KABUL,
Afghanistan — After nearly 12 hours of often tense negotiations,
Secretary of State John Kerry announced Saturday that Afghanistan would
audit all eight million votes cast in a runoff presidential election
last month as part of a deal to end a tense power struggle between the
top two candidates.
The audit, intended to resolve allegations of widespread fraud, is to begin almost immediately, he said, and will be supervised by international monitors. Its results will be binding, and the winner will go on to head a national unity government whose shape has yet to be finalized.
“Every single ballot that was cast will be audited,” Mr. Kerry said at a news conference where he was flanked by the two candidates, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, who endorsed the agreement.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Secretary of State John Kerry greeting the Afghanistan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah at the American Embassy in Kabul on Friday.Kerry Pushes for Solution to Afghanistan Election CrisisJULY 11, 2014
video Video: Kerry Meets Afghan Presidential HopefulJULY 11, 2014
U.N. Proposal Fails to Ease Crisis Over Disputed Afghan ElectionJULY 10, 2014
Abdullah Abdullah, center, a presidential candidate, asked supporters in Kabul on Tuesday to be patient. He trails Ashraf Ghani in the most recent vote tally.Afghan Candidate Stops Short of Forming GovernmentJULY 8, 2014
At War Blog: Signs of an Afghan Crisis, There on Election Day in JuneJULY 7, 2014
The breakthrough came on the second day of a visit that Mr. Kerry hastily arranged to try to prevent Afghanistan’s first democratic transfer of power from collapsing. Both Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani had said the election was marred by fraud, but both had also claimed victory.
Tensions were heightened Tuesday when Mr. Abdullah threatened to form his own government following the release of preliminary results from the runoff, raising the possibility of an ethnically and regionally divided Afghanistan just as American troops prepare to complete their combat mission.
Mr. Kerry spent Friday largely listening to the proposals of the Abdullah and Ghani camps and meeting with President Hamid Karzai.
And then on Saturday, shortly before 9 a.m., he began what would turn out to be an entire day of shuttling between meeting rooms at the American Embassy, where each candidate had gathered with a handful of advisers. He also met with Mr. Karzai at the presidential palace in the afternoon.
By the time they announced the deal, Mr. Kerry looked like a man who had put in a long day’s work. Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani looked similarly worn out by the marathon negotiations, which had achieved what they alone could not in the weeks since the June 14 runoff.
“This is unquestionably a tense and difficult moment,” Mr. Kerry said, “but I am very pleased that the two candidates who stand here with me today and President Karzai have stepped up and shown a significant commitment to compromise.”
Mr. Kerry said the audit would begin within 24 hours and take several weeks, and Mr. Karzai indicated that he would agree to postpone the inauguration, though he urged that the auditors try to complete their work in time to meet the scheduled date of Aug. 2.
He did not set a new date, only saying it would take place after the audit.
Mr. Karzai seemed comfortable with the outcome, something of a turnaround, as he had previously refused to allow international “interference” in the elections.
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Karzai have been through painfully long negotiations on previous occasions, but the two men seemed at ease together on Saturday night.
If it is implemented successfully, the deal will be an accomplishment for Mr. Kerry, who has long played a troubleshooting role on Afghanistan.
Continue reading the main story
When he was a senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry persuaded Mr. Karzai to accept a runoff in the contested 2009 presidential election. In March 2013, Mr. Kerry went to Kabul to rebuild relations with Mr. Karzai after he publicly accused the United States of wanting to destabilize the country.
Not all of Mr. Kerry’s efforts on Afghanistan have held up. In November 2013, Mr. Kerry announced that the United States and Afghanistan had completed the wording of a bilateral security agreement that would establish a legal basis for keeping American forces in Afghanistan after 2014. Mr. Karzai later refused to sign the agreement, though Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani have each indicated that they would do so shortly after assuming office.
The accord on the terms of an audit follows several recent setbacks for Mr. Kerry, most notably the failure of an intensive effort to secure a Middle East peace agreement. His push to encourage productive talks between Russia and Ukraine has also fallen short.
But in Kabul, Mr. Kerry had more leverage than he had in the Middle East. Afghanistan’s security forces depend on billions of dollars of assistance from the United States. In calls to each of the candidates last week, President Obama stressed his support for a review of the fraud, but warned pointedly that resorting to violence or taking extraconstitutional actions “would result in the end of U.S. assistance to Afghanistan.”
To ensure security — and to give the candidates confidence that no new vote tampering was taking place during the audit — the NATO-led military coalition in Afghanistan is to fly ballot boxes that are currently in the provinces to Kabul, the capital, and work with Afghan forces to provide security for the boxes once they arrive. United Nations and other international observers will watch the entire process.
Jan Kubis, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, called on other nations to send extra observers to assist with the audit as soon as possible.
Discussions on Saturday concerned how to determine how many ballots should be re-examined for fraud and how to ensure that the audit was impartial. Both sides had wrangled over the technical details, in particular the threshold for selecting which ballots should be reviewed.
