KABUL, Afghanistan: As part of reforms in the security system of Afghanistan, the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai plans to suspend senior civilian and military leaders in country’s most troubled provinces.
“Ghani feels there is a need for reform within the armed forces,” the special representative for the European Union in Afghanistan Franz-Michael Mellbin was quoted as saying by Associated Press on Monday.
“There is an inherent weakness in the way the armed forces have been managing their personnel that didn’t allow the best and brightest to step forward,” he added.
The presidential spokesman Nazifullah Salarzai also said that the president will remove governors and generals in the northern provinces of Kunduz and Baghdis as well as Ghazni and Nangahar provinces in the east bordering Pakistan, and Helmand in the south, where the Taliban militants have held strongholds for years.
On the other hand, the Afghan interior ministry has reportedly rejected the resignation tendered by the Kabul police chief General Muhammed Zahir Zahir.
The Kabul police chief resigned on Sunday following a series of attacks by militants in the capital.
Nine killed as suicide blast hits funeral ceremony in northern Afghanistan
Meanwhile, nine persons including two officers were killed and 18 others injured when a suicide detonated his explosives in a funeral ceremony in Burka district of Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province on Monday morning.
In a statement, the provincial police chief Aminullah Amarkhil that the target was probably a number of high-ranking police officials and provincial council members who were attending the funeral ceremony. However, they remained unhurt, he said.
