Alexander Knyazev. Outcome of Democracy - Afghanistan Moves to Decay
The beginning of the Gregorian year in Kabul was marked by serious anti-presidential activism. A group of deputies of the Volusi Jirga (the lower house of parliament) demanded the convening of the Grand Jirga to bring President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzay to justice for “betraying national interests.” According to the regulations of the Afghan parliament, if the initiative of the group is supported by a third of the deputies, then they can bring this issue up for discussion, if two thirds - the Big Jirga should gather. Indignation of the local political establishment was caused by the fact that the fourth month had passed since the day of the inauguration of the president, and there is no legal government in the country, no provincial governors, no heads of city and provincial police ...
The initiating deputies were indirectly supported by some media, for example, the popular satellite TV channel Tolo, together with the ATR organization, conducted and published a poll, according to which the rating of President Ashraf Ghani is declining almost catastrophically. After a month in power, Ashraf Gani’s activities were rated positively by 59% of respondents, 100 days after the inauguration, this number decreased to 27%. The latest survey showed that 32% of respondents were not satisfied with the results of the president’s activities, whereas in the previous survey, Gani’s “dissatisfied” with the activity was only 6%. The survey shows that people who rate Ashraf Ghani positively live mostly in the eastern and northern provinces of the country.
"Dissatisfied" mainly are residents of the capital and the central and southern regions of the country. If we consider that the president comes from the eastern tribes of Durrani, and the north of the country is extremely colorful in terms of ethnicity, it’s mosaic, then “dissatisfied” residents of the central and southern regions need to be understood mainly as Pashtun population of such provinces as Kandahar, adjacent Uruzgan, partially Zabol and Helmand, that is, the core of the opposition to Ashraf Ghani is gradually becoming, as expected, the Kandahar Pashtun-Durrani, traditionally dominant in Afghan politics. The value of the tribal factor, at least in the Pashtun environment, is increasing (see: Alexander Knyazev: The illegitimate dual power in Afghanistan is a tribal alignment).
In this regard, the political perspectives of ex-President Hamid Karzai, who maintain a strong position among the Kandahar Pashtun authorities, are curious. Deputy Vulusi Jirga, a well-known journalist Ramazan Bashardost, a Hazara from Kandahar who has already started collecting signatures for, in fact, the impeachment of Ashraf Ghani, is known for two important characteristics: proximity to Karzai and American intelligence agencies in charge of most Kabul media. Claims against Ashraf Ghani are not limited to the protracted government formation process. The reasons for the accusations of “betrayal of national interests” are his attempts to negotiate with part of the Taliban (Ashraf Ghani calls them “dissenting brothers” and “political opponents”), the invitation to Kabul of Pakistani’s “Jamoat-e Ulama-e” Fazyl Rahman, famous by the fact that he issued a fatwa on the legality of the conduct of "jihad" in the territory of Afghanistan.
On January 12, on the 108 day after his inauguration, President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai introduced the candidates for ministers and two candidates for management to Vulusi Jirga 25. The list, announced by the head of the administration of the President of the IGA, Abdusalom Rahimi, consisted of 13 candidates proposed by President Ashraf Ghani and 12 candidates for ministers - according to the compromise reached in September, the executive head of the “government of national unity” Abdullo Abdullo. According to the legislation, it is the lower house that must approve the composition of the government, which, apparently, will not happen quickly.
Ashraf Ghani, one of the main principles in the formation of the government, declared during the electoral campaign that the cabinet members had relevant education, professional knowledge and skills, as well as non-participation in previous military events, causing public suspicion of war crimes. The latter, in fact, meant the intention to close access to the government and to the system of state administration as a whole to the former “mujahidin”, that is, representatives of the former Northern Alliance, most often represented by Afghan Tajiks. This principle initially came into conflict with the compromise reached between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullo Abdulla, since the latter relied precisely on this ethnopolitical force in its election campaign and hoped to continue its support. The list submitted by the president to parliament is in great contradiction with both the promises of Ashraf Ghani himself and the named compromise. This is evident even in the example of several key positions and proposed persons.
