Ashraf Ghani, offering 'a new beginning' for Afghanistan

by Sardar AHMAD

KABUL, June 13, 2009 (AFP) - Ashraf Ghani built an impressive international career during many years of exile and now he wants Afghanistan's top job, emerging as one of President Hamid Karzai's toughest rivals.

Ghani, whose campaign is billed "A New Beginning", says he has a moral obligation to stand in the August 20 elections and offer his country an alternative to years of misrule.

"This is a government of corruption, violation of the human rights, continued violence, waste of public resources," he told AFP in a recent interview.

The academic was himself once part of Karzai's government, serving as finance minister between 2002 and 2004 after returning to Afghanistan at the ouster of the Islamist Taliban regime in 2001.

Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun born in a village near Kabul in 1949, had left in 1977 to do a master's degree in anthropology but was stopped from returning by the Soviet invasion and ensuing years of war.

During his time in exile, he finished the degree and went on to earn a doctorate before taking on various academic positions at top US universities and joining the World Bank in 1991 as an anthropologist.

It was a job he held until the ouster of the Taliban, when he was quickly drawn into international efforts to help his destitute and shattered nation.

His stint as finance minister resulted in an achievement of which he is proud - the creation the National Solidarity Programme, a project aimed at empowering and helping the rural poor who make up the bulk of Afghan society.

"Over 500 million dollars has gone to these villages," Ghani told AFP.

He believe this success will translate into votes at polling day.

"They know my voice," he said. "The only person who has addressed the issues of rural Afghanistan has been me ... you put me in front of any rural village in Afghanistan and see who connects to who."

Ghani has meanwhile established one of the most sophisticated campaigns in the field of 41, including a website that offers wallpapers, widgets and web banners and describes him as the "most qualified candidate".

His vision includes "one million dwelling units, one million jobs, 10,000 megawatts of electricity, the opening up of central Afghanistan, an agriculture where we raise our income per capita from one dollar a day to four dollars a day," he told AFP.

He has a 20-year development plan to boost the economy and create jobs, saying that rampant unemployment is one key drivers of the Taliban insurgency which relies on young men recruits.

"In two years, my goal would be that 60 percent of the population will be saying that things are going in the right direction," he said confidently.

Ghani, who gave up his US citizenship to run in the election and has two children with his Lebanese wife, has also been chancellor of Kabul University.

In 2006 he was in the running to replace Kofi Annan as UN secretary general.

He offers the Afghan public a sound plan for growth that has been lacking, analyst and parliamentarian Ahmad Behzad told AFP.

"Presenting serious economic projects will be his slogan and that could well influence the public since Karzai's government has had no proper economic strategies for the country," he said.