THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Afghans did two amazing feats. First, they actually agreed on who was to be the new president. And secondly they signed a much sought after agreement to allow a uselessly small residual force of US Imperial troops to remain in Shitholeistan.

Their campaign workers traded blows over ballot boxes during an election widely seen as fraudulent. Some of the warlords backing them have muttered about starting a parallel government, a potential recipe for civil war in Afghanistan. And they’ve just come out of a vote so discredited that some officials don’t want the final tallies announced.

Now Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s new president-elect, and his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, have joined together in a national unity government in which they will share power.

After eight months of enmity over the protracted presidential election, with two rounds of voting, an international audit and power-sharing negotiations finally behind them, they will have to confront the challenges of jointly governing a country that in many ways is far worse off than it was before the campaign began last February...

The agreement forming the new government, brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry, who led an intense diplomatic effort over the past month, makes Mr. Abdullah or his nominee the chief executive of the government, with the sort of powers a prime minister normally has. While reporting to the president, the chief executive will handle the daily running of the government. At the same time, Mr. Ghani keeps all the powers granted to the president by the Afghan Constitution.

Already, supporters for each side have debated whether Mr. Ghani will have more power, or whether Mr. Abdullah will be an equal partner.

That does not bode well. Neither did the brief ceremony Sunday afternoon during which the two men signed the power-sharing agreement in front of President Karzai and their top supporters.

They hugged one another stiffly afterward, to decidedly tepid applause, and the entire event lasted less than a quarter-hour. They failed to show up for a planned joint news conference on Sunday, sending spokesmen instead...

They both say they plan to sign the bilateral security agreement with the United States the moment they take office. Delayed a year because Mr. Karzai refused to sign it, the agreement is necessary if American troops are to remain in Afghanistan after the end of the current combat mission this year.

With 30,000 Americans and 17,000 other coalition troops still here, planning a sudden withdrawal by the end of the year would have been a challenge, but neither leader wants to renegotiate the agreement. Only a handful of Afghan military and police units are rated as completely self-sufficient without coalition support, which would potentially make a total pullout a disaster that neither leader wants.

There are strong indications, too, that the Taliban have taken advantage of the power vacuum caused by the long election imbroglio to step up their campaign, carrying out 700 ground offensives in the first six months of the current Afghan year, which began March 21, and killing 1,368 policemen and 800 soldiers, more than in any similar period.

Let's face it, the agreement serves only two purposes. One it allows the Taliban to keep potting away at their favorite targets, now weakened by the removal of full support. And the left-behinds serve as an Imperial trigger to let us re-enter Shitholeistan if the Taliban should ever behead anyone worth noticing. If anyone in the Pentagon still believes we can win there, they need to be retired ASAP.