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Afghanistan: Ghani and Abdullah sign power-sharing deal

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Under the agreement, Abdullah will lead council for peace talks and members of his team will be included in the cabinet.
5ec131ea0eb26.jpg

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah signed a power-sharing deal on Sunday, signalling the end of a months-long stalemate that plunged the country into a political crisis.

The breakthrough, which sees Abdullah heading peace talks with the Taliban, comes as Afghanistan battles a rapid spread of the deadly coronavirus and surging violence that saw dozens killed in brutal attacks last week.

Images released by the presidential palace showed Abdullah and Ghani sitting side-by-side for the signing ceremony, while leading Afghan figures, including former president Hamid Karzai, looked on.

Ghani said it was a "historic day" for Afghanistan and the agreement was reached without any international mediation.

"We will share the burden and our shoulders, God willing, will be lighter," he said, addressing Abdullah at the signing ceremony broadcast on a state-run television channel.

"In the days ahead, we hope that with unity and cooperation, we would be able to first pave the ground for a ceasefire and then lasting peace."

Abdullah said the deal commits to forming a "more inclusive, accountable and competent administration".

"It's meant to ensure a path to peace, improve governance, protect rights, respect laws and values, he said on Twitter after signing the deal.

Abdullah's spokesman, Fraidoon Khawzoon told AFP news agency the agreement ensures Abdullah's group gets 50 percent of the cabinet and other provincial governors' posts.

Abdullah had previously served as Afghanistan's "chief executive" under an earlier power-sharing deal but lost that post after he was defeated in a presidential election that the incumbent Ghani won in September.

But Abdullah rejected the election results, alleging fraud. He declared himself president and held his own swearing-in ceremony on March 9, the day Ghani was reinstalled as president.


The Political Agreement between President Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah has just been signed. Dr. Abdullah will lead the National Reconciliation High Council and members of his team will be included in the cabinet. Details will be aired shortly by RTA. pic.twitter.com/VZ95m5DfJq


— Sediq Sediqqi (@SediqSediqqi) May 17, 2020
The agreement further says that Ghani will make Abdul Rashid Dostum, his former vice president turned ally of Abdullah, a marshal of the armed forces. Dostum, a notorious military commander, was accused of ordering the torture and rape of a political rival in 2016.

The agreement names Abdullah to lead future peace talks with the Taliban, which has already signed a landmark accord with the United States to pave the way for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday welcomed the power-sharing deal.

"Secretary Pompeo noted that he regretted the time lost during the political impasse," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

"He reiterated that the priority for the United States remains a political settlement to end the conflict and welcomed the commitment by the two leaders to act immediately in support of prompt entry into intra-Afghan negotiations."

NATO, which maintains a training mission in Afghanistan, hailed the deal and urged Afghan leaders and the Taliban to work for peace.

"We call on the Taliban to live up to their commitments, reduce violence now, take part in intra-Afghan negotiations, and make real compromise for lasting peace," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.

Despite 18 years and billions of dollars in international aid, Afghanistan remains desperately poor. The poverty level soared from 35 percent of the population in 2012 to more than 55 percent last year.

Poverty in Afghanistan is defined as a person who survives on $1 or less a day. Successive Afghan governments, including Ghani's, have been accused by international watchdogs of widespread corruption.
 
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Under the agreement, Abdullah will lead council for peace talks and members of his team will be included in the cabinet.
5ec131ea0eb26.jpg

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah signed a power-sharing deal on Sunday, signalling the end of a months-long stalemate that plunged the country into a political crisis.

The breakthrough, which sees Abdullah heading peace talks with the Taliban, comes as Afghanistan battles a rapid spread of the deadly coronavirus and surging violence that saw dozens killed in brutal attacks last week.

Images released by the presidential palace showed Abdullah and Ghani sitting side-by-side for the signing ceremony, while leading Afghan figures, including former president Hamid Karzai, looked on.

Ghani said it was a "historic day" for Afghanistan and the agreement was reached without any international mediation.

