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 Afghanistan has plunged into political chaos in recent months as a
protracted election process to pick a successor to President Hamid
Karzai has run into a deadlock between two leading candidates,
Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.
Preliminary results from the June 14 second-round run-off put Ghani,
a former World Bank official, in the lead with 56.4 percent of the
vote, but Abdullah has rejected the count and his aides have
threatened to set up an alternative administration.
Kerry is expected to arrive in the Afghan capital Kabul on Friday to
try to mediate between the feuding camps, according to Abdullah,
although U.S. officials have not confirmed the trip. Kerry is
currently in neighboring China.
Ghani's camp, confident in its victory, is wary of Kerry's mediation
efforts, while Abdullah, who has alleged widespread fraud in the
vote, welcomes the initiative.
"I don’t know what he can do," said Abbas Noyan, a spokesman for
Ghani’s camp. "Secretary Kerry will come and talk with both
candidates and see what he can do. I don’t think he has a road plan
for this. Without a road map it is very difficult to solve this
problem."
The United States, Afghanistan's biggest foreign donor, is in the
process of withdrawing its forces from the country after 12 years of
fighting Taliban insurgents, and it is unclear what leverage Kerry
would have in resolving deep-seated rivalries.
Abdullah's camp, angry with Ghani's lead in the vote, has threatened
to announce its own parallel government, a dangerous prospect for
Afghanistan, already split along ethnic lines.
In a clear warning to Abdullah, Kerry said this week Washington
would withdraw financial and security support if anyone tried to
take power illegally. That would be a massive blow given about 90
percent of the Afghan budget comes from foreign aid.
Abdullah has put off announcing his government until after Kerry's
visit, and his camp welcomes U.S. involvement because it hopes it
could help pressure election officials into throwing out suspicious
votes and thus change the outcome of the vote.
Abdullah has accused the outgoing president, who has an uneasy
relationship with the United States, of backing Ghani and playing a
role in rigging the vote in his favor.
"His Excellency John Kerry is coming ... so we welcome any effort to
differentiate between clean votes and invalid votes," said Haji
Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdullah's second vice president and the leader of
Afghanistan's ethnic Hazara minority.
"I don't say that they should interfere but they should cooperate in
transparency. They should provide us political and technical
support," he told Reuters at his vast house in Kabul.
BITTER STANDOFF
U.S. support is crucial for Afghanistan because it depends on
foreign donors to fund everything from road-building to
schoolteachers' salaries and security, with Washington paying the
lion's share of the bill.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Kerry, who is touring Asia this
week, have spoken to both candidates to encourage them to find a
compromise and stop the country sliding into further political
chaos.
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"The goal is to help the parties find a way forward that ensures
that the next president of Afghanistan has a credible mandate to
lead a unified Afghanistan," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki
told Reuters.
"The United States has made clear that our preference is to continue
our strong support and assistance to Afghanistan and the Afghan
people, but if the leaders of Afghanistan are unwilling to abide by
their own constitution that could impact the kind of financial and
security assistance the United States provides." The White House
has added, however, it expects "a thorough review of all reasonable
allegations of fraud to ensure a credible electoral process".
Fomer U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan James Dobbins, in an
address to the Asia Society in Washington on Wednesday, said Obama
had spoken to both candidates. "On the one hand assured them that
Secretary Kerry would be arriving for discussions with them at the
end of this week; and cautioned in particular Dr. Abdullah about
moving pre-emptively in an unconstitutional fashion."
ANOTHER IRAQ?
Abdullah, a former anti-Taliban resistance fighter, draws his
support mainly from the Tajik minority in northern Afghanistan while
Ghani, a former World Bank economist, represents Pashtun tribes in
the south and east of the country.
Abdullah's refusal to accept the outcome of the vote has created a
deadlock in Afghanistan, risking to split the country along ethnic
lines and setting the stage for a possibly bloody standoff or even
succession in parts of the country.
The lack of political unity in Afghanistan has prompted observers to
draw parallels with Iraq, where a one-sided government has failed to
represent all parts of the political spectrum, weakening the country
and allowing an al Qaeda offshoot to capture large swathes of Iraq
in recent weeks.
Mohaqiq from Abdullah's camp blamed any possible repeat of Iraq's
scenario in Afghanistan on the Karzai administration.
"We don't want Afghanistan to repeat Iraq but all parties have to
think about it. It is not only our responsibility. The government
has been here for 13 years ... and still they do not want to leave
the power democratically," he said.
"If anything bad happens to Afghanistan the responsibility will be
on President Karzai’s monopolistic team."
(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Missy Ryan; Writing by
Maria Golovnina; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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