The only real candidate for key ministerial positions from Abdullo Abdullo - Salohuddin Rabbani, the son of the former President of the country Burhanutdin Rabbani, was proposed for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. This decision was not easily given to Abdullo Abdullo himself, the other aspirant was his closest ally, the head of the State National Security Bureau of Afghanistan in 2002-2010, Amriullo Soleh, a native of Panjshir. Preference in favor of Rabbani means Abdullo’s aspiration not to lose the support of the Badakhshan Tajiks, where the Nabbani clan comes from, but at the same time Abdullo Abdullo has to weaken his position in his own inner circle.
According to the agreements between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullo Abdullo, on the basis of which the victory in the Ghani elections was announced, the appointment of the ministers of foreign affairs, defense, the main national security department (GUNB, or National Directorate of Security, NDS) and finance should have become the prerogative of the Prime Minister . However, despite this, Ashraf Ghani, in the current list of candidates for the post of Minister of Defense, proposed the candidature of Shermuhammad Karimi, a graduate of one of the British military academies, the former Chief of the General Staff. The decision to appoint the secretary of defense was one of the most sensitive issues. This post was openly claimed by one of the most prominent and powerful contemporary Afghan politicians - the former governor of Balkh province, General Ata Mohammad Nur, who had provided crucial support for the election of Abdullo Abdullo, but in difficult confrontational relations with Ashraf Ghani. His absence in the list of candidates for ministers is the beginning of a separate trend in domestic Afghan politics. As well as the appointment of Ashraf Ghani to the post of head of the State Public Library of Belarus, Rakhmatullo Nabil - Pashtun-Durrani from Wardak province, the former head of the security service of the President of Afghanistan (until June 2010), the former head of the GUNB (until August 2012).
However, the approval of the list submitted by Ashraf Ghani in parliament is a fact that has not yet been accomplished. The development of events can take several options, about equally negative. The deputies of Vulusi Jirga, being unhappy with the president, intend to thoroughly investigate the low ranking candidates for ministers, including such, for example, sensitive questions for many, such as the legality of their educational diplomas. The interweaving of ethnopolitical, regional, criminal, commercial, interpersonal and other interests and relationships within the Kabul political class can lead to both complete rejection of the president’s list and to lengthy discussions around individual candidates. Which brings the prospect of creating any effective government in the category of very abstract.
In the course of personnel intrigues in Kabul, which lasted for three and a half months, several relatively new trends emerged within Afghan political life.
The first of these, in fact, is not new: the protracted process of forming the government almost zero reduces the euphoria about the September compromise between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullo Abdullo, which existed in a number of political and expert circles in Afghanistan itself, beyond its borders, among the population of Afghanistan. There will not be a strong government capable of implementing at least some positive stabilization and development programs in Afghanistan. Sooner or later, the parliament may agree with one or another composition of the cabinet, but it will be a decorative government that can only very locally, point to influence what is happening in the country, without controlling the basic processes and limited mainly to the framework of government institutions in Kabul.
Two other trends develop in sync with each other. The outcome of the “peaceful transfer of power” in Kabul, the entire electoral process and the current one, associated with the redistribution of power functions, leads to the formation of two large opposition groups.
One of them is associated with former President Hamid Karzai, who is now actively working to consolidate around himself reputable Pashtun political circles, including parliamentary ones. In the Pashtun environment, an important stake is placed on the tribal factor, the Kandahar tribes of Durrani will become the core of the formation of this opposition group. There is also an attempt to involve non-Pushtun forces, in particular, the “Karzai group” is in active contact with the Herati Tajiks, already historically headed by Mohammad Ismail Khan. The presidential nomination of Minister of Internal Affairs Nurulhak Ulumi - a representative of the particularly authoritative tribal branch of Kandahar Durrani - must mean, besides the other, that the president understands the danger of Kandahar opposition However, Nurulhak Ulumi alone, despite even his distant relationship with the former king Zahir Shah, may not be enough to become a link between Ashraf Ghani and the Kandahar elite, especially since his biography connected with the “communist regime” can always be subject serious vulnerability even among kandahar relatives.