"We will share the burden and our shoulders, God willing, will be lighter," he said, addressing Abdullah at the signing ceremony broadcast on a state-run television channel.

"In the days ahead, we hope that with unity and cooperation, we would be able to first pave the ground for a ceasefire and then lasting peace."

Abdullah said the deal commits to forming a "more inclusive, accountable and competent administration".

"It's meant to ensure a path to peace, improve governance, protect rights, respect laws and values, he said on Twitter after signing the deal.

Abdullah's spokesman, Fraidoon Khawzoon told AFP news agency the agreement ensures Abdullah's group gets 50 percent of the cabinet and other provincial governors' posts.

Abdullah had previously served as Afghanistan's "chief executive" under an earlier power-sharing deal but lost that post after he was defeated in a presidential election that the incumbent Ghani won in September.

But Abdullah rejected the election results, alleging fraud. He declared himself president and held his own swearing-in ceremony on March 9, the day Ghani was reinstalled as president.


The Political Agreement between President Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah has just been signed. Dr. Abdullah will lead the National Reconciliation High Council and members of his team will be included in the cabinet. Details will be aired shortly by RTA. pic.twitter.com/VZ95m5DfJq


— Sediq Sediqqi (@SediqSediqqi) May 17, 2020
The agreement further says that Ghani will make Abdul Rashid Dostum, his former vice president turned ally of Abdullah, a marshal of the armed forces. Dostum, a notorious military commander, was accused of ordering the torture and rape of a political rival in 2016.

The agreement names Abdullah to lead future peace talks with the Taliban, which has already signed a landmark accord with the United States to pave the way for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday welcomed the power-sharing deal.

"Secretary Pompeo noted that he regretted the time lost during the political impasse," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

"He reiterated that the priority for the United States remains a political settlement to end the conflict and welcomed the commitment by the two leaders to act immediately in support of prompt entry into intra-Afghan negotiations."

NATO, which maintains a training mission in Afghanistan, hailed the deal and urged Afghan leaders and the Taliban to work for peace.

"We call on the Taliban to live up to their commitments, reduce violence now, take part in intra-Afghan negotiations, and make real compromise for lasting peace," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.

Despite 18 years and billions of dollars in international aid, Afghanistan remains desperately poor. The poverty level soared from 35 percent of the population in 2012 to more than 55 percent last year.

Poverty in Afghanistan is defined as a person who survives on $1 or less a day. Successive Afghan governments, including Ghani's, have been accused by international watchdogs of widespread corruption.
Sir, If I may ask, how long is this accord valid for? Till both these characters abandon Kabul, or till Taliban over runs them? :D
 
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They Both look extremely unhappy, uncle sam just wanted to get out of this mess, they have brokered this deal in haste. Anyways why should we care about that, our friends will be taking over their govt. pretty soon anyways.
 
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Seriously Seems like these People want Taliban to Fcuk them.

Here is something on Dostum from NY Times:

Accused of Rape and Torture, Exiled Afghan Vice President Returns
July 22, 2018
By Rod Nordland

KABUL, Afghanistan — After more than a year in exile, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum returned to his native Afghanistan on Sunday facing criminal charges of rape and kidnapping, as well as accusations of brutality, human rights abuses and killing his first wife.

General Dostum also remains the country’s first vice president.

Waiting to greet him on Sunday at Kabul’s international airport was a government delegation and, apparently, a suicide bomber.

An array of top officials met his plane and, despite the criminal charges against him, they gave him safe passage — not to jail, but to his office and home, in a deal that Afghan officials have said was negotiated by President Ashraf Ghani in the wake of widespread protests and unrest among his fellow Uzbeks.

Moments after he left the airport, however, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the traffic circle at the exit, killing 20 people, including nine members of a security detail assigned to General Dostum, and wounding 90 others, according to police and health officials.

“Just as we passed the roundabout, we heard a boom. I said, ‘Oh God,’ ” General Dostum told a crowd of thousands of supporters gathered outside his office in downtown Kabul to cheer his return. “I pray that all the wounded survive.”

