President Hamid Karzai, right, signing the country’s constitution as former Afghan King Zahir Shah looks on during a ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul on Jan. 26. (File photo)

APPROVAL TO CONSTITUTION, JAN. 4: Delegates at a national meeting in Kabul approved a new constitution for Afghanistan on Jan. 4 after three weeks of often tense debate. Their decision heralded a new era of democracy after a quarter century of war. It was decided that the country will be renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, combining democracy and religion. There is to be a system of civil law, but no law will be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of Islam.

Mirwais Sadiq

CIVIL AVIATION MINISTER KILLED, MARCH 21: Afghan minister for Civil Aviation Mirwais Sadiq, son of provincial governor Ismail Khan, was killed in Herat city during factional fighting which killed more than 100 people.

jihad against drugs, April 6: President Hamid Karzai on April 6 called for a holy war against drugs in Afghanistan, the world’s leading producer of opium.“Drugs threaten the basis of our life. We must rid this country of poppies,’’ Karzai said in Kabul.



‘MILITIAS A THREAT TO ELECTION:’ President Hamid Karzai said on July 11 that the failure to disarm Afghanistan’s militias had become the country’s greatest danger –– greater than the Taliban insurgency –– and that new action was required to defeat them.



‘OPERATION LIGHTNING RESOLVE’: American forces in Afghanistan began a military operation aimed at providing security for the October presidential election amid vows by the Taliban to disrupt the voting process and a threat posed by rogue militias, the Pentagon said on July 13. Thousands of U.S. troops participated in ‘Operation Lightning Resolve’ leading up to the landmark presidential balloting scheduled for Oct. 9, defense officials said.



ESCAPE FOR INTERIM PRESIDENT: A bomb detonated by remote control exploded next to the convoy of President Hamid Karzai’s running mate on Oct. 6, killing at least one person and injuring as many as seven.

The vice-presidential candidate, Ahmed Zia Massoud, was not hurt in the attack, in the northeastern province of Badakshan, which followed a rocket attack against Karzai last month. Massoud is a brother of the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary northern resistance fighter.

Karl Inderfurth

ROLE OF U.S. IN AFGHANISTAN: The U.S. and the world community should recommit themselves to finish the task of preventing Afghanistan becoming a “sanctuary for international terrorism and drug trafficking,” says South Asia expert Karl Inderfurth. In a recent article titled ‘Afghanistan: A Job Half Done,” he quoted the 9/11 Commission’s final report to say that the U.S. and the international community should signal a renewed and strengthened, long-term commitment to Afghanistan and redouble efforts “to secure the country, disarm militias and curtail the age of warlord rule.”



SNAGS IN PICKING A CABINET, DECEMBER: Two weeks after his inauguration, and six weeks after being declared the winner in the presidential race, President Hamid Karzai encountered difficulties in forming a new cabinet during the third week of December, The New York Times reported. As he worked on his cabinet last week, he found himself restricted by Afghanistan’s new Constitution and by strict conditions laid down in it by a constitutional grand assembly a year ago. In particular, the constitutional demands that cabinet ministers have higher education and hold only Afghan citizenship, and not dual citizenship, have stalled his plans. Speaking to journalists on Dec. 19, Karzai, 46, said that he had spent most of the past two weeks selecting his cabinet, but that he had not finished. At least five members of the current cabinet whom Karzai had considered keeping do not have enough education.



8 KILLED IN BID TO ESCAPE PRISON, DEC. 17: At least eight people were killed –– four guards and four prisoners –– when inmates from Al Qaeda tried to break out of Kabul’s main prison on Dec. 17, The New York Times reported.

Two Qaeda prisoners, an Iraqi and a Pakistani, slashed a guard with a razor blade, seized his gun and killed four guards early in the morning, said the governor of the vast, Soviet-era Pul-i-Charkhi prison. Forces under the prisoner commander battled the inmates for several hours, killing at least two of them. Two more prisoners ––– both Pakistanis, the governor said –– escaped to an empty cellblock and held out under siege until the evening, when they were finally killed in a rocket blast, witnesses said. Gen. Abdul Salam Bakhshi, the governor, put the number of foreign Qaeda members at the prison at 11. A prison guard said the men trying to break out had at least six Kalashnikov rifles, and that they seized several spare magazines from guards.

(Compiled from the pages of

News India-Times by Charles Isaac)