Responding to recent remarks made by presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai regarding the possibility of unrest in response to the result of this year’s election, Balkh Governor Atta Mohammad Noor on Tuesday warned of a potential uprising if the presidency is won through fraud.
“Leader of Change and Continuity laughed at my remarks, and as you may have observed, this laughing exposes his abnormality,” Noor said. "We do not have complaints, laughing has its own place...But he said uprising against who? I say uprising against the one who arrives through fraud, against the one winning by corrupted votes - uprising against the one who doesn’t know about religion and whose children and wife are not Afghans.”
The exchanges between Ashraf Ghani and Noor, a powerful northern figure who is connected to the Abdullah Abdullah campaign and considered the de-facto leader of Afghanistan’s Uzbek community, began when the Balkh Governor did an interview with the Washington Post on August 14. At the time, Noor warned that if the vote audit process was biased, the outcome would not be accepted.
"If the vote recount is one-sided or fraudulent, we will not bow down and accept the results," he said.
In a subsequent interview with Radio Azadi, presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani was asked what his reaction was to Noor's remarks. "Uprising?" Ghani questioned, bursting into laughter. "This is really funny. It made me laugh. Think about it: Dr. Abdullah is an official of a team and is a national leader. He has promised to accept the result of the audit; no one can create an uprising. It's simple; the people of Afghanistan do not want an uprising.”
Whether Ashraf Ghani will offer another response to Noor’s most recent remarks remains to be seen. For now, his spokesman, Faizullah Zaki, has declined to comment.