them brutal warlords -- who helped deliver votes.

Signs of those pressures were reflected in the list of appointees, analysts said. As expected, Karzai retained 11 of 25 cabinet members, including those most important to and favored by the international community -- the interior, defense and finance ministers. Karzai also kept the education, health and agriculture ministers, whose portfolios receive massive amounts of foreign aid directed toward the Afghan people.

The minister of mines and the minister of hajj and Islamic affairs, both linked to corruption, were not on the list. But one former warlord, Energy Minister Ismail Khan, was.

A Karzai spokesman, Waheed Omer, said the cabinet was chosen after consultation with various parties, including Western governments. But he said Karzai selected the appointees independently, based on their qualifications and effectiveness.

Critics said the cabinet amounted to more of the same.

"There is not some big difference," said Nur ul-Haq Ulumi, a member of parliament who supported Karzai's main opponent in the presidential election, Abdullah Abdullah. "With these weak people, we can do nothing."

The new ministers need the approval of parliament.

The holding over of several ministers was just one element that drew complaints from Afghan lawmakers. Some said Karzai had violated a recent parliamentary resolution by naming several people with dual citizenship, while others expressed disappointment that the cabinet would include just one woman.

Others said they were befuddled by the appointment of little-known figures to low-profile positions. Though many of those people appeared to be experienced or well educated, observers said, there was a widespread assumption that they were allies of some of Karzai's more dubious backers.

"The problem we Afghans have is whether the good person you see in government has bad brothers or bad sons," said Waheed Mojda, a political analyst in Kabul.

Two Washington-friendly figures whose names were circulating as cabinet possibilities did not appear on the list. But analysts speculated that former finance minister Ashraf Ghani and former interior minister Ali Jalali would be named as economic and security advisers to Karzai, a move that would potentially give them more influence than they would have in the cabinet.