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Ashraf Ghani Sworn In as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Sworn In as Afghan President
(about 4 hours later)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Ashraf Ghani, the former World Bank technocrat and prominent intellectual, on Monday became Afghanistan’s new president in a rare peaceful transfer of power in the country’s four decades of war. KABUL, Afghanistan — Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated as president of Afghanistan on Monday, punctuating a season of grave political crisis with a peaceful transition of power that stood as a rarity in a country marked by four decades of war.
His inauguration came under a dark cloud, however, dogged by fraud allegations that were so serious he was forced to accept a power-sharing arrangement with his opponent, the official runner-up, Abdullah Abdullah. Even that deal nearly collapsed at the last minute, as Mr. Abdullah threatened to pull out of the inauguration ceremony over a series of disputes, including an unseemly fight over office space in the presidential palace. As the international community breathed a collective sigh of relief, Mr. Ghani's first appearance as president was full of reassuring touchstones.
In what has been a characteristic of the six-month wrangle over the Afghan presidential elections, representatives of both camps met late into the night to iron out their differences so that they could present a united front at the inauguration. He quickly appointed his rival in the bitterly contested election, Abdullah Abdullah, as the government's chief executive officer, and shared the inaugural stage with him. It was a signal that Mr. Abdullah was to have a real role in their power-sharing government, which American officials had midwifed through months of acrimonious negotiations.
The ceremony was mostly attended by low-level delegations from Afghanistan’s international supporters, including the United States, which sent two of President Obama’s advisers along with the American ambassador, James B. Cunningham, and the American military commander, Gen. John F. Campbell. Pakistan was apparently the only country to send a head of state, President Mamnoon Hussain, despite the deeply strained relations between the two neighbors. Mr. Ghani also declared a halt to the degeneration of relations with the United States under the departing president, Hamid Karzai, who refused to sign a long-term deal to keep American troops in Afghanistan and in his last days in office publicly blamed his allies for the country’s predicament.
Mr. Abdullah did attend the inauguration. As soon as Mr. Ghani took the oath of office, he issued a decree appointing Mr. Abdullah the chief executive of his government. Both men must soon begin the difficult process of agreeing on cabinet ministers and other positions on the basis of “parity,” according to an American-brokered agreement they signed on forming the national unity government. “Now it’s time that we enter a new era of our relationship with the United States, Europe and other countries of the world,” Mr. Ghani said. And his aides said his government would sign the troop agreement with the United States on Tuesday, followed the same day by a similar agreement with NATO.
The new government was expected to move quickly to make formal a bilateral security agreement with the United States, which Hamid Karzai, the outgoing president, negotiated but refused to sign. Both Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah support the agreement. The signing ceremony is expected to happen on Tuesday, with a similar agreement with NATO scheduled to be signed afterward. The agreements call for a continued American and coalition military presence in Afghanistan after the end of 2014. Seeking to strike a note of social change, Mr. Ghani announced that his wife, Rula, whom he met while both were students at the American University of Beirut, would have a public role as well — another rarity in a country where women are frequently sequestered.
Hopeful notes were sounded at the inauguration ceremony. Mr. Ghani spoke at length in his address about the need to fight corruption and to bring more women and young people into the government. “My wife worked a lot on behalf of refugees and will continue working for them,” Mr. Ghani said. “Women and youth will have a wide participation in my government.”
In sharp contrast to Mr. Karzai, Mr. Ghani said that his wife, Rula, whom he met while they were students together at the American University of Beirut, would take part in public life. “My wife has worked a lot for refugees and will continue working for them,” he said. Mrs. Ghani was in the audience on Monday; Mr. Karzai’s wife was almost never seen in public. Many watching his first presidential speech were struck by another departure: his willingness to adopt a tone of humility and accessibility at odds with a long-held reputation for arrogance and aloofness.
Despite a reputation for intellectual arrogance, Mr. Ghani took a humble tone. “I’m your leader, but I’m not better than you, so if I make any mistake you should hold me accountable for it,” he said. He also told the country’s judicial authorities not to hesitate to prosecute his own relatives if the need ever arises. “I am your leader, but I am not better than you,” he said, echoing remarks attributed to Islam’s first caliph, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq. “So if I make any mistake you should hold me accountable for it.”
