December 2007 Edition
Saad Mohseni
Kabul
SAYED Mustafa Kazemi, 45, a prominent Afghan politician and former minister,
was killed in a suicide bombing on November 6. He was one of
Afghanistan’s most competent and capable politicians with a talent for ‘bridging’
the visions of opposition parties and the international community.
In 1992, just before Afghanistan ’s bloody civil war, Sayed Mustafa Kazemi –
then the aide de camp to a prominent Afghan Jihadi commander – was tasked
with organising a high-level meeting between two of Afghanistan’s most prominent
leaders. Both leaders insisted that the other visit him at his location. The
meeting never happened and the fighting that ensued resulted in over 50,000
deaths and the complete destruction of Kabul. This was an important lesson for
Kazemi. He learnt that compromise is a necessity in the world of politics and
pride should have no role in determining a nation’s fate.
Further lessons were learnt when the Kabul regime collapsed in 1995 and the Northern Alliance retreated to the North. In 1998, he barely escaped with his life when the city of Mazar- e- Sharif fell to the Taleban. It was said that he led the last Northern Alliance contingent out of Mazar. Sayed Mustafa Kazemi went on to become an important advocate of peace and reconciliation, representing the Northern Alliance in Rome and then in Bonn. While in Bonn he was instrumental in the election of Hamed Karzai – whom he had befriended earlier in Rome – as President. He later joked that he was Karzai’s eyes and ears in Bonn, talking to him via satellite telephone daily.
When Karzai announced his first cabinet in 2002, Kazemi was appointed Commerce Minister. By being a true champion of the private sector, Kazemi went on to achieve more results than any minister in that position has done before or since. During his tenure the economy grew substantially, albeit from a low base, and important bilateral agreements were signed ensuring Afghan products and services reached regional and international markets. For example, Afghan dried fruits became the second-most imported item in India. He established Afghanistan ’s High Commission for Investment, modelled on Singapore’s Economic Development Board and the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA), the nation’s first one-stop shop, became an example of efficiency in the region. Registration periods for businesses dropped from 27 to 3 days.
Despite the extraordinary hurdles of working within the ranks of the Soviet-modelled Afghan government, Kazemi did much to create an environment conducive to investment. Within the first two years after its liberation from the Taliban, Afghanistan had a Singaporestyle High Commission for Investment to encourage private capital inflows from abroad; an investment support agency to help foreign businessmen navigate the Afghan regulatory system; a stable new currency backed by reserves that have increased to almost $3 billion today from nothing in 2002; the country's first fully serviced industrial parks; and a new tax and tariff regime that started to roll back the dross of 20 years of communist-inspired economic policy.
After his election as President in 2004, Hamed Karzai decided to remove Kazemi from his position as Commerce Minister, citing his lack of tertiary qualifications as the primary factor. As one of Karzai’s most vocal and longstanding supporters, Kazemi was shocked by this decision. Kazemi, undeterred by this rebuke, ran for Parliament the following year. He was elected MP for the Province of Kabul in 2005. Unaccustomed to life as an MP he was often off the mark. He failed in his attempts to chair the Economic Committee and alongwith his fellow former Northern Alliance MPs, failed in their attempts to block key government appointments. However, by 2006, Kazemi led a number of legislative endeavours, including forming an important parliamentary block.
Kazemi also helped establish the National Front (a loose alliance of former Jihadis, communists and former technocrats) with Yonnus Qanooni (speaker of the House), Marshal Fahim (former Defense Minister), Ahmad Zia Massoud (vice president), Oloomi (former governor of Kandahar during Dr Najib’s reign), Gulobzoy (former communist Interior Minister) and Burhanuddin Rabbani (former President) where he became the spokesperson and chief strategist. Soon after he secured enough votes to wrest control of the Economic Committee’s chairmanship, and from then on quickly moved to assist the executive branch in pushing through pro business legislations. By 2007, he was one of Afghanistan’s most prominent commentators and opposition politicians, calling for national reconciliation and private sector development. His dreams of a secure, prosperous and inclusive Afghanistan were cut short when he and 100 others were killed in a suicide bombing in Baghlan, while inspecting a sugar plant, the privatisation of which he had championed in 2003.
(Saad Mohseni is Director, Moby Media Group, saad.mohseni@mobymediagroup.com)
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