President Ashraf Ghani enters a second term with his legitimacy challenged.
Photo: omar sobhani/ReutersKABUL—Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has won a second term in office with a slim majority of the votes cast, a result that comes five months after the election and threatens to spark political unrest amid U.S. efforts to reach a peace deal with the Taliban.
The country’s election commission said Tuesday that Mr. Ghani won 50.64% of the votes cast in the Sept. 28 poll, confirming preliminary results it released in December. The incumbent leader just exceeded the threshold needed to avoid a runoff against his top rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who drew 39.52% of the vote.
The result, announced amid heightened security around the election commission’s headquarters in Kabul, assigns Mr. Ghani another five years in power. But it also risks throwing Afghanistan into political turmoil that could threaten the peace process.
Abdullah Abdullah, who lost the vote and alleged fraud amid low turnout, didn’t say how he would form a parallel government.
Photo: Rahmat Gul/Associated PressMr. Abdullah, who had alleged fraud amid record-low voting, immediately vowed to form a parallel government, echoing recent pledges from his supporters.
“The result announced today stole the elections. It was a coup on democracy,” Mr. Abdullah said hours after the commission’s statement. “We will form an inclusive government.”
Mr. Abdullah didn’t say how he would form a government, but Mr. Ghani will enter a second term with his legitimacy challenged as his administration heads toward expected talks with the Taliban aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement of the more than 18-year Afghan war.
“The moment has come when we all put our hands together and bring peace to every village, valley and corner of our country,” Mr. Ghani said in a speech at the presidential palace, aired on state television. “Our team will bring peace for all Afghanistan.”
The U.S. and the Taliban last week agreed on the first step of a peace deal meant to lead to a reduction in violence and talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government as early as March, a potential milestone in the war.
If successful over a seven-day initial period, the reduction in violence is intended to lead to the signing of a peace agreement between the Taliban and the U.S. and a reduction in American troop numbers.
Yet, the potential for the peace process to crumble and the country to slide back into violence remains high. The Taliban have so far refused to recognize as legitimate any Afghan government supported by the U.S., dismissing them as lackeys of Washington.
“Holding elections and announcing oneself a president under occupation shall never remedy the problems of our Muslim Afghan nation, just as it has failed to do so over the past nineteen years,” the Taliban said after Tuesday’s announcement. The group warned that the announcement was at odds with the current peace process.
Mr. Abdullah and other opposition figures who protest Mr. Ghani’s re-election also have the potential to spoil the process, experts say.
The Taliban have an interest in peeling opposition factions off from the government, and Mr. Abdullah and others may seek to engage with the insurgents independently from the government to secure their own position, said Andrew Watkins, senior Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group.
“It’s unclear if other parties will openly break with the government’s line,” Mr. Watkins said, adding that it was very likely they would seek to secure their own interests in a way that could undercut the pro-government message of unity.
The stakes involved in the peace process are immense.
The United Nations counted a record 8,200 civilian casualties, including 2,563 deaths, in the first nine months of 2019.
In the last three months of 2019, attacks by the Taliban and other armed antigovernment groups hit a 10-year high, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an independent U.S. government watchdog agency.
Twenty-three U.S. soldiers were killed last year, the highest number since the international combat mission wound down in 2014.
Tuesday’s result comes after Mr. Abdullah had demanded that election authorities invalidate about 300,000 ballots that he alleged were fraudulent out of the total of 1.82 million cast in the election. Fewer than 19% of the country’s registered voters and about only 5% of its estimated 35 million people turned out to cast ballots amid threats of Taliban violence and voter apathy. The election itself was twice postponed for security and technical reasons.
The election commission said it conducted an audit of some 240,000 disputed votes after candidates filed approximately 16,000 complaints.
Mr. Abdullah walked out of the audit process, blaming the electoral bodies of what he called illegal doings.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
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