Thousands greet new governor of Afghan province amid threats of war

by Bryan Pearson

GARDEZ, Afghanistan, Feb 14 (AFP) - Thousands of people turned out here Thursday to welcome the newly appointed governor of eastern Paktia province amid threats of war from an Afghan warlord who was passed over for the job.

People from Gardez and surrounding villages gathered for the inauguration of Taj Mohammad Wardak, who urged them to unite to rebuild Paktia.

Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai, who visited eastern Nangarhar province Thursday, named Wardak as governor despite threats of violence from tribal warlord Padsha Khan, who was his first choice for the post.

Without mentioning Khan by name, Wardak warned: "If anyone does anything illegal against us we will respond."

Meanwhile the commander of Khan's forces, Gellani Khan Zadran, declared they were ready for battle as soon as Khan gives the order.

"We have brought in machine guns and rockets and heavy weaponry," Zadran told AFP on the city's outskirts.

"We are just awaiting the order from Padsha Khan, and then we'll be fighting" he said in a hut surrounded by soldiers toting Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers.

He said Khan would return from Kabul on Friday and decide by Monday whether to go into battle.

The row over control of Paktia has underlined the fragility of the UN-backed interim cabinet as it tries to assert its control over the countryside, where ethnic and tribal warlords still hold sway.

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported that further unrest was brewing in neighbouring Khost province against another Karzai-appointed governor, Mohammad Ibrahim.

The Khost shura, or tribal council, warned of bloodshed if Ibrahim, appointed two weeks ago, was not withdrawn.

"If this is not done there will be bloodshed, worse than what happened in Gardez," shura spokesman Mohammad Khan Gurboz told the Pakistani-based news agency.

Clashes broke out in Gardez on January 30 when Khan sent his forces in to take the governor's residence from rival warlord Saif Ullah.

Karzai dropped his support for Khan after Ullah's men routed Khan's fighters in 24 hours of fighting.

Gurboz claimed that Ibrahim, a loyalist of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, was Khan's nominee and therefore unacceptable to the people of Khost.

A member of the nine-man commission appointed by Karzai last week to resolve the Gardez dispute, Shabaz Ahmmad Zai, said the commission would discuss the Khost stand-off later Thursday.

"We'd like to apply the same kind of formula as in Paktia," Zai told AFP here.

He said Kabul was in favour of bringing in outsiders to govern provinces where there is a dispute.

"Where there's conflict in a province we'll bring in an outsider...If the local person has the support of all the people in the province we'll appoint him," Zai said.

He said appointing Khan was a "mistake" but was confident the dispute had been resolved.

"This Padsha Khan is a good man, he should not interfere any more."

Wardak, wearing a black turban and sporting a white beard, told supporters in Gardez he had returned from the United States to "pay attention to the development of my own country."

The 80-year-old had been governor of northeastern Badakhshan province under former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, who was ousted in 1973.

He told AFP that his supporters were ready to fight Khan and dismissed Khan's claims that he had 6,000 soldiers behind him.

"If he wants to attack he will find us waiting for him... He will be hitting his head against a wall," Wardak said.

Khan Wednesday warned he would wage war if anyone else was appointed governor and repeated claims that his opponents were members of terror suspect Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

"We will fight there till the end of al-Qaeda," he told AFP. But Wardak retorted with a vow to "arrest him and take him to court" if Khan carries out his threats, calling him inexperienced, "ignorant and illiterate."