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, according to SITE, the extremist monitoring group.

His supporters dismissed the many charges against General Dostum. “He is a leader who has millions of supporters,” Mullah Mohammad Qasim said. “All of those allegations against him are baseless lies.”

The government insisted that the criminal charges remained active, even though they date from November 2016 and have resulted in no arrests. General Dostum and nine of his bodyguards are accused of abducting a political opponent, Ahmad Ishchi, and of beating and raping him repeatedly.

General Dostum’s return from exile is the latest episode in the tumultuous career of the Uzbek leader, an illiterate former Communist enforcer turned warlord who at one time or another was allied with every side in Afghanistan’s long war — including the Taliban — and turned on most of them.

He is accused of war crimes, including allowing his men to suffocate thousands of Taliban prisoners in locked truck containers.

Long a protégé of the Central Intelligence Agency, which mentored and armed him, General Dostum has proved a powerful political player in Afghan elections in recent years, able to deliver his small but united Uzbek minority as a four-million-strong bloc, giving him outsize influence. Mr. Ghani took him on as his running mate in 2014, despite previously calling him a “known killer.”

The new political respectability of First Vice President Dostum — the country has three vice presidents — did little to curb his behavior, however. After the election, he would still at times be seen leading his private militia into battle, riding in his personal Humvee with two dwarf bodyguards on the hood, and engaging in drinking bouts in a country where alcohol is outlawed. And he is widely accused of continuing to use rape to subjugate his enemies, and occasionally his allies.

His exile to Turkey was negotiated with the help of diplomats to avoid the unrest that would most likely have erupted if he were to face trial on rape charges. But unrest in northern Afghanistan, where General Dostum has many supporters and allies, is happening anyway: Many Uzbeks have been angered by the government’s arrest of a powerful northern warlord and Dostum ally, Nizamuddin Qaisari, and his bodyguards. Video of government forces violently abusing his bodyguards became public, fueling protests and more outrage.

Government officials insist that Mr. Qaisari will remain in custody, but General Dostum’s return is expected to calm his supporters.

The deal allowing him to return is seen as a bid by Mr. Ghani’s government to seek his cooperation in parliamentary elections this year, as well as in next year’s presidential race. Many other northern political factions are aligning against Mr. Ghani’s largely Pashtun ethnic base, and General Dostum could broaden that support to Uzbeks.

American Embassy cables released by WikiLeaks have detailed even more.
A former personal chauffeur to General Dostum, Saleh Mohammad Faizi, was interviewed by The New York Times in refugee housing in Austria, where the authorities have granted him asylum because he was under threat from the general, whom he served for 23 years. He gave explicit permission to be identified and photographed as he came forward with his accusations.

He said he fell out with General Dostum when he refused to marry the general’s girlfriend, whom he described as a 15-year-old girl, in order to provide a discreet means for Mr. Dostum to see her. General Dostum already had two wives, who would not consent to his taking a third one, Mr. Faizi said.

Infuriated at Mr. Faizi’s refusal, General Dostum, with the help of his bodyguards, repeatedly raped and tortured Mr. Faizi over a period of several days, he said, eventually chaining him by his lip — the scar is still evident — to the inside wall of a truck container. Mr. Faizi said he was able to escape after a C.I.A. team won his release in 2013; he later fled the country.

Mr. Faizi also accused General Dostum of killing his first wife, Khadija, and of numerous rapes of political opponents as well as underage boys and girls. “I know whom he killed, and when and where he put the bodies,” he said.

While several diplomats and government officials have confirmed Mr. Faizi’s account of how he was treated by General Dostum, there is no independent corroboration of his charges of numerous other rapes and murders.

The episode involving Mr. Ishchi took place much more recently, in November 2016, and Mr. Ishchi has publicly avowed that he was raped by Dostum’s bodyguards on the general’s orders. In the interview, Mr. Ishchi claimed that General Dostum tried to rape him but was unable to physically perform the act, so instead had photographs taken to simulate the rape in order to humiliate Mr. Ishchi.


