Bismillah Khan Mohammadi

For the Indian shehnai musician, see Bismillah Khan.

Bismillah Khan Mohammadi
Bismillah Khan in May 2011
Interior Minister of Afghanistan
Incumbent
Assumed office January 6, 2010
President	Hamid Karzai
Preceded by	Mohammad Hanif Atmar
Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army
In office 2002 – January 6, 2010
Succeeded by	Sher Mohammad Karimi
Personal details
Born	1961 Panjshir Province, Afghanistan
Religion	Islam

Bismillah Khan Mohammadi (born: 1961, Panjshir Province), often known simply as Bismillah Khan, is the Interior Minister of Afghanistan. Among his duties, he is responsible for the securement of the international borders of Afghanistan, as well as maintaining law and order within the country by the Afghan National Police. He previously served as Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army.

Early years and early careers

Mohammadi was born in 1961 in Panjshir Province of Afghanistan. An ethnic Tajik, he is the son of Ghausuddin of Panjshir Valley. He has graduated from 14th grade in Abu Hanifa Seminary then enrolled in Kabul Military University in 1995. Mohammadi was a former PDPA Parcham member, but after the Russian Agreement in 1978 he aligned with mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Before the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, Bismillah Khan served as Deputy Minister of Defense of the Northern Alliance, under the administration of Ahmad Shah Massoud and later Mohammed Fahim. After the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance in November 2001, he was appointed commander Kabul's police force and a member of the Kabul Security Commission. During that period the security situation in Kabul was better than in other parts of Afghanistan.

Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army

In 2002 he became Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army, a post he held until 2010. On 6 June 2010 the Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar resigned.

As the Interior Minister, Mohammadi has loudly deplored ethnic fractiousness within the Afghan security forces, and has called on Afghanistan's ethinic groups to come together in the interest of the country and Islam. By stressing national unity and Islamic ethics in the Afghan National Police, he may be able to get officers of different identities to work together, discourage them from pilfering supplies, and convince them to prevent their men from robbing and beating civilians, as he was at times able to do in the Afghan National Army.

Mohammadi is committed to base police leadership appointments upon merit. The challenging tasks to prevent politics, ethnicity, tribalism, cronyism, and nepotism from influencing appointments will take perseverance and patience by Mohammadi. When Mohammadi was the army chief of staff, he was able to achieve substantial improvements in the army’s capabilities by championing meritocracy. With the police, he will need to redouble his efforts, for Karzai and other political figures have intruded into appointments more often with the police than the army.

Mohammadi’s ties to the army also make him uniquely qualified to increase cooperation between the police and the army in the field. Such cooperation is essential, above all because most police units are not adequately prepared to deal with sizable groups of armed insurgents on their own.

U.S. General David Petraeus with Bismillah Khan in July 2010.

One advantage for appointing Mohammadi as the Minister of Interior is the hope of mending the rifts within the Afghan National Army that opened or widened as a result of the U.S. government’s plan to begin withdrawing forces in July 2011. Expecting the eruption of a civil war after the American withdrawal, officers have been gravitating towards ethnic groupings and powerful generals, with Mohammadi and the Pashtu Defense Minister Wardak at the head of the two largest cliques. The departure of Mohammadi from the Ministry of Defense leaves no one who can rival Wardak in stature, which could mean a weakening of centrifugal forces.

One of Mohammadi's strategies is to push greater authority down to local police commanders. When Mohammadi was the chief of staff of the Afghan National Army, he enforced the decentralization process within an institution heavily influenced by senior officers who had been trained in the centralized model of the Soviet army during the 1980s.

A decentralized command requires a wide range to regulate due to the fact that some commanders lack the abilities and must be identified for help or removal. Upper-­echelon commanders must get out of their headquarters and visit the field commanders, a practice alien to some senior Afghan officers. Fortunately, Mohammadi was well known for circulating the battlefield as an army commander, and has already implemented his regular process of making unannounced inspection trips to police stations at all hours of the day and night. Mohammadi undoubtedly will expect other senior commanders to do the same.

As the Minister of the Interior, Mohammadi stressed the need to curb the corruption that has corroded the government and the people’s trust in it. Mohammadi has already begun taking some of the actions essential to the reduction of corruption. He is, for example, keeping tabs on the movements of Ministry of Interior officials, and has fired several police chiefs for corruption.

If Mohammadi truly is serious about stopping corruption, he will soon find himself prosecuting people close to the Karzai family for complicity in protection rackets, fraudulent governmental contracting, drug trafficking, and the like. No prior Interior Minister has been able to bring these individuals to justice in significant numbers, because Karzai has obstructed investigations and prosecutions. But Mohammadi is a stronger personality than any of his predecessors, and he represents a stronger constituency.

By 26 June 2010 Afghan President Hamid Karzai nominated Khan as Atmar's successor as Interior Minister.

Awards

Bismillah Khan Mohammadi has received the Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani, Ghazi Amanullah Khan and Ahmad Shah Baba awards for his efforts in bolstering the Afghan National Army.

External links

• Interview: General Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, Chief of General Staff, Afghan National Army
• Afghanistan's New Minister of Interior: A Potential Game Changer

Preceded by Mohammad Hanif Atmar

Interior Minister of Afghanistan June 06, 2010 - present

Succeeded by current