Continue reading the main story
RECENT COMMENTS
Cole W 12 minutes ago
I highly doubt this will solve anything once the audit is all said and done. One side will claim victory once again and the other will cry...
Yoandel 51 minutes ago
So both sides agree that ballot stuffing by the other side was incontrovertible and by the hundreds of thousands... yet an audit, which can...
Withheld 1 hour ago
I am looking forward to the follow-up article in the Times on how you audit a flawed election. What are the auditors going to be looking...
SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT
Mr. Kerry had to seek not only agreement by the two candidates, but also acceptance by Mr. Karzai, who will step down after 13 years in power and has by all accounts remained a powerful presence behind the scenes.
In the first round of voting on April 5, Mr. Abdullah emerged the top vote-getter against 11 other candidates, with 45 percent to Mr. Ghani’s 31 percent. Because neither won more than 50 percent of the vote, a required runoff between the two was held on June 14.
Preliminary results from the runoff show Mr. Ghani leaping ahead with 56 percent of the vote, and Mr. Abdullah with 44 percent. The turnout in the runoff also increased by more than a million voters, to eight million.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
Mr. Abdullah’s campaign has accused his opponents of conducting extensive institutional fraud, and has alleged that members of the Independent Election Commission, government officials and Ghani supporters orchestrated large-scale ballot stuffing to enable Mr. Ghani to win the presidency.
Mr. Ghani’s team has said that fraud took place on both sides and insists that his better showing in the runoff was the result of an energetic campaign to mobilize his fellow ethnic Pashtuns to vote for him.
The dispute, which has delayed results for nearly a month since the initial vote, comes amid a rise in violence around the country. Civilians are killed and wounded more frequently now in Afghanistan than at any point since the arrival of American forces, the International Crisis Group said in a statement on Saturday.
Seven members of the Afghan security forces were killed in clashes with the Taliban east of the capital in Laghman Province on Saturday.
Two tribal elders and a family of eight were killed in three separate attacks in southern Afghanistan, electricity has been knocked out in the city of Kandahar, and a bomb killed two people in Jalalabad.
CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY
57
COMMENTS
The power struggle between the candidates had threatened to once again plunge the country into ethnic violence. Some officials here warn that such an outcome could be even more dangerous for the country than the continuing Taliban insurgency.
“The legitimacy of this voting process is obviously at stake,” a senior administration official traveling with Mr. Kerry said in a briefing to journalists Friday evening. He was speaking on the condition that he not be named in accordance with State Department rules.
“There were millions of people that voted in the first round and then again in the second round of elections,” he said. “They deserve to be counted accurately and to demonstrate that democracy works.”
Correction: July 12, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the initial vote. It was April 5, not June 14. (The latter date was the day the runoff vote was held.)
Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
The audit, intended to resolve allegations of widespread fraud, is to begin almost immediately, he said, and will be supervised by international monitors. Its results will be binding, and the winner will go on to head a national unity government whose shape has yet to be finalized.
“Every single ballot that was cast will be audited,” Mr. Kerry said at a news conference where he was flanked by the two candidates, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, who endorsed the agreement.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Secretary of State John Kerry greeting the Afghanistan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah at the American Embassy in Kabul on Friday.Kerry Pushes for Solution to Afghanistan Election CrisisJULY 11, 2014
video Video: Kerry Meets Afghan Presidential HopefulJULY 11, 2014
U.N. Proposal Fails to Ease Crisis Over Disputed Afghan ElectionJULY 10, 2014
Abdullah Abdullah, center, a presidential candidate, asked supporters in Kabul on Tuesday to be patient. He trails Ashraf Ghani in the most recent vote tally.Afghan Candidate Stops Short of Forming GovernmentJULY 8, 2014
At War Blog: Signs of an Afghan Crisis, There on Election Day in JuneJULY 7, 2014
The breakthrough came on the second day of a visit that Mr. Kerry hastily arranged to try to prevent Afghanistan’s first democratic transfer of power from collapsing. Both Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani had said the election was marred by fraud, but both had also claimed victory.
Tensions were heightened Tuesday when Mr. Abdullah threatened to form his own government following the release of preliminary results from the runoff, raising the possibility of an ethnically and regionally divided Afghanistan just as American troops prepare to complete their combat mission.
Mr. Kerry spent Friday largely listening to the proposals of the Abdullah and Ghani camps and meeting with President Hamid Karzai.
And then on Saturday, shortly before 9 a.m., he began what would turn out to be an entire day of shuttling between meeting rooms at the American Embassy, where each candidate had gathered with a handful of advisers. He also met with Mr. Karzai at the presidential palace in the afternoon.
By the time they announced the deal, Mr. Kerry looked like a man who had put in a long day’s work. Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani looked similarly worn out by the marathon negotiations, which had achieved what they alone could not in the weeks since the June 14 runoff.
“This is unquestionably a tense and difficult moment,” Mr. Kerry said, “but I am very pleased that the two candidates who stand here with me today and President Karzai have stepped up and shown a significant commitment to compromise.”
Mr. Kerry said the audit would begin within 24 hours and take several weeks, and Mr. Karzai indicated that he would agree to postpone the inauguration, though he urged that the auditors try to complete their work in time to meet the scheduled date of Aug. 2.
