Kabul : After an exhausting and contentious election process, Ashraf Ghani, a US-educated anthropologist turned reformist politician, has finally been sworn in as president of Afghanistan in the first peaceful transfer of power since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The ceremony at the presidential palace in Kabul marked the country’s first democratic transfer of power and opened a new era after the rule of Hamid Karzai, president since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001.The ceremony at the presidential palace in Kabul marked the country’s first democratic transfer of power and opened a new era after the rule of Hamid Karzai, president since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001.
The June presidential election was engulfed in disputes over fraud, but international donors welcomed the inauguration as a key legacy of the costly military and civilian intervention in Afghanistan. NATO’s US-led combat mission will end in three months but the Taliban still pose a serious threat to national stability, having launched several fresh offensives in recent months.
“We ask opponents of the government, specially the Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami (another militant group), to enter political talks,” Ghani said after being sworn in. “Any problems that they have, they should tell us, we will find a solution. We ask every villager to call for peace. We ask Muslim scholars to advise the Taliban, and if they don’t listen to their advice, they should cut off any relations.”
Karzai also pursued peace talks with the Taliban, but preliminary efforts collapsed last year when a Taliban office that opened in Qatar was styled as an embassy for a government-in-exile. The security threat in Kabul was underlined by a suicide attack near the airport today in which police said four civilians were killed. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
