MAZAR-I SHARIF: A stand-off between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Atta Mohammad 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.
Noor, a leader in the Jamiat-i Islami party and governor of the strategic province of Balkh, is defying Ghani, denouncing the “weak, lazy and corrupt” Kabul government in daily rallies with thousands of supporters and warning the government against trying to remove him by force.
The deadlock, which has alarmed Western embassies and sparked fears of civil violence, has highlighted a fractious political climate that threatens to undermine recent battlefield successes from the sharp increase in US air strikes last year.
Noor accuses Ghani of trying to remove a potential rival and divide Jamiat ahead of a presidential election likely to be shaped by the ethnic fault lines that dominate Afghan politics, notably between Pashtuns and Persian-speaking Tajiks.
“This is about the 2019 presidential election,” he said in an interview 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 among the people and they are afraid of public figures who do.”
Ghani has not explained an announcement last month that he had accepted a letter of resignation from Noor, signed earlier last year during negotiations over a possible national role for the governor who has ruled Balkh for more than a decade.
But Noor says the letter, which has not been made public, was conditional on steps that Ghani has not taken and has refused to go.
Ghani has not said anything publicly about the stand-off. His spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment.
Noor, a former commander in the anti-Soviet Mujahiddin considered one of the richest men in Afghanistan, has faced repeated accusations 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 vital trade routes into central Asia, is also one of Afghanistan’s most stable and prosperous provinces, with a much smaller Taliban and IS presence than in other northern regions.
Noor enjoys 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.”
As the stand-off in Balkh has continued, it has become a national issue, with Noor now demanding wider concessions, including what Jamiat sees as proper implementation of the accord underpinning Ghani’s national unity government. — Reuters
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