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12/25/2004:

"New Cabinet in Afghanistan Includes More Technocrats and Fewer Warlords"

NEW DELHI, Dec. 23 - After weeks of deliberations, Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, announced his new cabinet on Thursday night, offering a lineup largely free of wartime commanders and heavy on technocrats.

...On the whole, said Barnett Rubin, the director of studies at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, it is a "clean" cabinet, free of members accused of drug trafficking or serious human rights violations.

It is largely a technocratic group, dominated by Pashtuns - members of the country's largest ethnic group - from eastern Afghanistan who have American connections but no political following. Mr. Karzai's first cabinet was largely composed of factional leaders representing the country's different political and ethnic groupings. Many had been powerful and popular commanders but lacked the education and skills for their portfolios.

The current cabinet is ethnically balanced in terms of pure arithmetic, Mr. Rubin noted, but not in terms of the balance of power, which rests with Western-oriented Pashtuns like Mr. Karzai, who now hold the critical posts of interior, defense, finance, and urban and rural development.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Well, more like replacing one set of 'warlords' with another of a more dangerous, 21st century sort. So now that Iraq is in tatters, Afghanistan will become the new showplace for free-market fundamentalism. The banality of evil: so slick and smooth and 'clean' you'd gladly marry your daughter off to it.