HERAT - Ismail Khan played a major role in Afghanistan's struggle against Soviet occupation, but the powerful warlord now accuses his country's government of sidelining him just as it faces up to the Taliban's obstinate insurgency.
Khan was once one of the most important commanders of the "mujahideen" fighters who battled to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. The 68-year-old is still a force to be reckoned with in western Afghanistan, and in an interview with AFP in his stronghold in the city of Herat, he railed against the administration of President Ashraf Ghani.
Sat in a huge armchair in his reception room, the white-bearded commander said sidelining the leaders of the anti-Soviet resistance had created unnecessary divisions in the country. "The jihadi leaders are not in the government and it (has) created distrust among the people and led to insecurity in Afghanistan," he said. For Khan and some of the other big hitters of the anti-Soviet fight, a power-sharing deal agreed following bitterly-disputed presidential polls in 2014 has left them out in the cold.
They include influential Islamist leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the powerful governor of Balkh province and northern strongman Mohammad Atta Noor, former vice-president Yunus Qanooni and former Nangarhar provincial governor Gul Agha Sherzai. Instead Ghani has passed more power on to a new generation, with a few exceptions -- such as the redoutable and indefatigable old Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum, now the first vice-president under Ghani.
Khan was water and energy minister under previous president Hamid Karzai and was disappointed at not being allowed to continue when Ghani took over. To add to his frustration, the new interior minister Noor ul-Haq Ulumi is a former military commander in the former Afghan communist regime that the Soviets propped up -- the sworn enemy of the mujadhideen.
Moreover, with elections delayed by political squabbling, Afghanistan's president issued a decree on Friday extending parliament's mandate until a vote could be held.Parliament's five-year term was set to expire on June 22, but elections scheduled for April were postponed because of security fears and disagreement on how to ensure a fair vote after a bitterly disputed presidential election last year. President Ashraf Ghani's office said the decision to let the existing parliament stay on had been taken in consultation with the judiciary, the legislative and the executive, and a new election date would be announced in a month.
Both Ghani and rival Abdullah Abdullah claimed victory after last year's presidential vote was marred by accusations of widespread fraud on both sides. It took months for them to agree to a US-brokered deal to form a unity government with Ghani as president and Abdullah as chief executive. Under the deal, electoral reforms were a condition for holding future votes, but little progress has been made because rivals in government disagree over who should lead the reform commission.