BBC, 24 September 2014
Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, quotes AAN’s Kate Clark in her analysis of the Afghan election outcome, the apprehension it created and the personnel – much of it with a well-known past – involved in it:
“At best, they will now work as partners with a common goal.” observes Kate Clark of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network. “At worst, all those tasks will re-open or keep open old divides and rivalries.”
Lyse adds:
“Indeed, when cameras of Afghan state television focused in the other direction [away from Ghani and Abdullah], they found the same mujahideen leaders from the war in the 1980s against Soviet rule, sitting in the front row – all except those who were assassinated or died of illness in their advanced age.
Even if many of the faces in the front are the same, Afghans searching for a slim seam of hope say that, in some ways at least, these men of guns had to change as they fought a different kind of battle for Afghan votes.”
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This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