Akbar Bai, the head of the Turkic Council of Afghanistan, a group that represents Uzbeks and others who speak Turkish languages, is widely reported to have been attacked by General Dostum. Reached by telephone in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where he has business interests, he confirmed an assault that was reported by a United States Embassy cable publicized by WikiLeaks, which the cable described as “the latest of Dostum’s drunken fits sparked by challenge to his feudal authority.”

“This thug caused the murder of hundreds and thousands of people since the time of the Communists, and raped many people, men, women, even young girls and boys,” Mr. Bai said. “Today he is the second man in the country. This person is the biggest butcher and criminal in the world, he should not be free — he should be put in The Hague.”

General Dostum’s first wife, Khadija, was killed more than 20 years ago. Mr. Faizi, the former chauffeur, said he was on duty one night when the wife caught General Dostum having sex with an underage girl. After an angry argument between the couple, Mr. Faizi said, General Dostum drove off, leaving instructions with one of his bodyguards to “take care of her.”

“Later he called him on the walkie-talkie and said, ‘It’s done, the mission was carried out as instructed,’ ” Mr. Faizi said. When they returned to the family home, Khadija was found shot to death with an AK-47, purportedly by her own hand, and accidentally. She was the mother of the four oldest of General Dostum’s nine children.

Mr. Faizi claimed that General Dostum’s personal secretary, Jalil Sarbaz, had called him in Austria and threatened his family if he talked to the news media about the Uzbek leader.

Brian Glyn Williams, a University of Massachusetts professor who wrote a generally admiring biography of General Dostum, The Last Warlord,” raised the question of how Khadija had died during an interview with his subject. “It was almost dangerous. He got angry and stormed away from the table, and didn’t come back for a week,” Mr. Williams said.

General Dostum denied being behind her death, and eventually related his version of events, the author said: The general told him that Khadija had been cleaning their house, which had several AK-47s hidden in it. She accidentally tripped one that was behind a refrigerator, with a broom, the general told Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams wrote of the general’s account: “As the gun caught on her broom and fell sideways toward her, a coil behind the refrigerator set off the trigger on the deadly automatic weapon, he said, and it went off. The gun fell from behind the refrigerator with a bang, shooting off several shots that caused Khadija and her servants to scream in panic. As Khadija jumped away, she was shot in the chest.” Twice.

General Dostum’s spokesmen have dismissed all of the accusations against him as concoctions by his political opponents.

Bashir Ahmad Tahyanj, the spokesman, called Mr. Ishchi’s rape charge absurd, and said it was “a thoroughly false and made up claim.”

“In this old age, the general — a respected person, the first vice president — and Ishchi, also a 60-something year old, what wisdom and logic accepts that he would rape him?” Mr. Tahyanj said.
 
. .
Here is something on Dostum from NY Times:

Accused of Rape and Torture, Exiled Afghan Vice President Returns
July 22, 2018
By Rod Nordland

KABUL, Afghanistan — After more than a year in exile, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum returned to his native Afghanistan on Sunday facing criminal charges of rape and kidnapping, as well as accusations of brutality, human rights abuses and killing his first wife.

General Dostum also remains the country’s first vice president.

Waiting to greet him on Sunday at Kabul’s international airport was a government delegation and, apparently, a suicide bomber.

An array of top officials met his plane and, despite the criminal charges against him, they gave him safe passage — not to jail, but to his office and home, in a deal that Afghan officials have said was negotiated by President Ashraf Ghani in the wake of widespread protests and unrest among his fellow Uzbeks.

Moments after he left the airport, however, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the traffic circle at the exit, killing 20 people, including nine members of a security detail assigned to General Dostum, and wounding 90 others, according to police and health officials.

“Just as we passed the roundabout, we heard a boom. I said, ‘Oh God,’ ” General Dostum told a crowd of thousands of supporters gathered outside his office in downtown Kabul to cheer his return. “I pray that all the wounded survive.”

