Kabul Archive

Kabul, Nov 3 (DPA) Afghan President Hamid Karzai promised Tuesday to assemble a government of ‘national unity’, a day after the presidential runoff was cancelled and he was declared the winner.

His new cabinet would include representatives from all of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups and political camps, Karzai said in Kabul.

The president left open whether the new administration would include the man he was to have faced in Saturday’s runoff, Abdullah Abdullah.

Karzai’s one-time foreign minister came in second after Karzai in the Aug 20 election but withdrew Sunday from the runoff, alleging that it, like the first round of voting, would not be fair.

The August election was marred by massive fraud, mostly in favour of Karzai. A UN-backed investigation discounted about one million ballots, or one-third of Karzai’s votes, forcing him into the runoff.

But with Abdullah’s withdrawal, the Afghan Independent Election Commission Monday called off the runoff and declared Karzai the winner. However, the method of Karzai’s re-election to a new five-year term cast doubts over the legitimacy of his new government.

He said Tuesday that he would make fighting corruption, for which is government has long been criticised, a priority.

A day earlier, US President Barack Obama urged Karzai to begin a ‘new chapter’ for his country by initiating reforms and cracking down on graft.

Obama telephoned Karzai after he was declared the election winner to offer congratulations but also to urge him to get serious about improving the government, fighting corruption and speeding up the training of Afghan security forces.

‘The proof is not going to be in words; it’s going to be in deeds,’ Obama said at a meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

Kabul, Oct 26 (DPA) Four US soldiers were killed Monday when two helicopters flying for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan were involved in what was believed to be a mid-air collision, the ISAF and US military said.

Hostile fire was not involved in the accident, the ISAF said.

Two soldiers were also injured in the accident in southern Afghanistan, it said, without specifying the location.

US Colonel Wayne Shanks confirmed the four fatalities were American troops.

A third helicopter also went down in western Afghanistan after a raid on a compound where suspected militants involved in the narcotics trade were located, the ISAF said.

Casualties were reported in the third crash as rescue efforts were under way.

More than a dozen militants were also killed in a firefight that broke out with the international security force conducted the raid, the ISAF said.

Kabul, Oct 24 (DPA) Taliban militants threatened Saturday to disrupt the Nov 7 presidential runoff after attacks during the first round of balloting in August kept many voters away from polling stations.

‘The Islamic Emirate hereby informs all countrymen not to take part in this US-led election process,’ a statement posted on the Taliban website said.

‘If anyone gets harmed by our mujahedin by participating in this unfortunate process, they will themselves be responsible for that because the mujahedin have repeatedly informed all Afghans of our decision,’ it said.

The statement claimed that by convening the election, the Western countries whose militaries are deployed in Afghanistan were trying to conceal their invasion and their defeat on the military front.

During the election’s first round, insurgents carried out more than 130 attacks, including firing dozens of rockets and unleashing numerous suicide bombers on polling sites to disrupt the vote.

Those attacks did not stop the elections but contributed to the low turnout of 38 percent of eligible voters.

‘Besides implementing old tactics, this time, they (Taliban fighters) would use more new tactics to stop this process of the enemies of Islam and our country,’ it said.

The statement also called on Taliban insurgents to attack Afghan and Western military bases before the election and to block all highways one day before the polling day.

The threats were one of the numerous obstacles that could undermine the runoff. Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission must dispatch polling kits to the country’s 380 districts, access to some of which could be blocked by the onset of winter snows at the beginning of November.

Because of the remoteness of many areas and time constraints, the commission is having to rely more on airplanes to deliver the kits, replacing trucks and around 3,000 donkeys used in the first round to transport election materials.

President Hamid Karzai, who had claimed an outright victory in the first round, bowed to intense pressure from the US and other Western supporters of his government to allow the two-man runoff after a UN-led fraud investigation team found about one million ballots cast for him were fabricated.

The runner-up in the first round, Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s former foreign minister, previously accused both the incumbent and the commission of engineering the fraud and has voiced concerns about a repeat of rigging in the runoff.

Abdullah’s spokesman has threatened that his candidate might pull out of the elections if top commission members were not replaced. The six-member commission was appointed by Karzai and is widely accused of being biased in favour of the president.

The US government and other Western allies that have troops in Afghanistan hope that the fresh vote would restore the credibility of the elections and produce a legitimate government in Afghanistan that could partner with them in the fight against a resurgent Taliban.

There has been heated deliberations in Washington on sending additional US troops to Afghanistan as demanded by NATO’s top commander in the country, but President Barack Obama has said no extra soldiers would be deployed until the new government in Kabul is formed.

Nearly 200,000 Afghan security personnel and more than 100,000 NATO-led international troops are to provide security for the November polling.