Karzai drops warlord from ticket

KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai dropped a powerful warlord to add the brother of a slain Afghan hero to his electoral ticket Monday. The surprise move followed political wrangling so intense that NATO peacekeepers stepped up their presence in the streets of Kabul.

The U.S.-backed interim leader selected a little-known brother of resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massood as his chief running mate, a move sure to test this volatile nation’s fragile ethnic and factional balance.

“I hope the Afghan people will recognize us as a good team, and I hope the people of Afghanistan will vote for us,” Karzai told reporters summoned to a shady courtyard of the presidential palace.

Meanwhile, a bomb exploded Monday near a U.S. military vehicle in southeastern Afghanistan, injuring three U.S. soldiers and their interpreter, the military said.

In Kabul, Karzai, beaming under his trademark woolen hat, was flanked by his vice presidential choices for the Oct. 9 vote as well as dozens of aides and security guards. But he appeared to have lost the support of snubbed Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, his current first vice president and arguably Afghanistan’s most powerful warlord, as well as the backing of his foreign and education ministers.

Ahmad Zia Massood, an ethnic Tajik, is Afghanistan’s current ambassador to Russia and a brother of Ahmad Shah Massood, who led the resistance to the Taliban regime until he was killed by al Qaeda terrorists on Sept. 9, 2001. Karzai, a member of the country’s main Pashtun group, named ethnic Hazara leader Karim Khalili his choice for second vice president.

That lineup is likely to appeal across the country’s deep ethnic divides. It will also help Karzai shake off a reputation for using kid gloves with the warlords who dominate much of the country.

Karzai is the overwhelming favorite to beat about a dozen challengers and win a five-year term. However, the race has heated up in recent days, with declarations first by Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek strongman, and now Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik, that they would run.

The vote, the first direct presidential election in Afghan history, is seen as a referendum on the international community’s patchy efforts to rebuild the country after more than two decades of fighting.