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, according to SITE, the extremist monitoring group.

His supporters dismissed the many charges against General Dostum. “He is a leader who has millions of supporters,” Mullah Mohammad Qasim said. “All of those allegations against him are baseless lies.”

The government insisted that the criminal charges remained active, even though they date from November 2016 and have resulted in no arrests. General Dostum and nine of his bodyguards are accused of abducting a political opponent, Ahmad Ishchi, and of beating and raping him repeatedly.

General Dostum’s return from exile is the latest episode in the tumultuous career of the Uzbek leader, an illiterate former Communist enforcer turned warlord who at one time or another was allied with every side in Afghanistan’s long war — including the Taliban — and turned on most of them.

He is accused of war crimes, including allowing his men to suffocate thousands of Taliban prisoners in locked truck containers.

Long a protégé of the Central Intelligence Agency, which mentored and armed him, General Dostum has proved a powerful political player in Afghan elections in recent years, able to deliver his small but united Uzbek minority as a four-million-strong bloc, giving him outsize influence. Mr. Ghani took him on as his running mate in 2014, despite previously calling him a “known killer.”

The new political respectability of First Vice President Dostum — the country has three vice presidents — did little to curb his behavior, however. After the election, he would still at times be seen leading his private militia into battle, riding in his personal Humvee with two dwarf bodyguards on the hood, and engaging in drinking bouts in a country where alcohol is outlawed. And he is widely accused of continuing to use rape to subjugate his enemies, and occasionally his allies.

His exile to Turkey was negotiated with the help of diplomats to avoid the unrest that would most likely have erupted if he were to face trial on rape charges. But unrest in northern Afghanistan, where General Dostum has many supporters and allies, is happening anyway: Many Uzbeks have been angered by the government’s arrest of a powerful northern warlord and Dostum ally, Nizamuddin Qaisari, and his bodyguards. Video of government forces violently abusing his bodyguards became public, fueling protests and more outrage.

Government officials insist that Mr. Qaisari will remain in custody, but General Dostum’s return is expected to calm his supporters.

The deal allowing him to return is seen as a bid by Mr. Ghani’s government to seek his cooperation in parliamentary elections this year, as well as in next year’s presidential race. Many other northern political factions are aligning against Mr. Ghani’s largely Pashtun ethnic base, and General Dostum could broaden that support to Uzbeks.

American Embassy cables released by WikiLeaks have detailed even more.
A former personal chauffeur to General Dostum, Saleh Mohammad Faizi, was interviewed by The New York Times in refugee housing in Austria, where the authorities have granted him asylum because he was under threat from the general, whom he served for 23 years. He gave explicit permission to be identified and photographed as he came forward with his accusations.

He said he fell out with General Dostum when he refused to marry the general’s girlfriend, whom he described as a 15-year-old girl, in order to provide a discreet means for Mr. Dostum to see her. General Dostum already had two wives, who would not consent to his taking a third one, Mr. Faizi said.

Infuriated at Mr. Faizi’s refusal, General Dostum, with the help of his bodyguards, repeatedly raped and tortured Mr. Faizi over a period of several days, he said, eventually chaining him by his lip — the scar is still evident — to the inside wall of a truck container. Mr. Faizi said he was able to escape after a C.I.A. team won his release in 2013; he later fled the country.

Mr. Faizi also accused General Dostum of killing his first wife, Khadija, and of numerous rapes of political opponents as well as underage boys and girls. “I know whom he killed, and when and where he put the bodies,” he said.

While several diplomats and government officials have confirmed Mr. Faizi’s account of how he was treated by General Dostum, there is no independent corroboration of his charges of numerous other rapes and murders.

The episode involving Mr. Ishchi took place much more recently, in November 2016, and Mr. Ishchi has publicly avowed that he was raped by Dostum’s bodyguards on the general’s orders. In the interview, Mr. Ishchi claimed that General Dostum tried to rape him but was unable to physically perform the act, so instead had photographs taken to simulate the rape in order to humiliate Mr. Ishchi.


