AFGHANISTAN - July 20 - Warlords Are Moved To Civilian Roles.

Disappointing hopes of a robust move to curb the so-called warlords' influence, Pres Karzai removes three powerful militia commanders from their posts but awards them key civilian jobs. Jawed Ludin, Karzai's spokesman, said Gen Atta Mohammed, one of the country's strongest provincial commanders, would step down as head of a northern army corps and become governor of Balkh, the province in which his militia is based. The corps commander in the eastern province of Nangahar Gen Hazrat Ali, will become provincial police chief, while Khan Mohammed, his counterpart in the southern province of Kandahar, makes the same switch. Ludin said: "The changes are part of the ongoing process of trying to improve governance at the provincial level". (Local and foreign officials in Kabul have advocated stripping recalcitrant militia commanders of their positions in an attempt to dismantle provincial power structures and boost the strength of the central government outside Kabul. They voiced scepticism that the new appointments would improve the way local government was run. Karzai has avoided directly challenging commanders, who control thousands of troops and have often received the quiet support of the US-led military coalition, which is using them to fight Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants. But he has vowed to disarm militias through a UN-sponsored process and last week threatened severe punishment for anyone who defied the programme. Under pressure from local and international officials, the three commanders have reluctantly complied with the disarmament programme and Ludin insisted the reshuffle had nothing to do with last week's threat. He said: "They are not being moved as a gesture of punishment, they're being promoted". Observers in Kabul said that the commanders' reassignment was a sign that Karzai remained anxious not to make political enemies with elections looming in October). An analyst in Kabul for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank Vikram Parekh, said: "You have the centre nominally standing up to the strongmen but not fundamentally changing the reality on the ground. They've been handled rather gingerly because Karzai feels the need to maintain alignments in the run-up to elections". The decision to make Gen Atta governor of Balkh is likely to anger his arch rival, Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, who controls a large militia in the region and heads one of the main political parties. Afghan security forces July 20 captured a brother-in-law of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the fugitive Taliban leader. Mullah Amanullah was arrested before dawn in the central province of Uruzgan, Mullah Omar's home province. The latter is among the militants most wanted by Afghan and US forces.