MAZAR-I-SHARIF: A second Afghan provincial governor defied an attempt by President Ashraf Ghani to remove him on Sunday, deepening a political crisis that has underlined the weakness of the Western-backed government in Kabul. Abdulkarim Khaddam, governor of the northern province of Samangan, followed the leader of neighboring Balkh province, Atta Mohammad Noor, in rejecting an order to step down, issued last week as part of a shakeup of regional governors. But the standoff has underlined the fractious political climate, marked by increasingly open divisions between Afghanistan’s mix of different ethnicities. Khaddam is an ethnic Turkman but both he and Atta Noor are from Jamiat-i Islami, a party mainly supported by Persian-speaking ethnic Tajiks that has been increasingly hostile to Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun. Although Ghani nominally shares power with Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah from Jamiat, the two sides have become more and more alienated, with Jamiat accusing Ghani of monopolizing power and favoring his own Pashtun supporters.

Source: Pakistan Today February 18, 2018 20:21 UTC