| Hamid Karzai named a new Cabinet on Thursday, sacking the prominent defense minister and removing other warlords from top posts in a major reshuffle weeks after being sworn in as the nation's first democratically elected president. Karzai named a relative unknown, Habibullah Qaderi, to head the new Counternarcotics Ministry, which will be tasked with cracking down on a multibillion-dollar drug trade that is flooding the world with cheap heroin. Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, a major Tajik warlord and the head of the northern alliance that helped the United States oust the Taliban in 2001, was replaced by his deputy, Abdul Rahim Wardak, according to a decree announced on state-run television. Wardak is a Pashtun who made a name for himself as a commander in the 1980s fighting Soviet occupation, then fled abroad as the country descended into civil war. The new Cabinet was announced on state-run television. But government officials leaked the list of Cabinet members to The Associated Press hours before the official announcement. |