By Kevin Sullivan
The Washington Post
KABUL, Afghanistan — Fifteen weeks after terrorist attacks on the United States triggered a war that toppled Afghanistan’s radical Taliban rulers, a new Afghan government took office Saturday vowing to succeed where others had failed and bring peace to a country that has known little but war for much of its history.
Hamid Karzai, a prominent tribal leader from Afghanistan’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group, was installed as head of an interim council empowered to rule for six months. After taking the oath of office before 2,000 international dignitaries and Afghan ethnic leaders, Karzai, 44, promised to punish terrorism, restore order and build a modern economy.
"Today we are happy that we can see the sun rising again on our land," Karzai said in speech delivered in Pashto and Dari, Afghanistan’s two main languages. "I think a wave of peace and unity is coming to our country."
While Karzai enjoys the hopeful optimism of much of the Afghan population — and of the foreign powers whose military campaign against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden cleared the way for a new government — he and the rest of the new 30-member ruling council inherit a country ruined by war and riven by ethnic and political divisions.
But Saturday’s ceremony offered evidence that, for now at least, Afghans appear eager to overcome their differences. Two factional leaders who had disparaged the new government — Abdurrashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek from the north, and Ismael Khan, an ethnic Tajik from the west — attended the three-hour ceremony in a cavernous auditorium at the Interior Ministry. When Khan arrived during Karzai’s speech, the new leader stopped and greeted him from the podium, calling him "brother."
The United States was represented by James Dobbins, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, and Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the military effort in the region.
The installation of the new leadership was a milestone in the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, launched after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and aimed at eliminating Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida organization and their Afghan hosts, the ruling Taliban movement.
The Taliban has been driven from power and al-Qaida’s Afghan operations apparently destroyed, but bin Laden and other leaders of the two groups have not been captured.
The inauguration of Karzai’s administration fills the political vacuum left by the collapse of the Taliban, a militant Muslim group that had ruled the country under its severe interpretation of Islamic law since 1996. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were linked to bin Laden, President Bush’s war on terrorism focused on Afghanistan, where al-Qaida had been operating for five years. Starting on Oct. 7, American warplanes pummeled Taliban targets throughout the country, enabling an array of anti-Taliban militias to drive the repressive Islamic regime from power.
The council that Karzai will lead was worked out by Afghan delegates at a U.N.-brokered conference last month in Bonn, Germany. During its six-month term, the council is to administer the country and prepare it for a national conference that will choose a transitional government to govern the country for no longer than two years. After that, Afghanistan is expected to hold democratic elections.
Karzai said the interim council would hold its first meeting today. Among the obstacles facing the new government is the nearly total lack of basic supplies in many ministry buildings. "We have to make due with what we have," Karzai said.
Everything Karzai did and said Saturday seemed aimed squarely at uniting rival factions.
"Dear brothers and sisters, in this very important moment when the motherland is looking to us, we should put our hands together to be brothers, to be friends, to be together, to forget the painful past and as brothers and sisters enter a new Afghanistan," Karzai said.
Karzai formally took control of the government from Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Northern Alliance leader who was Afghan president from 1992 until 1996, when the Taliban overthrew him. Until he passed power to Karzai today, Rabbani was still recognized as Afghanistan’s leader by the United Nations, which never recognized the Taliban’s legitimacy.
Rabbani has been a critic of the Bonn agreement, and there have been fears that he and his many followers could disrupt Karzai’s efforts at governing. But Saturday, Rabbani said he fully supported the new government. Then the two men shared a long, warm and highly symbolic embrace on the stage.
"This is a historic moment which has no precedent in the last century," Rabbani said.
Associated Press
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