Afghan picked for Marjah government has criminal record

[G_j]

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100306/marjah_leader_100306/20100306?hub=World

Afghan picked for Marjah government has criminal record

The Associated Press
Date: Saturday Mar. 6, 2010 8:11 AM ET

KABUL, Afghanistan — The man chosen to be the fresh face of good Afghan governance in a town just seized from the Taliban has a violent criminal record in Germany, but Western officials said Saturday they are not pushing to oust him.

Court records and news reports in Germany show that Abdul Zahir, the man appointed as the new civilian chief in Marjah, served part of a more than four-year prison sentence for stabbing his son in 1998. A U.S. official confirmed that he did serve time in Germany, though Zahir denies he committed any crime.

"I was not a killer. I was not a smuggler. ... I didn't commit any crime," Zahir told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday evening. He said allegations of a criminal record were "all a lie."

Zahir's integrity is an issue because his job is to convince residents of the town in Helmand province that the Afghan government can provide them with a better life than the Taliban, which were routed during a three-week offensive by thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan troops. Marjah is the first major test of NATO's counterinsurgency strategy since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 new American troops to try to reverse the Taliban's momentum.

Adm. Gregory Smith, director of communications for NATO, said the international alliance strongly supports Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal, who picked Zahir for the job. "Zahir, from our reporting, is doing good work down there," Smith said Saturday, adding that NATO is not pushing Afghan officials to oust him.

Zahir said he lived in Germany for 15 years before returning to Afghanistan in 2000. During his time in Germany, he said he worked in a hotel and at a laundry service.


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[G_j]

1. The smell of corruption in the morning..

it would be hard to top Karzai,
people are dying to maintain this election stealing criminal.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/asia/24karzai.html

Afghan Leader Asserts Control Over Election Body

By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: February 23, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — To the dismay of his political opponents and many of his international backers, President Hamid Karzai has moved to ensure that he can handpick members of an electoral monitoring commission, removing significant United Nations oversight of future elections.

Using a loophole in the Afghan Constitution, the Karzai government unilaterally rewrote the election law, and the president put it into effect by a legislative decree on Feb. 13.

Under the new version, the five members of the Election Complaint Commission, created to oversee voting irregularities, will now be chosen by the president after consultation with the parliamentary leadership. Previously, three of the seats were held by foreigners appointed by the United Nations. The other two members were Afghans.

The Election Complaint Commission was the oversight body that documented widespread irregularities in the presidential elections last August, ruling that at least a million votes cast for Mr. Karzai were suspect and forcing him into a runoff.

Mr. Karzai’s opponents denounced the new decree, saying the move threatened the nation’s stability. They predicted that without an impartial complaint commission, elections would lead to a Parliament whose members were indebted to Mr. Karzai or others in his government. Parliamentary elections are expected this summer.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62306B20100304

U.S. military questions Karzai's steps on corruption
WASHINGTON
Wed Mar 3, 2010 8:04pm EST

(Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai must take "significant steps" to fight corruption, the U.S. military's top officer said on Wednesday, suggesting Washington was concerned inaction could undercut the campaign against the Taliban.

World

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it was "too early to tell" what Karzai and other leaders have done to address the issue, underscoring persistent tensions between Washington and the Kabul-based government on the issue.

"There have to be significant steps taken on the part of President Karzai and other leaders in Afghanistan to eliminate corruption," Mullen told an audience at Kansas State University in an address broadcast to journalists at the Pentagon.
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[G_j]

2. ``