ALJAZEERA: Afghanistan’s presidential election is set to go to a second-round runoff between former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai after none of the candidates won an absolute majority, preliminary results showed on Saturday.
The winner will oversee a tumultuous period, as the United States and NATO are expected to withdraw most of their troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. President Hamid Karzai, whose relations with Washington have sharply deteriorated, was constitutionally barred from running for a third term.
Abdullah, who ran against Karzai in the last election, garnered 44.9 percent of the vote, putting him ahead of Ghani’s 31.5 percent, according to the chairman of the Independent Election Commission, Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani… (more)
