Sunday, February 21, 2016

Governance

Replacement Player. Fazl Ahmad Faqiryaar has been appointed as legal advisor to President Ashraf Ghani. He succeeds Mohammadi who was fired because of his involvement in the "Smart City Scandal". The Smart City scandal was tied up with the "Kabul Bank Scandal". One of the convicted participants of the bank scandal had reached a deal with the government to mitigate his jail sentence in exchange to helping out with the "Smart City".

Dostum Back in the Swing of Things. Vice President of Afghanistan Abdul Rashid Dostum had taken a break from participating in the National Unity Government (NUG) for a short while but now he is back in the fold. His advancement of private militias in northern Afghanistan had put him at odds with the NUG. There are more than one former mujahideen leaders calling for a greater role for private militias to participate in the fight against the Taliban - especially in light of the ANDSF ineffectiveness on the battlefield.

MSC 2016. President Ghani attended the Munich Security Conference where he stated that the conflict in Afghanistan is not a civil, internal war but a regional and international war. Most of the attention of the attendees (and press) was on the Syria situation and the Ukraine. Afghanistan was not a highlighted event and one wonders how much Ghani was able to accomplish. You can watch his 13-minute long speech in a video posted by the Afghan UN representative on YouTube on Feb 13, 2016. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XplzKBVJIE

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