Mr. Ghani was declared the winner of a June 14 runoff election against Mr. Abdullah, but Mr. Abdullah and his supporters cried foul, noting that their candidate had received the most votes in the first round on April 6, outpolling Mr. Ghani 45 percent to 31 percent in a crowded field of contenders. They accused Mr. Ghani’s camp of fraud. Mr. Ghani’s road to the presidency of Afghanistan began in 2009, when he renounced his American citizenship – most of his adult life had been spent in the United States and other countries rather than Afghanistan – in order to run against Mr. Karzai. He finished a distant fourth that year, earning the sobriquet of “Mr. Three Percent.”
Nearly a million votes were officially discarded as fraudulent, about two thirds of them for Mr. Ghani, but Mr. Abdullah’s supporters said that the true number of fraudulent ballots was double or triple that figure. His professorial and sometimes preachy style at the time left Afghan voters cold, and he worked hard at changing his image during the 2014 campaign, adopting a more populist approach in his speeches.
The dispute forced a full audit of the vote, supervised by the United Nations, but Mr. Abdullah’s supporters felt the audit was not fair and boycotted it. After two visits to the Afghan capital, Kabul, by Secretary of State John Kerry, and further negotiations by phone and video link with Mr. Kerry and other American officials, the two sides agreed to a national unity government in which Mr. Abdullah would have substantial powers. Famously short-tempered, Mr. Ghani stayed so notably calm throughout the campaign that a joke circulated that he had been taking anger-management counseling. Mr. Abdullah, usually billed as the smoother politician, ended up seeming more mercurial than Mr. Ghani did.
All sides agreed that the election commission would not publicly announce the final vote totals for the runoff until after the inauguration, a highly unusual procedure but one that the election commission accepted under United Nations pressure. “Isn’t that ironic?” Mr. Ghani said after the first round of the election, on April 6. “If the campaign has shown anything, it’s that my alleged reputation is manufactured. All the campaign events, all the TV interviews, all the debates — can anyone count a single instance of anger or display of emotion, negative emotion, or false pride?”
Then on Friday, Mr. Ghani’s campaign posted those totals on its official Facebook page, leading Mr. Abdullah to nearly pull out of the inauguration ceremony. Tensions were aggravated further by a scuffle at the presidential palace between Mr. Abdullah’s followers and those of Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mr. Ghani’s first vice president, over office space that Mr. Abdullah had expected to get, according to a Western diplomat. Mr. Ghani, 65, proved during the long campaign and its tumultous aftermath that he was nothing if not disciplined, in ways that went far beyond his public demeanor. Years ago, stomach cancer cost him all but a tiny portion of his stomach, he has told people many times, so he has to eat numerous small meals through the day. During the campaign, though, he still kept a punishing schedule of public appearances and travel throughout Afghanistan.
Mr. Dostum, an Uzbek warlord whom Mr. Ghani described in 2009 as a “known killer,” brought a substantial block of votes to Mr. Ghani’s campaign. The presence of many of Mr. Dostum’s followers on the streets of Kabul, in civilian clothes but heavily armed, has been a cause of concern for some residents. The carrying of weapons is illegal for anyone other than uniformed security forces or people with special licenses, but the police have been reluctant to challenge the gunmen. An anthropologist by training, Mr. Ghani worked for the World Bank for many years. In 2005, he formed a consultancy called the Institute for State Effectiveness with Clare Lockhart, who had been an adviser to him when he served as Afghanistan’s finance minister under Mr. Karzai.
Despite the wrangling, the transfer of power on Monday was unique in Afghanistan’s modern history, and Mr. Karzai said he was fulfilling his oft-stated ambition of passing the baton democratically and peacefully. Although the book that Mr. Ghani wrote with Ms. Lockhart, “Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World,” opens with a general look at countries in crisis, it could also be taken as a succinct and specific summary of some of the problems facing Mr. Ghani’s new government.
