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 The visit comes at a difficult moment for Afghanistan, with
President Ashraf Ghani's government weakened by infighting between
political rivals, the economy sinking and the resurgent Taliban
stronger than at any time since they were toppled from power in late
2001.
In announcing the visit, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby
said Kerry would "emphasize U.S. support" for the government and its
security forces, which NATO officials say fully control no more than
70 percent of Afghanistan.
At the same time, U.S. forces in Afghanistan are due to be almost
halved to 5,500 from the current 9,800 by the start of 2017, and the
new commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, is conducting
a review of security before making his recommendations to Washington
some time in June.
 Kerry was scheduled to meet Ghani, the victor of Afghanistan's
disputed 2014 election, and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, the
runner-up. The pair share power under the 2014 National Unity
Government agreement.
The political deal that Kerry brokered suggested that their
power-sharing arrangement would end in September 2016, which has
fueled political maneuvering in Kabul. An opposition movement close
to former president Hamid Karzai is pushing to have a say on the way
forward.
The legal decree that enacted the deal, however, provided no clearly
binding time limit, leaving open the possibility that the National
Unity government, in one form or another, could continue on for the
rest of Ghani's five-year mandate.
Kerry is expected to make that point while in Afghanistan, a stance
that U.S. officials hope may help quell some of the infighting.
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"Though the political agreement calls for this to be a two-year
agreement, the decree doesn't spell out an end date," said a senior
U.S. official on condition of anonymity. "We ourselves here don't
view that there is going to be an end ... in September."
U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard
Olsen made a similar point more obliquely with reporters in
Washington on Monday.
"The Secretary wants to signal continuing U.S. support for the
national unity government," he said. "It's at the 18-month mark in a
five-year term."
In July, the NATO Western security alliance is expected to decide
how to fund Afghanistan's security forces in the coming years and
donor nations will gather in Brussels in October to make civilian
aid pledges to Afghanistan.
Noting the dates, Andrew Wilder, an Afghanistan expert at the United
States Institute for Peace think tank, said "the last thing we need
is a big political crisis calling into question the legitimacy of
the national unity government in September".
(Editing by Paul Tait)
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