KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday reshuffled top leadership in one quarter of the country's 38 provinces, firing American-backed governor and other local leaders as part of an effort to improve governance and clamp down on corruption among provincial officials. Rafi Ferdous, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said 10 governors were removed from their posts or were given new jobs. Among those fired is governor Gulab Mangal, who had ran the volatile southern province of Helmand during the height of the Taliban insurgency. Mangal was respected by both British and American officials. He was replaced by Gen. Sultan Mohammad Ebadi, who previously worked for Afghanistan's intelligence service. It's Karzai's second sweep through the war-torn country's leadership after the president recently replaced several government ministers, including two in charge of security. Afghanistan's international backers such as the US and Britain have long demanded improvements in the country's local administrations, where corruption is rampant. Britain, which has 9,500 troops in Helmand alone, developed close ties with Mangal, and the foreign office praised his work in a statement Thursday. “He has worked tirelessly in his role over the last four years and has made a real difference to the life of Afghans there,” the statement said. Earlier this month, the parliament approved Karzai's choice of candidates for two key security posts in the government. The lawmakers confirmed former Interior Minister Bishmullah Mohammadi as the new defense minister, and Mushtaba Patang, a former police chief in northern Afghanistan, as interior minister. Also Thursday, NATO said one of its service members was killed in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan. No other details were provided. The death brought to 19 the number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan in September. In the southern province of Uruzgan, five members of the same Afghan family died in a roadside bomb explosion, according to provincial spokesman, Abdullah Himmat. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama held a video conference with Karzai focusing partly on an unprecedented wave of attacks on NATO troops by their local comrades. The White House rejected calls to slow US troop withdrawals in a “strategic pause” to assess the impact of the killings, which number 51 so far this year and have put the NATO effort to build Afghan forces under scrutiny. — Agencies