“I’m very grateful to God to give me the power to hand over the power to the new president today,” Mr. Karzai said at the inauguration ceremony. “Within these countries, vicious networks of criminality, violence and drugs feed on disenfranchised populations and uncontrolled territory,” he wrote, describing how the people of countries from Latin America to Africa and Central Asia are “locked into lives of misery, without a stake in their countries or any certainty about or control over their lives.”
Still, the condition of Afghan democracy is likely to be an issue for years to come. Many Afghans would identify with the book’s thrust. Their country is ravaged by violence, sick with corruption, and seething with frustration. The government is struggling against a Taliban insurgency that has turned much of the country into a government no-go-zone.
“Absolutely, it’s a democratic transfer, in that millions of Afghans voted, millions of those votes were validated through the audit process, a significant proportion of fraud was discovered in the audit and those votes were invalidated, and there is a result, which is a lawful, constitutional result,” said Mr. Cunningham, the American ambassador. Many young Afghans, taunted by the images of Western prosperity on the internet and facing massive unemployment at home, desperately want to flee, as evidenced by the large sums that young Afghans pay to human traffickers for a dangerous, difficult passage into Europe. Afghanistan remains the biggest source of asylum seekers year after year, although in the last year it has been surpassed by Syria.
Mr. Abdullah’s supporters continue to maintain, however, that he was the real winner of the election, and that Mr. Abdullah agreed to the compromise that came into effect on Monday only to avoid further conflict and strife. Amid these daunting problems, Mr. Ghani is taking office under a cloud, dogged by electoral fraud allegations.
After an internationally led audit of the runoff election, nearly a million votes, two-thirds of them for Mr. Ghani, were officially discarded as fraudulent. But Mr. Abdullah’s supporters said from the start that the true number of bad votes may have been two or three times higher than that, and Mr. Ghani was pressured to accept a power-sharing arrangement with Mr. Abdullah.
Further, that deal very nearly collapsed at the last minute, as Mr. Abdullah threatened on Sunday to pull out of the inauguration ceremony over a series of disputes, including an unseemly fight over office space in the presidential palace. Mr. Abdullah’s followers squabbled with supporters of Mr. Ghani’s first vice president, the influential but controversial power broker Abdul Rashid Dostum, over who would have offices that Mr. Abdullah had expected to get.
The presence of many of Mr. Dostum’s followers lately on the streets of Kabul, in civilian clothes or unofficial uniforms and heavily armed, has been a cause of concern to many residents of the capital. It is technically illegal for anyone other than government security forces to publicly carry weapons, but the police have been reluctant to challenge the gunmen.
Perhaps because many foreign officials feared yet another of the kind of sudden crises that defined the electoral battle, the inauguration was attended mainly by lower-level delegations from Afghanistan’s international backers. Pakistan was the only country to send a head of state, President Mamnoon Hussain, despite the deeply strained relations between the two neighbors.
In a reminder of another challenge facing the new government, the Taliban carried out a deadly suicide bombing near Kabul International Airport, killing at least four people there despite heavy security around the city. During his speech, Mr. Ghani called on the Taliban and other militants to disarm and join peace talks.
Despite the concerns around the six-month election wrangle, the transfer of power by Mr. Karzai, who was Afghanistan’s president for nearly 13 years, was in the end orderly, and Mr. Karzai said he was fulfilling his often-stated ambition of handing over power democratically and peacefully.
“I’m very grateful to God to give me the power to hand over the power to the new president today,” he said at the inauguration ceremony. Officials said that immediately after the ceremony, he moved into a private house near the palace, but outside its walls.
John Podesta, the counselor to President Obama who represented the White House at the ceremony, said its was a “momentous day” for Afghanistan, and he added, “We’re looking forward to working with Dr. Ghani and Dr. Abdullah.”
Although two contested and turbulent presidential elections in a row have prompted questions about the outlook for Afghan democracy, the departing American ambassador, James B. Cunningham, defended the result after months of turmoil.
“It is a democratic transfer,” Mr. Cunningham said. “Absolutely it’s a democratic transfer — in that millions of Afghans voted, millions of those votes were validated through the audit process, a significant proportion of fraud was discovered in the audit, and those votes were invalidated. And there is a result, which is a lawful, constitutional result.”