Afghanistan's presidential rivals reach agreement after Kerry flies into Kabul

Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah strike political accord many hope puts faltering deal in election dispute back on track

The Guardian, May Jeong in Kabul, Friday 8 August 2014

Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, left, rival Ashraf Ghani, right,
 and the US secretary of state, John Kerry, announce the accord. Photograph:
Rahmat Gul/AP

The two candidates in Afghanistan's disputed presidential election have reached a political agreement that would outline the terms of a power-sharing deal, both camps said on Friday.

"We are putting the past behind us. We are looking into the future," said Ghani Ashraf, one of the candidates.

The announcement followed the arrival of the US secretary of state, John Kerry, in Kabul on Thursday. Kerry flew into the Afghan capital in an attempt to salvage the faltering political and technical agreements that he had brokered between Ghani and his presidential rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

Those agreements had been reached four weeks ago and were meant to produce a winner in Afghanistan's election. However, the deal soon fell apart, with fistfights breaking out in the auditing centre where disputed ballots are being assessed and that process being halted numerous times.

The two-day negotiation yielded an agreement which would, among other things, create the role of a chief executive officer for the runner-up in the election. It remains unclear, however, what this new role would entail and whether Ghani and Abdullah had agreed upon anything more specific beyond agreeing to agree. Work to hammer out the details would begin immediately, Ghani said on Friday.

"No matter who wins, we commit ourselves to working together for the sake of Afghanistan," Abdullah said, addressing the widespread concern that the results of the audit will not be accepted by his camp.

Kerry said the agreement on Friday was an "Afghan solution to an Afghan problem" and its clauses were in line with the country's constitution.

"It is critical for both candidates to do what they just said, which is to move beyond the campaign and move into the process of governing," he added.

Kerry expressed hopes that the new president and his unity partner would be able to attend a Nato summit in September, adding: "One of these men is going to be president. But both of these men are going to be critical to the future of Afghanistan."

Ghani took to the platform to deliver a nearly 20-minute speech in Dari, Pashto, and English. He said he and Abdullah were "completing each other's sentences in front of Secretary Kerry", and that he hoped this spirit of cooperation would continue, "like in the past, when he was the foreign minister and I was the finance minister".

Previously, Abdullah had wanted clarity on the political agreement and Ghani did not want to commit to it until the completion of the vote audit, which he hopes will declare him the winner. Ghani, a former World Bank technocrat, emerged from the runoff on 14 June in the lead but Abdullah, a former mujahideen doctor, claimed that 2m of the votes cast for his rival were fraudulent.

The seven-point political agreement outlines the steps to be taken after the results of the ongoing audit has identified a winner. According to negotiators who helped broker the deal, the agreement states that a president will take office immediately and hold a loya jirga (meeting of elders) to create a new prime minister position within the first two years.

The president will also create the position of opposition leader, to be appointed by the runner-up, and both the winner and the loser will select certain posts in national security and economic institutions.

The president alone will appoint ministers, the chief justice and other key provincial positions. With an eye on future elections, the agreement also calls on the two candidates to begin work on electoral reform to address some of the shortcomings of this year's ballot.

Both candidates expressed hopes that the audit would be complete by the end of the month, but shied from setting a date for inauguration. "We do not want to commit ourselves to a fixed date, because then this date will drive the process," Ghani said. A clean and thorough audit was integral to the imbuing the new administration with full legitimacy, he added.

Kerry urged election experts to help with the "largest audit that the United Nations has ever conducted in any country in history", so that the process would be complete by the hoped-for deadline.

Fabrizio Foschini, of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said the visit by the US secretary of state was a sign of improving conditions. "It shows a high level of commitment from the international community," Foschini said. "It remains to be seen whether this risks becoming a pattern, however, where every time you have a crisis, it has to be solved with external involvement."