Akbar Bai, the head of the Turkic Council of Afghanistan, a group that represents Uzbeks and others who speak Turkish languages, is widely reported to have been attacked by General Dostum. Reached by telephone in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where he has business interests, he confirmed an assault that was reported by a United States Embassy cable publicized by WikiLeaks, which the cable described as “the latest of Dostum’s drunken fits sparked by challenge to his feudal authority.”

“This thug caused the murder of hundreds and thousands of people since the time of the Communists, and raped many people, men, women, even young girls and boys,” Mr. Bai said. “Today he is the second man in the country. This person is the biggest butcher and criminal in the world, he should not be free — he should be put in The Hague.”

General Dostum’s first wife, Khadija, was killed more than 20 years ago. Mr. Faizi, the former chauffeur, said he was on duty one night when the wife caught General Dostum having sex with an underage girl. After an angry argument between the couple, Mr. Faizi said, General Dostum drove off, leaving instructions with one of his bodyguards to “take care of her.”

“Later he called him on the walkie-talkie and said, ‘It’s done, the mission was carried out as instructed,’ ” Mr. Faizi said. When they returned to the family home, Khadija was found shot to death with an AK-47, purportedly by her own hand, and accidentally. She was the mother of the four oldest of General Dostum’s nine children.

Mr. Faizi claimed that General Dostum’s personal secretary, Jalil Sarbaz, had called him in Austria and threatened his family if he talked to the news media about the Uzbek leader.

Brian Glyn Williams, a University of Massachusetts professor who wrote a generally admiring biography of General Dostum, The Last Warlord,” raised the question of how Khadija had died during an interview with his subject. “It was almost dangerous. He got angry and stormed away from the table, and didn’t come back for a week,” Mr. Williams said.

General Dostum denied being behind her death, and eventually related his version of events, the author said: The general told him that Khadija had been cleaning their house, which had several AK-47s hidden in it. She accidentally tripped one that was behind a refrigerator, with a broom, the general told Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams wrote of the general’s account: “As the gun caught on her broom and fell sideways toward her, a coil behind the refrigerator set off the trigger on the deadly automatic weapon, he said, and it went off. The gun fell from behind the refrigerator with a bang, shooting off several shots that caused Khadija and her servants to scream in panic. As Khadija jumped away, she was shot in the chest.” Twice.

General Dostum’s spokesmen have dismissed all of the accusations against him as concoctions by his political opponents.

Bashir Ahmad Tahyanj, the spokesman, called Mr. Ishchi’s rape charge absurd, and said it was “a thoroughly false and made up claim.”

“In this old age, the general — a respected person, the first vice president — and Ishchi, also a 60-something year old, what wisdom and logic accepts that he would rape him?” Mr. Tahyanj said.

What a nasty sadist whore this individual is, I'm surprised Turkey didn't finish this filth of while he was in exile. Probably brought in to try and deal with the Taliban s, etc., we all know this peace agreement is a pain for Ghani.
 
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These two could eat each other. Definitely look like the Americans brokered some sort of deal between both. Well, as long as the Taliban negotiations don't suffer it should be all fine.
 
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What a nasty sadist whore this individual is, I'm surprised Turkey didn't finish this filth of while he was in exile. Probably brought in to try and deal with the Taliban s, etc., we all know this peace agreement is a pain for Ghani.
These two could eat each other. Definitely look like the Americans brokered some sort of deal between both. Well, as long as the Taliban negotiations don't suffer it should be all fine.
Taliban Says Dostum Remains on Hit List
A day after Afghanistan’s First Vice President, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, narrowly survived an assassination attempt, the Taliban vowed Sunday the former warlord remains one of their prime targets.

Officials in Afghanistan have confirmed Dostum’s convoy came under a Taliban attack Saturday evening in the northern Balkh province that killed one of his security guards and wounded several others.

https://www.voanews.com/south-central-asia/taliban-says-dostum-remains-hit-list
 
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