With all votes counted in Afghanistan, tensions are rising as some have been quick to anoint Ashraf Ghani as the new Afghan president, while others, including leading opposition candidate and previous frontrunner Dr. Abdullah Abdullah have labeled the election a “coup” and have refused to recognize the results of the election. The Afghan Independent Election Commission announced that Ghani received nearly 56% of the votes in the June 14 run-off, and that Abdullah received a mere 44%. This result has been widely questioned, and Abdullah even backed out of the race when it began to look like Ghani would win by landslide. The Afghan turnout for the initial, pre-runoff vote was considered an all-time high for the country, and led many to believe that the results of the runoff were fixed as they alleged that more than 7,000 new voters came out in support of Ghani.

The results of the election doubles place the country in a precarious position. It is doubtful that Ghani will capitulate, and that Abdullah will ever accept the results of the election without a thorough auditing of the votes by an external body, a possibility likely to be ruled out by Afghan electoral commissions.  If the status quo is maintained, Afghanistan faces the possibility of being divided along ethnic lines. Abdullah, who is an influential Tajik, and Ghani, an influential Pashtun, will likely maintain the support of their own ethnic groups, as well as Hamid Karzai, the current Afghan president and accused accomplice in voting irregularities. Adding to the dilemma is the seeming resurgence of large-scale Taliban military action in the country’s southwest. As recently as yesterday, Taliban forces attacked and killed an Afghan police chief in the western Afghan city of Herat and assaulted a checkpoint in northern Afghanistan. With the country seemingly divided along ethnic lines, a concerted effort to curb violence in the southwest is unlikely, placing the country’s future further in jeopardy.

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News Briefs: 

• Kazakhstan and Belarus have rejected a Russian plan to raise duties on Ukrainian goodsas a stipulation of the Customs Union framework that exists between the three countries. The announcement was made formally at a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Commission council. The move is thought to be a reprisal after Petro Poroshenko signed the economic agreement that would set the stage for a free trade zone between Ukraine and the EU. Kazakhstan is thought to have rejected the proposal due to its own bid to join the World Trade Organization, which Ukraine could block if it chooses as a consequence of raising tariff duties.

• Perhaps the most notable aspect of the Ukrainian armies push into Donetsk, Luhansk, and Slovyansk rebel strongholds is that Putin has made no statement about it, nor made any obvious moves to curtail the Ukrainian army as it rolls through the eastern territories. Some ultra-nationalist Russian figures have taken this as a betrayal, in particular Alexander Dugin, who predicts that the betrayal could split Putin from his key electoral base of “patriotic” Russians, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

• Kyrgyzstan has been removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) “gray list,”a move that Joomart Otorbayev says will encourage investment in the country.  The “gray list” includes countries that are subject to global financial crime law restrictions related to terrorism. The FATF is an intergovernmental body that formed in 1989 and has maintained a list ever since. Otorbayev cited that the FATF list commands great respect and that “our system doesn’t take risks… and meets global standards.”

• The P5+1 powers are making little headway with Iran during negotiations ahead of the July 20^th deadline. Both sides are attempting to address the issues that remain ahead of the deadline. Two diplomats told the Associated Press that there is still a disagreement on the constraints Iran is ready to accept, with the biggest hurdle being uranium enrichment. Iran still maintains 20,000 active centrifuges that are churching out reactor grade fuel. Weapons-grade fuels require a much greater concentration of the radioactive uranium isotopes, and one of the West’s biggest demands is the dismantling of at least half of these reactors.