At a time in the history of Afghanistan that an elected government should embark upon numerous economic development projects and social recovery, the country is plummeting into an abyss of uncertainty where divisive forces get a chance to play their evil role and to kill the slightest glimmer of hope for the country's resuscitation.

News of fighting in Shindand air base area in the south-western province of Farah between the forces of the Tajik warlord Ismail Khan of Herat and local Pushtuns, insecurity in the north of the country, the bright day killing of high ranking officials of the administration in the capital Kabul as well as unrest and armed conflict in Paktia province do not help put the minds of the common citizens at ease.

In a country where people have lived under extreme oppression for the most part of the past quarter of a century, news of a protest rally by 3000 people in the eastern city of Jalalabad, calling for the government to find and arrest the assassins of Haji Qadeer the late governor of Nangrahar, minister of public works and vice president of the transitional government is in fact an expression of dissatisfaction of the common man with the policies of the transitional government's head, Mr. Hamid Karzai.

Before accepting the challenge of heading the transitional government, Karzai was aware of the enormity of the task that required nothing less than a miracle to perform. With his election, it was expected of him to lay away his cloak, take off his karakul, roll up his sleeves and get to the task of the nation building. It now appears that he is wrapping the cloak tighter around him, grasping his karakul with both hands and sitting on his golden chair at the palace, only pondering how to please everyone at the same time.

Everyone, in his case include his ethnic Pushtuns, who seem not to be happy with his policies, the Northern Alliance members who are in control of the day to day functioning of the government, the warlords, whom Karzai had promised more than once to get rid of and instead each time has given them further government offices and privileges and the common citizens, who suffered before and are suffering now because of a standstill in the process of reconstruction and alleviation of their problems.

Karzai also has to keep his foreign supporters, the United States without whom Taleban would still be in charge and engaged in their oppressive rule of the country, the United Nations Security and Assistance Force, without whom Kabul would not live in peace and the transitional government would lose its meaning.

Karzai does not have the power to deal with many of the problems emanating from his mild attitude and the impossible mission of keeping everyone happy. He does not have a national army at his disposal. The warlords, that he has promised time and again to deal with, have not only access and control of what can be called the government military, but they also have their own private armies. Fahim, the minister of defense in Karzai's cabinet not only has control of the government military, but has his own private army of 10,000 armed fighters. Ismail Khan is reported to have a private army of between 30,000 and 70,000. Dostum runs his own Uzbek force in the north and Pushtun warlords in Kandahar, Paktia and Nangrahar have kept their own armies. All of this happens when Karzai had issued a directive to disarm all militia in the country. His hollow order did not specify when the disarmament should take place and who should be responsible for it and how this should be enforced. In actuality in a very few districts that the US or UN forces took the initiative to disarm the population, the arms collected were all given to General Fahim.

Besides, the fact that none of the militia and warlords have been disarmed or disbanded, there are other political problems that need urgent intervention by the transitional government. The government had promised the establishment of the national army, balanced distribution of government power among different ethnic groups, compilation of a draft constitution, embarking upon programs of reconstruction and putting the general wheel of government in operation. So far, it has failed to accomplish any one of these promises. Perhaps one of the most important reasons for this is his inability to deal with the problem of warlords and warlordism. Instead of Karzai trying to weaken warlords, as he had vowed to do so, he has helped empower them further.

All of the above suggest that he is in trouble, a trouble that he does not acknowledge, but might soon manifest in an expression of open dissatisfaction expressed by the masses. He has to do something about all of this and soon. Otherwise, these problems may create the darkest clouds over the political environment of an Afghanistan that had emerged from the darkness of Taleban administration to live under the bright sun of democracy and to march ahead to a prosperous future. 7/26/02