Afghanistan's New Cabinet

"There has been a mixed reaction to the cabinet."

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has unveiled his unity cabinet more than three months after he was sworn in.

As widely rumoured, his new foreign minister is confirmed as Salahuddin Rabbani, son of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani who was killed by a suicide bomber in 2011.

Mr Ghani's cabinet contains three women, for the portfolios of women's affairs, culture and higher education. The cabinet still needs to be approved by parliament.

Almost all the cabinets are new faces. Some are hardly known to the public. Many of the new ministers are young.

There has been a mixed reaction to the cabinet.

34 year old shopkeeper Suleiman says he is just happy there has been a decision: “For the past few months while they have been discussing the cabinet all the government officials have stopped doing their job.  I think there are people among the new ministers who really can serve the people.”

But some say the Ministers were selected to keep both rival camps happy. The cabinet contains prominent ethnic and regional power-brokers.

24 years old University student Emal Formuly doesn’t think this means they will be good at their job: “The people who have the skills to be a good minister were not selected, only people who have good relations with the people in power.”

Political specialist Hameed Allah Zazay says it was a bad sign that it took so long for the government to decide on ministers: “It has crushed people’s hopes in this government that it took them more than one hundred days to decide on the cabinet which is a basic and predicable task.”

According to a new survey by a private TV company support for the national unity government and President Ghani has dropped by 50 percent during the first 100 days of their term.

Abdul Nasir Kabul is a university student: “For the last one hundred days the government has not been working to address the problems we face, such as poverty, unemployment and social problems.”   

• Afghan
• cabinet
• power broker
• politic
• Ghayor Waziri
• eng