Major events of last year and its Impacts on the New Year
The last days of 1393 Solar Hijri year gives us the chance to better evaluate the major political and military events of this year, and thus the developments of this year will have impacts on the upcoming year.
Political Challenges:
In 1393 we witnessed holding the presidential election of Afghanistan. The elections took months and there were rumors that President Karzai did not want to step down from power, so the election delayed for so long. During the election, public and private media and civil society praised it as transparent and with unprecedented participation of people, especially women. It was planned to hide the massive fraud of the election by propaganda. Similarly international observers tried to take the wide fraud easy and do not be serious about it.
The election failed to give any result at the first round, and in the second round also Abdullah’s team provided proofs of massive frauds by the followers of Ashraf Ghani. International community intervened, but even with the recount of 100% of the votes the problem was not solved. So the U.S. forced the decision according to which the electoral team is neither winner, nor loser; and based on this fact a unity government was formed.
Forming the unity government by the two electoral rival teams, who were blaming each other for fraud during the election, was not an easy task; therefore, even after 150 days of the establishment of the unity government the cabinet is not appointed yet and there are still disputes between the teams.
B.S.A. with the U.S.:
Though the tasks and works of B.S.A. were finalized during Hamid Karzai’s regime and Consultant Loya Jirga was also invited based on his decree to vote for signing the agreement, but later on he denied to sign it. Ashraf Ghani, during the second day of his duty as the president of the country, signed the pact, so the foreign aid to Afghanistan will keep up, and as the official duty of NATO in Afghanistan ended, in the light of the agreement foreign forces may stay in Afghanistan.
Though peace with the armed opponents was in the priority of Ashraf Ghani’s duties, but by signing the agreement he caused ambiguity for succeeding peace with the Taliban, while their first demand was withdrawal of the foreign forces from Afghanistan.
Changes in the Foreign Policy:
Though Afghanistan lacked a codified foreign policy during Hamid Karzai’s government, and it seemed that its foreign policy was formed based on the daily conditions, but yet Afghanistan and India had close relationships. Pakistan was concerned about the role of India as one of the main donors for Afghanistan.
Unlikely, Ashraf Ghani has changed the policy to get away from India, so Pakistan also became interested to get closer to Kabul. Pakistani media reported that such friendship between Pakistan and Afghanistan is unprecedented relations, and these countries never had such close relations during last thirteen years.
In contrast, India has seen these changes of policy as a failure. “Delhi Policy Group” [1] reported in a report titled: (What can India expect from the National Unity Government of Afghanistan) [2]that India is concerned about the changes in the foreign policy of Afghanistan as mentioned below: [3]
- ”First of all, President Ghani told Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval that Afghanistan would no longer seek Indian military aid.
- Second, he made a series of hugely concessional offers to Pakistan.
- Third, Pakistan will host the next Heart of Asia Ministerial instead of India.
- Fourth, Afghanistan, China and the U.S. now appear to accept that Pakistan will never allow transit trade to India through its territory.”
Based on the mentioned concerns of India, we can say that it is in contrast with claim of both the leaders of national unity government who said that they will be just about their foreign policy and they will keep balance among countries, at least between India and Pakistan they are giving more opportunities to Pakistan compared to India.
The Peace Program:
The main aim of changing the foreign policy regarding Pakistan, which the unity government has started in 1393, was to attract the support of Pakistan regarding the peace process. It seems that changing the policy might be the result of justification that if Afghanistan does not achieve peace, it may not achieve anything.
Ashraf Ghani may thought that the result of gaining aid from India is much less compared to the loss caused by the insecurity. Corruption and many other challenges have direct relationship with war.
Most of the resources that Afghanistan is hopeful for it, is the resource of minerals, but losing minerals in insecure areas of Afghanistan increased to the point that the Taliban also created a commission by the name of Mineral Commission, the duty of the commission is to give contracts to people and companies. Therefore, some of the income for their war comes from minerals.
The Year 1394:
In this year Afghanistan will have parliamentary election, but before the election takes place, the mentality of people should be changed; because, based on what happened in previous elections, they do not believe in election. Changing ideology of the public is not possible without fundamental changes in IEC and ECC. If the dispute regarding the distribution of electronic Tazkira (identity card) is not solved, it will cause dangerous challenges for the election.
By signing B.S.A. the Afghan unity government was hopeful that the international community will financially support Afghan Government, but international community is concerned about the existence of corruption inside the governmental system. On the other hand, international community is not currently in the condition of 2001 and Afghanistan is no more in their priority list. Even before the recent conference of Munich, magnification of presence of Daesh in Afghanistan also did not encourage the international community to provide more financial cooperation for Afghanistan. Therefore, we should not be hopeful for the economic improvement of Afghanistan in the upcoming year.
Currently the relations of Afghan-U.S. governments are much closer compared to the regime of the ex-president of Afghanistan, but based on Ashraf Ghani’s recognition of the U.S., he knows that he should not hope blank check, as we witnessed during Karzai’s presidency. So he has to pay attention to internal resources, even that needs peace and security. The peace negotiation with the Taliban is counted as a media rumor, and the Taliban said that it is an intelligence attempt to cause distrust between the Taliban groups.
Overall, we can say that not only the new unity government is not able to get rid of the inheritance of Hamid Karzai, but also faced challenge that started during Karzai’s regime. The Government want to show itself as united, but currently too much people have doubt about its unity. The mechanism of this government is formed in such a way that the government itself is the cause of its failure, and the weakness of the government is clear from the suspension of declaration of the entire cabinet.
Based on the mentioned issues, we can say that success and failure of the unity government in 1394 is extremely dependent to the peace process, which will be able to hide all the weakness of the government. The process which is not yet clear that how will it start and to what extent it will be successful.
The End
[1] Delhi Policy Group
[2] Afghanistan’s National Unity Government: What can India expect?
[3] See online:
“First of all, President Ghani told Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval that Afghanistan would no longer seek Indian military aid. Second, he made a series of hugely concessional offers to Pakistan. Third, Pakistan will host the next Heart of Asia Ministerial instead of India. Fourth, Afghanistan, China and the U.S. now appear to accept that Pakistan will never allow transit trade to India through its territory.”