Another emerging opposition group is associated with General Ata Mohammad Nur. There are signs of an attempt to unite the part of the Tajik and non-Pashtun political elites dissatisfied with what is happening. The involvement of individual representatives of the Pashtun elite, especially of the northern Pashtuns, is not excluded. The formation of such a group will contribute to the growth of the split within the Tajik community of Afghanistan into two at least parts: Panjshir and North, conditionally - Mazar-Sharif.
In these processes, attention is paid to the geographical and foreign policy factors. 6 in January, the Khaul news agency Khaama Press published a large editorial on Hamid Karzai (Karzai still can be America's Strategic Partner), one of the important meanings of which is the thesis on the political prospects of the ex-president, Washington, with whom Karzai "did not have a relationship." In any case, the entire political biography of Hamid Karzai, associated with certain circles in the American establishment, makes it possible to state with confidence that it would be too early to write him off the accounts of Afghan politics. Unlike Ashraf Ghani, Hamid Karzai already has considerable experience in dealing with external partners besides the United States - India, China, Iran, Russia, the experience that Ashraf Ghani has yet to acquire. Inside Afghanistan, the center of support for Karzai has undoubtedly been and remains Kandahar, which is important from the point of view of a common Pashtun identity.
The high level of external influences on internal political processes is a long-standing historical given, established at the beginning of the XIX century during the first Anglo-Afghan war and the subsequent "Great Game" of empires. Naturally, seriously changing, it has only intensified in recent decades, constantly updating the issue of the territorial integrity of Afghanistan and, from time to time, the tendency toward separatism.
A special place of the Mazar-Sharif ethnopolitical grouping has always existed, and another thing is that the situational elite in the previous period was consolidated with the most politically active in the pan-Shshir general Afghan processes. The fragmentation of the Tajik community in Afghanistan, which was clearly evident around 2002-2003, played an important role in the role of the individual. The point of reference was the death of Ahmadshah Masud in September 2001, and after the fall of the Taliban regime in Kabul, the process went with acceleration. The death of ex-president Burkhanutdin Rabbani in September 2011, who ideologically somehow united the different groups of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, the oldest national Tajik party, put an end to the former unity. The political ambitions of the Tajik leaders, even within the Panjshir group, began to diverge, while the interests of Badakhshan and Northerners in general were included in some cases in real antagonisms. Temporary associations on an ethnic basis all this time happened only on special occasions, as a rule - electoral ones.
The divergence of interests is fueled by external factors. If for Badakhshan and especially Balkh with its center in Mazar-i-Sharif external relations with post-Soviet Central Asia and with China are of essential importance, the Panjshir elite is more interested in Kabul, including the factor of traditional confrontation with Pakistan, which has been the arbiter in recent decades. in fact are the United States. The northern Tajik elites have always strived for greater autonomy from the capital, the Panjsheris in this sense are more focused on national goals and participation in the affairs of Afghanistan as a whole, being in constant search for a balance of interests not with the northern regions, but with the Pashtun elite in Kabul.
Excluding the Mazar-i-Sharif elite from government structures will only contribute to centrifugal processes, and given the uncontrollability of the Kabul government in most parts of the country, the weakness of government security forces, turn Afghanistan into a simple set of alienated territories. The “peaceful transfer of power,” based on the agreements of only two subjects of the political process, does not lead to the formation of a tandem, or even to a more or less effective dual power with the division of spheres of influence. So far this is the main result of the democratic development of Afghanistan, against the background of which difficult processes are taking place in the field of regional security as a whole.
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