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Afghanistan Chooses New President as Uncertainty Looms

Afghanistan Chooses New President as Uncertainty Looms
folder_openAfghanistan access_time9 years ago
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Local Editor

Afghans head to the polls on Saturday to replace outgoing President Hamid Karzai. Looming over the vote, though, are threats of Taliban violence, a poor economy dependent on outside aid, and the impending exit of many foreign security forces.

Afghanistan Chooses New President as Uncertainty Looms

After 13 years of rule by Karzai, eight candidates are vying for the presidency. Three of them - former foreign ministers Abdullah Abdullah and Zalmay Rassoul, and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani - are considered the favorites.

Voters on Saturday will consider just where their country stands after well over a decade of widespread bloodshed and foreign occupation. Since the US-led invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001, at least 16,000 civilians, almost 3,500 foreign troops, and thousands of Afghan soldiers have been killed.

According to a UN report, at least 45 civilians were killed and 14 injured from US drone strikes in 2013 - triple the amount that occurred in 2012. US figures show the US launched over 500 drone strikes in Afghanistan last year.
A Pentagon-backed independent study found that the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan will likely flourish after the bulk of foreign forces depart the country in late 2014.

"We conclude that the security environment in Afghanistan will become more challenging after the drawdown of most international forces in 2014, and that the Taliban insurgency will become a greater threat to Afghanistan's stability in the 2015 to 2018 timeframe than it is now," according to the report, which was conducted by a panel of experts, including four retired generals and several former defense and national security officials.

Adding fuel to the fire, former US War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - whom many blame for the dismal execution of US combat strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the suspect motivation that kept the US mired in two elongated post-9/11 wars - recently trashed the Obama administration for failing to attain a security forces agreement with Hamid Karzai.

"A trained ape could get a status of forces agreement," Rumsfeld said. "It does not take a genius. And we have so mismanaged that relationship."
Amid the consistent violence, the country deals with rampant unemployment. Those with jobs earn, on average, an estimated US$410 annually.

The US and other foreign sources have sent $100 billion to improve conditions in the poverty-stricken country, with projects in healthcare, infrastructure, and a number of other sectors. However, the latest auditing reports have said a lot of this cash is being wasted, or swallowed by corruption.

Meanwhile, in the days running up to Saturday's vote, the Taliban has pursued a bloody campaign in an effort to intimidate a healthy election turnout. On Wednesday, at least six police officers were killed and four others injured as a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device outside the Interior Ministry in Kabul.
Early Friday, longtime AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus, 48, was killed and AP senior correspondent Kathy Gannon, 60, was severely wounded after an Afghan policeman opened fire on the journalists' car as they traveled with election workers through Khost. Niedringhaus is the third journalist to be murdered in Afghanistan in the past month.

According to Reuters, over 350,000 Afghan troops are on duty around the country to hold off attacks at polling stations and against voters. Kabul, the nation's capital, has been surrounded by many layers of roadblocks and checkpoints.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team