He did not set a new date, only saying it would take place after the audit.
Mr. Karzai seemed comfortable with the outcome, something of a turnaround, as he had previously refused to allow international “interference” in the elections.
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Karzai have been through painfully long negotiations on previous occasions, but the two men seemed at ease together on Saturday night.
If it is implemented successfully, the deal will be an accomplishment for Mr. Kerry, who has long played a troubleshooting role on Afghanistan.
Continue reading the main story
When he was a senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry persuaded Mr. Karzai to accept a runoff in the contested 2009 presidential election. In March 2013, Mr. Kerry went to Kabul to rebuild relations with Mr. Karzai after he publicly accused the United States of wanting to destabilize the country.
Not all of Mr. Kerry’s efforts on Afghanistan have held up. In November 2013, Mr. Kerry announced that the United States and Afghanistan had completed the wording of a bilateral security agreement that would establish a legal basis for keeping American forces in Afghanistan after 2014. Mr. Karzai later refused to sign the agreement, though Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani have each indicated that they would do so shortly after assuming office.
The accord on the terms of an audit follows several recent setbacks for Mr. Kerry, most notably the failure of an intensive effort to secure a Middle East peace agreement. His push to encourage productive talks between Russia and Ukraine has also fallen short.
But in Kabul, Mr. Kerry had more leverage than he had in the Middle East. Afghanistan’s security forces depend on billions of dollars of assistance from the United States. In calls to each of the candidates last week, President Obama stressed his support for a review of the fraud, but warned pointedly that resorting to violence or taking extraconstitutional actions “would result in the end of U.S. assistance to Afghanistan.”
To ensure security — and to give the candidates confidence that no new vote tampering was taking place during the audit — the NATO-led military coalition in Afghanistan is to fly ballot boxes that are currently in the provinces to Kabul, the capital, and work with Afghan forces to provide security for the boxes once they arrive. United Nations and other international observers will watch the entire process.
Jan Kubis, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, called on other nations to send extra observers to assist with the audit as soon as possible.
Discussions on Saturday concerned how to determine how many ballots should be re-examined for fraud and how to ensure that the audit was impartial. Both sides had wrangled over the technical details, in particular the threshold for selecting which ballots should be reviewed.
Continue reading the main story
RECENT COMMENTS
Cole W 12 minutes ago
I highly doubt this will solve anything once the audit is all said and done. One side will claim victory once again and the other will cry...
Yoandel 51 minutes ago
So both sides agree that ballot stuffing by the other side was incontrovertible and by the hundreds of thousands... yet an audit, which can...
Withheld 1 hour ago
I am looking forward to the follow-up article in the Times on how you audit a flawed election. What are the auditors going to be looking...
SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT
Mr. Kerry had to seek not only agreement by the two candidates, but also acceptance by Mr. Karzai, who will step down after 13 years in power and has by all accounts remained a powerful presence behind the scenes.
In the first round of voting on April 5, Mr. Abdullah emerged the top vote-getter against 11 other candidates, with 45 percent to Mr. Ghani’s 31 percent. Because neither won more than 50 percent of the vote, a required runoff between the two was held on June 14.
Preliminary results from the runoff show Mr. Ghani leaping ahead with 56 percent of the vote, and Mr. Abdullah with 44 percent. The turnout in the runoff also increased by more than a million voters, to eight million.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
Mr. Abdullah’s campaign has accused his opponents of conducting extensive institutional fraud, and has alleged that members of the Independent Election Commission, government officials and Ghani supporters orchestrated large-scale ballot stuffing to enable Mr. Ghani to win the presidency.
Mr. Ghani’s team has said that fraud took place on both sides and insists that his better showing in the runoff was the result of an energetic campaign to mobilize his fellow ethnic Pashtuns to vote for him.
The dispute, which has delayed results for nearly a month since the initial vote, comes amid a rise in violence around the country. Civilians are killed and wounded more frequently now in Afghanistan than at any point since the arrival of American forces, the International Crisis Group said in a statement on Saturday.
Seven members of the Afghan security forces were killed in clashes with the Taliban east of the capital in Laghman Province on Saturday.
Two tribal elders and a family of eight were killed in three separate attacks in southern Afghanistan, electricity has been knocked out in the city of Kandahar, and a bomb killed two people in Jalalabad.
CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY
57
COMMENTS
The power struggle between the candidates had threatened to once again plunge the country into ethnic violence. Some officials here warn that such an outcome could be even more dangerous for the country than the continuing Taliban insurgency.
“The legitimacy of this voting process is obviously at stake,” a senior administration official traveling with Mr. Kerry said in a briefing to journalists Friday evening. He was speaking on the condition that he not be named in accordance with State Department rules.
“There were millions of people that voted in the first round and then again in the second round of elections,” he said. “They deserve to be counted accurately and to demonstrate that democracy works.”
Correction: July 12, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the initial vote. It was April 5, not June 14. (The latter date was the day the runoff vote was held.)
Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
