KABUL, Afghanistan — In a rupture that could send seismic cracks through Afghanistan’s shaky political landscape, one of the country’s most powerful leaders has definitively broken with President Ashraf Ghani after months of alternating between private negotiations and public denunciations of his government.
Atta Mohammad Noor, 53, the last remaining Afghan regional strongman and the governor of Balkh province for the past 16 years, has either resigned or been fired, according to various statements and interpretations that circulated Monday in the capital.
The president’s office said Noor had “offered his resignation” at some point in the past and had been replaced, but associates of Noor, a leader of the influential Jamiat-i-Islami party, said that the offer had been made “conditionally” during talks last year and that because his demands were not met, his dismissal would not be accepted.
Noor made no public comment Monday, but Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani, the head of Jamiat, issued a statement calling Ghani’s replacement of Noor a “hasty, irresponsible act against the stability and security of Afghanistan.”
