After six months of uncertainty and often bitter political wrangling, Afghanistan finally has a new president. Millions of Afghans breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the news. But the path to presidential palace for the former World Bank economist, Ashraf Gani, has been a bumpy one from the very beginning. Once a close aide to outgoing president Hamid Karzai, Gani, is going to inherit a country with its economy crippled and security worsened by the dispute over the election that was marred by allegations of industrial scale fraud.
Intense international and domestic pressure pushed Gani and his opponent, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, to end the turmoil by agreeing to work together under a fragile power-sharing deal. Soon after Gani is sworn in on Monday, he will have to deal with a long list of domestic challenges. His first test is to keep the so-called National Unity Government united and to turn it into an effective government. There are serious concerns that it will be difficult for both men who come from totally different backgrounds — one an academic and the other a former anti-Taliban fighter — to get along well. There are already some key allies of Abdullah who are not happy with Gani as president. Most prominent among them is the powerful governor of northern Balkh province, Atta Mohammad Noor, who believes Gani is a fraudulent president.
Getting the economy back on track where it was six months ago will be another priority in the short term. Even bigger than that, in the long term, is to get Afghanistan to stand on its own feet and to stop the economy from being so heavily dependent on international aid money. Most Afghans believe Gani is well-qualified for the job. He was the architect of the current economic system when he was finance minister from 2002 to 2004. But the obstacles are enormous. What will make this job extremely difficult for the 65-year-old new president is the widespread corruption in Afghanistan. His predecessor’s fight against corruption was not successful.
Frustrated Afghans will measure the success of Gani’s fight against graft by whether he can deliver serious reforms and put a proper anti-corruption mechanism in place. Questions are already being raised about how real reform can happen without a strong opposition keeping a watchful eye on government programmes. Under the power-sharing deal, it will be the president who will create the opposition post and he will also write the job description for the leader of the opposition. It has also been agreed that the opposition leader will be an ally of the unity government.
Gani has said many times during his campaign rallies that corruption will take time to be eradicated. There is no doubting the president-elect’s capability and seriousness in bringing change. And what makes Afghans optimistic about the future is the experience that Gani has from his World Bank days in state-building and helping other post-conflict countries to recover. Gani is taking the leadership of Afghanistan at a very critical time. By the end of this year, all US-led combat troops will leave the country after 13 years of fighting the Taliban. They leave without having accomplished their mission. The Taliban have intensified their operations and disrupted security in at least half the country.
There are concerns that once the troops pull out, the Taliban could capture area after area in the same way that Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) militants have done in Iraq. President Hamid Karzai, Gani’s predecessor has rejected these concerns as baseless, saying Iraq and Afghanistan are two very different stories and countries. Afghanistan has a military and security force of around 350,000 US-trained and equipped troops who will stand alone against the Taliban from next year.
Gani is perhaps one of the few people in Afghanistan who has a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Afghan military. As head of a commission overseeing the transition of security responsibilities from US-led forces to Afghan forces, from 2011 to 2013, he travelled to every province and knows where the challenges are. He knows that his security forces will depend on US military aid for years to come. They lack a proper functional air force and therefore will need US air support to conduct any operations against the insurgent groups. He has repeatedly said that one of the first priorities will be to sign the long-awaited Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with Washington. The agreement will allow thousands of US troops to remain in the country after 2014 to train and assist Afghan forces and also to conduct counter-terrorism operations.
Gani knows that signing the agreement will result in some level of enmity in the region, particularly from Afghanistan’s western neighbour Iran. The Iranians do not hide their disagreement with the BSA and they have publicly said they will not tolerate foreign troops on their borders. International pressure and threats did not work to persuade the reluctant outgoing President Karzai to sign the BSA. Karzai said he wanted reassurances from the US that it would genuinely help to kick-start political talks with Taliban and bring peace to Afghanistan.
The peace process has had so many ups and downs over the past few years. But none of the efforts have had any tangible result. Now it is Gani and his National Unity Government’s turn to give it a fresh try. Some Afghans say that the Taliban will have no excuse to continue fighting once the foreign troops are out. But with the Taliban calling both Gani and Abdullah Abdullah “American puppets”, it seems unlikely that a political solution to the conflict is on the horizon.
Daud Qarizadah is BBC’s Afghanistan Reporter.