Our beloved ministers

(Note: I wrote this piece a day before the Wolesi Jirga voted on the cabinet)

As Hamid Karzai goes out of favour due to rampant corruption and inefficiency some of his key ministers are befriended by Western officials to facilitate a face-saving exit.

Omar Zakhilwal, the nominated minister of finance, is now at days the beloved darling of Western diplomats in Kabul. Because he has been perceived as efficient and uncorrupt by the powerful diplomatic and aid community, Mr. Zakhilwal is enjoying personal political support and his ministry has been receiving generous funding. Some foreigners even propose him to take up the role of a super-coordinator and/or manager of the entire development enterprise in Afghanistan.

Although new into the ministers’ club, Omar seems to be gradually outpacing Hanif Atmar and Rahim Wardak the two US/UK-favourite ministers of the interior and defence.

Apart from his glorified tenure in the rural rehabilitation and development ministry (MRRD) Mr. Atmar failed to sort out the mess in the education ministry (2005-2008), and seems paralyzed in bringing order into his current interior ministry.

Obviously competency is not what drives Rahim Wardak as the defence minister, but he has been blessed by his own and his son’s deep ties with US military and intelligence heavyweights in Kabul and beyond.

Giving the three key ministries of interior, defence and finance to Pashtuns was not expected from a Karzai who has a sensitive style of ethnic inclusiveness and power-sharing. The weakened and isolated Karzai had received clear instructions to satisfy his Tajik and Hazara allies elsewhere in the cabinet.

Dollars, political support and other resources will surely usher Messrs Zakhilwal, Atmar and Wardak through the parliamentary approval and they all will have to handle big projects designed by their Western patrons.

My Afghani wisdom tells me that the personification of international community’s approach is as flawed as the 200-2008 development and democratization of Afghanistan. We need system-and-institution-building development not individual-based policies in which the departure of an individual minister marks the end of donors’ interest and funding to a ministry. Almost nine years after the Taliban we terribly suffer Washington’s Karzai-centric approach to Afghanistan as a result of which a failing president has been failing a nation.

I am amazed by the naivety of those who justify the personified approach as transfer of authority to Afghans or the so called “Afghanisation”. Washington has made no secret of its policy of direct support for “competent and uncorrupt” ministers and governors in a bid to tackle corruption and ineptitude in the Afghan government. As such, the new policy is picking and supporting ministers like Zakhilwal and Atmar.

This policy is wrong. It creates a culture of cronyism where ministers and governors will seek to satisfy their foreign patrons instead of meaningfully serving their Afghan constituencies.

Moreover, picking a handful of ministers and governors to do things the way the US and its allies want is actually Americanising the Afghan development and governance – not Afghanising the process.

How can Zakhilwal, Atmar and Wardak change the lot of Afghanistan when their boss – Karzai - is weak, ostracized and doomed to failure?

It would look very cynical to suggest that Washington and London do not support ministers and governors to change the wrongs of Afghanistan but to engineer their own exit. Are the three beloved ministers commissioned to finance, train and prepare a large Afghan mercenary force to which NATO will eventually outsource the war?

Alas! This seems to be an imperialistic project.