Political Crisis in Afghanistan
Foreign Desk Report
NEW YORK: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is “thoroughly isolated” as his power is undermined leaving him with few remaining allies while the Taliban gain militarily across Afghanistan, media reported.
“From most vantage points, Mr. Ghani, well qualified for his job and deeply credentialed, with Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Columbia, the World Bank and the United Nations in his background, is thoroughly isolated, the newspaper said in a report from Kabul.
The report said that Ghani was was performing his presidential functions, how much control he has over his imperiled country’s future and his own has become a matter of debate among politicians, analysts and citizens.
“A serious author with a first-class intellect, he (President Ghani) is dependent on the counsel of a handful, unwilling to even watch television news, those who know him say, and losing allies fast,” Times’ correspondent Adam Nossiter wrote.
“That spells trouble for a country where a hard-line Islamist insurgency has the upper hand militarily, where nearly half the population faces hunger at crisis levels, according to the United Nations, where the overwhelming balance of government money comes from abroad and where weak governance and widespread corruption are endemic.”
Pointing out that the Americans are preparing to pull out their last remaining troops, the report said that prospect was expected to lead to the medium-term collapse of the Afghan forces they now support.
“He is in a desperate situation,” Rahmatullah Nabil, a former head of the country’s intelligence services, was quoted as saying. “We’re getting weaker. Security is weak, everything is getting weaker, and the Taliban are taking advantage.” The United States, according to the report, has steadily distanced itself from Ghani, saying Washington has in fact frequently worked around him to deal with the Taliban and regional power brokers, while Afghan warlords, potent centers of alternative power, openly condemn or flout him.
The country’s Parliament twice rejected his budget and distrusts Ghani, and his principal adversaries, the Taliban, refuse to entertain the idea of a deal with him. His mandate, weak from the outset, voter turnout was around 18.7 percent in his sharply contested 2019 victory, according to Afghanistan’ Independent Election Commission, appears to have shrunk, it said.
“American officials have mostly lost patience with him,” correspondent Nossiter said, adding that many are fed up with what they see as his obstinacy in refusing to make concessions to adversaries, or his condescending style. “Dead man walking,” is the term some civil society members use to describe his political standing, the report said. A recent letter to him from Secretary of State Antony Blinken was so harsh that even Afghans critical of Ghani found it insulting.
