Following Afghan President Hamid Karzai's move this week to secure U.S. military protection for himself and dismiss Afghan guards loyal to Defense Minister Mohamed Fahim, the Washington Post reports today that Karzai supporters see the country's secret service, which is run by Fahim, as a threat to national security.

According to the Post, Karzai and his allies see the 30,000-employee secret service as a huge, corrupt system that operates outside the president's authority and poses a threat to democracy in Afghanistan.  One source close to Karzai said the agency's ethnic Tajik leaders, formerly of Fahim's Northern Alliance, answer only to the defense minister.  Known as the National Security Directorate or the Amaniyat, the service is a holdover from Soviet days, and Karzai allies said it remains a Soviet-style institution.

"It hasn't changed at all from the KGB," a former intelligence operative said.  "They use the same methods."

"They are really a problem.  They all belong to one ethnic group, to one political group, and they do whatever they want without anyone questioning them," added a senior official in Karzai's government.  "They are really a threat to national security."

The agency is headed by Mohamed Aref, former intelligence chief for late Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood, whom Fahim succeeded in the anti-Taliban movement.  The Post reports everyone it interviewed agreed Fahim is really in charge of the intelligence agency but adds that none of the agency's leaders were willing to be interviewed.

Amid allegations the agency tortured and killed a 22-year-old former refugee who had returned from Pakistan, Karzai this month named a high-level commission to investigate charges against the Amaniyat and recommend reforms.  Vice President Hedayat Amin Arsala, who co-chairs the commission, said of the secret service, "For a democratic country, a country that wants to move toward democracy, an institution like this is obviously in contradiction."  The commission's other chairman, Vice President Nematullah Shahrani, vowed reform "so that people are not afraid of" the intelligence service.  The Post reports, though, that the two men have no staff, no funds and no offices to carry out their task.

The Karzai-Fahim rivalry goes back several years.  Karzai himself was detained by the then-Fahim-led secret service in the mid-1990s.  At the time, Karzai was in contact with both sides -- President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- as rival militias battled for control of Afghanistan.  Post sources said Karzai was arrested in connection with his contacts with Hekmatyar (Susan Glasser, Washington Post, July 24).

Yesterday, the two men presided together over a graduation ceremony for U.S.-trained Afghan army recruits, the first to complete the training.  Following three months of training, 350 of the soldiers marched at a former Soviet military academy in Kabul.  Fahim called them the "backbone" of the country (Liz Sly, Chicago Tribune, July 24).

A U.S. airstrike last month that left at least 40 civilians dead in Afghanistan's Oruzgan province came as U.S. forces were searching for former Taliban Supreme Leader Mohamed Omar in the area, two unnamed U.S. defense officials said yesterday.  The Pentagon has declined to comment officially on what U.S. troops were doing in the area at the time of the strike, which hit a wedding party.

A U.S. intelligence official said yesterday that Omar is still believed to be in the country (Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, July 24).