US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Afghanistan again to break the impasse over the results of the run-off presidential election. On his earlier visit Kerry managed to broker a deal between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, to first allow the audit of the entire balloting of the April 2014 presidential election and later in order to accommodate each other, to form a unity government through a constitutional amendment in favour of a parliamentary form of government that would carve out the space for the office of a prime minister. This transition would save Afghanistan from falling into another civil war that ravaged the country in the 1990s. Afghanistan’s political landscape is still frighteningly divided along ethnic and sectarian lines. Unless a popular government is installed with the inherent magnanimity to accommodate the differences posed by varying factions, all desiring to capture the centre of power, Afghanistan will never become a nation-state. So far the signs are not promising. The audit is running into trouble since both the contenders have lost patience with the idea of power sharing. Abdullah is asking for clarity on the political agreement while Ghani does not want to commit unless the audit is complete. The audit had to be stopped on several occasions when brawls broke out between Abdullah and Ghani’s supporters. Kerry has pressurised both the parties to allow the process to run its course so that a government in Afghanistan is formed by September. In the meantime the US’s efforts in Afghanistan have been affected by the killing of Major General Harold Greene, the highest ranking US official to be killed in combat since the Vietnam War, by an Afghan solider. It is not the first ‘insider’ attack, though the target was the biggest so far. The attack wounded 15 other foreign and Afghan soldiers. The attacker, who was also killed, was from the eastern province of Paktia. The district has been the base of the Haqqani network and is hiding Maulana Fazlullah, the absconding Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan head. Green-on-blue attacks, as insider attacks have come to be known, have since 2008 killed 143 western officials in 88 incidents. The US is depending on the Afghan National Army to take control of Afghanistan as the drawdown of US-led NATO forces begins by the end of this year. Is the US really confident of the Afghan army’s ability to take care of the mess being left behind by the war? The killing has also raised questions about the selection and vetting process adopted to create the Afghan army. The situation in Afghanistan is far from normal and it seems the prophecy of George W Bush about a task (fighting terrorism) that never ends, is proving true. *