DEADLOCK AS AFGHAN GOVERNOR REFUSES PRESIDENT’S CALL TO QUIT
▶ Leader of wealthy Balkh province is holding rallies that look a lot like presidential primaries
A stand-off between Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and Atta Noor, the powerful provincial governor he is trying to remove from his northern stronghold, is increasingly turning into a battle over next year’s presidential election.
Mr Noor, a leader in the Jamiat-i-Islami party and governor of the strategic province of Balkh, is defying Mr Ghani, denouncing the “weak, lazy and corrupt” government in daily rallies backed by thousands of supporters.
He has warned the government not to try to remove him by force.
The deadlock, which has worried western embassies and sparked fears of violence, has highlighted a fractious political climate that threatens to undermine recent successes against extremists resulting from increased US air strikes.
Mr Noor accuses Mr Ghani of wanting to remove a potential rival and divide Jamiat before the election, which is likely to follow the ethnic faultlines that dominate Afghan politics, especially between Pashtuns and Persian-speaking Tajiks.
“This is about the 2019 presidential election,” Mr Noor said at his office in the provincial capital Mazar-i Sharif, where his portrait adorns streets and buildings across the city. “They have no grassroots support and they are afraid of public figures who do.”
Mr Ghani has not explained why he last month announced he had accepted a letter of resignation from Mr Noor, who has ruled Balkh province for more than a decade.
It was signed last year during negotiations over a possible national role for the governor.
But Mr Noor says the letter, which has not been made public, was conditional on the president taking certain steps. Mr Ghani has not done so, therefore he refuses to go.
Mr Noor, a former mujahideen commander who fought against Soviet forces, is one of the richest men in Afghanistan and has been accused of corruption, which he denies.
In 2015, Human Rights Watch said there was “strong evidence that he controls and funds local militias implicated in serious abuse”.
But Balkh, which sits on trade routes into central Asia, is also one of Afghanistan’s most stable and prosperous provinces, with a smaller Taliban and ISIL presence than in other northern regions.
Mr Noor has strong support, notably from a business community that has done well out of the lucrative transit trade through Hairatan, the border crossing into Uzbekistan that handles hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods a year.
“People have been very unhappy about the problems between the president and the governor,” said Khairuddin Mayel, who runs a large cooking oil and foods business.
“The governor has been very successful and people don’t want this province to become like the others. They do not want to lose this governor.”
The stand-off in Balkh has now become a national issue, with Mr Noor demanding further concessions, including what his party regards as proper implementation of the accord underpinning Mr Ghani’s national unity government.
Like many of the political problems of the past three years, the crisis stems from the 2014 presidential election that produced no clear winner.
Under a US-brokered deal, Mr Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun, was appointed president while his rival Dr Abdullah Abdullah from Jamiat was given the new post of chief executive.
But Jamiat bitterly resents what it perceives as Mr Ghani’s favouritism towards Pashtuns, who are traditionally the strongest group in Afghan politics.
And while Mr Noor is angry with Mr Ghani, he is equally incensed by Dr Abdullah, his party rival, who he describes as a snake. Dr Abdullah has said he had approved the decision to oust the governor.
“Jamiat will never trust Dr Abdullah,” Mr Noor said. “He has shown he is weak and a partner in the incompetence and crimes of the government.”
The dispute has also highlighted the role of a clutch of powerful regional leaders over whom central government has little control. Over recent months, Mr Ghani has sidelined several of them, forcing ethnic Uzbek vice-president Rashid Dostum into exile after a torture scandal.
Mr Noor joined him in Turkey last June to form a “Coalition for the Salvation of Afghanistan”, uniting figures from the Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek communities.
Mr Noor said they, and other regional leaders, represented a reality that could not be ignored.
“We have powerful political parties, influential figures, those who have grassroots support,” he said. “They will remain in Afghanistan and will fight against terrorism as they fought in the past.”