20 February 2018•Update: 20 February 2018
By Shadi Khan Saif
KABUL, Afghanistan
In the wake of growing rift between the main factions of the Afghan unity government, a provincial governor on Tuesday acknowledged his termination orders by the president after initial refusal last week.
In a seemingly routine move, the government on Sunday issued a list of replacements for five out of 34 provincial governors. But, Abdul Karim Khudam, the ousted governor of northern Samangan province, announced he would not be stepping down.
Khudam belongs to the Jamait-e-Islami party, part of the ruling coalition whose leader Atta Mohammad Noor set the precedence of refusing to step down as governor of Balkh province in December last year.
Since 2004, Noor had been the governor of the Balkh province bordering Uzbekistan. Noor’s Jamiat party has been in power since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 thanks to the U.S. backing.
While warning the government against using the international community and foreign forces present in Afghanistan to put pressure on him, Noor had also lashed out at his own colleague and President Ashraf Ghani’s power-sharing Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah for conspiring for his removal.
After intense negotiations, Khudam acknowledged his termination on Tuesday.
According to the local Salam Afghanistan radio, the Jamiat party only allowed their rival party Hezb-e-Islami’s Abdul Latif Ibrahimi to take charge as governor of Samangan when the government ensured to provide Jamiat at least three top slots in the government in return.
The ousted governor Khudam belongs to the country’s ethnic Turkmen minority while the new governor hails from the ethnic Uzbek minority. Members of the Turkmen community took to the streets against the removal of Khudam.
The U.S.-brokered National Unity Government was created after the 2014 presidential elections, but it is beset with disagreements.
Last year, Jamiat’s leader Noor bypassed Abdullah to enter formal negotiations over power-sharing matters with the president, but the negotiations ended without any results. He then formed a new anti-government coalition together with Vice President Abdul Rasheed Dostum and Deputy CEO Mohammad Mohaqiq.
