March 7, 2002. Copyright, 2002, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Voice of reason in a troubled land
By Elisabeth Ribbans

LONDON, March 7, Graphic News:  In his first 10 weeks as head of AfghanistanÕs interim government, Hamid Karzai made at least 10 summit visits to foreign lands, including Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, the United States, Britain, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, India and Uzbekistan. In the days immediately before he took charge of the temporary administration, he also squeezed in a visit to Rome for talks with AfghanistanÕs exiled former king Zahir Shah, a kinsman of his own Pashtun tribe. Between take-offs and landings, he inaugurated the wrecked nationÕs new flag, freed 300 ÒinnocentÓ Taliban prisoners, restored the solar calendar that the Islamic militia had ditched for Saudi ArabiaÕs lunar version, and took on a range of issues from clamping down on art smuggling to drumming up foreign investment. While bidding fair for the title of worldÕs busiest leader, another accolade fell on his astrakhan-hatted head: he was, according to GucciÕs creative director, Tom Ford, the ÒworldÕs most chic manÓ.

By any standards it has been a good start. In Afghanistan, the risk of descent into another nightmare era must never be discounted, but for the time being the sartorial and consensus-minded Hamid Karzai is the western diplomatÕs dream. Addressing the world stage in his impeccable English, he has become the refined antidote to the veiled, unaccountable, brutal and inward-looking Taliban regime. Karzai, 44, was chosen to head the ethnically diverse administration in part for his western bent Ð he has spent time in the U.S., where his siblings own a chain of Afghan-style restaurants Ð and also for his potential as a unifier of the countryÕs fractious opposition factions. As the powerful chief of the 500,000-strong Popolzai clan of the majority Pashtun people, he commands widespread respect in Afghanistan.

College-educated in India, with six languages to his linguistic repertoire, Karzai served as a deputy foreign minister in AfghanistanÕs post-Soviet Mujaheddin government in 1992. Having briefly supported the Taliban who took control soon afterwards, he later refused an invitation to become their UN ambassador Ð his disdain deepening following the regimeÕs suspected role in the murder of his politician father in 1999. Exiled in Pakistan, he spent much of the decade quietly galvanizing opposition to the Islamic fundamentalists, escaping at least one attempt by the Taliban to capture him. In the end, it was this free-thinking and moderate nationalist who assisted in negotiating the TalibanÕs final surrender at Kandahar Ð his own and the movementÕs birthplace.

Jealous warlords already threaten the administrationÕs stability. But if Karzai Ð with the indispensable aid of tens of thousands of international peacekeepers Ð can keep the peace until the planned Loya Jirga (traditional grand assembly) is convened this summer, he will have done as much as was asked by the Bonn summiteers who installed him as prime minister last December. Having devoted much of his life to the quest for renewed democracy Ð against custom he delayed marriage, to Zanit, a doctor, until the age of 41 Ð it is likely he will seek to do more. Karzai says he wants to resurrect not only independence and peace but to restore Afghanistan to the ranks of the Òdignified and honourableÓ nations of the world.
/ENDS