Afghanistan: Editorial : The Guardian view on Afghanistan’s new government: better late than never --- It won’t be Surrey, a British general said earlier this year, discussing the approaching Afghan elections. After two votes, much wrangling over cheating, an elaborate investigation of irregularities, and anguished mediation by the US and the UN, it’s even less like Surrey. Afghanistan finally has a new government, but it is one uneasily based on power-sharing between the declared winner, Ashraf Ghani, and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah. Neither would concede victory to the other after the second-round elections in June, and the only way to prevent a complete collapse of the political process was to offer a deal that would give both men and their followers roles in a “government of national unity”. US secretary of state John Kerry backed that up with threats that Afghanistan could lose the aid it desperately needs if they did not settle and, grudgingly and cantankerously, they eventually have. With the Taliban returning to areas from which they had long been cleared and the economy in disarray, this delay, and the divisions that caused it, are exactly what Afghanistan did not need. -- There are two ways of looking at what has happened. One is to see the new government as almost bound to fail, as the rival blocks manoeuvre for advantage, exploit their ministerial posts for every bit of patronage they can extract, maintain competing, and corrupt, networks of allies in the provinces, and use the veto power inherent in such an arrangement to sabotage policies they do not like. The record for power-sharing of this kind is not good. In Cambodia and Zimbabwe, one partner swallowed the other. In Cyprus, government was paralysed, and war followed. In Iraq, one community was gradually excluded, with the unhappy results we see today. In Northern Ireland, where the phrase “power-sharing” first came into use, the picture is better, but there you have joint pressure from London and Dublin to keep people up to the mark. -- The more hopeful view is that in the Afghan polity central government is weak and needs as many connections to local power centres as it can get. President Ghani is an impressive technocrat with a worked-out sheaf of projects for social and economic renewal. The sooner they can be started the better for Afghanistan, divided as it is between relatively prosperous cities and an impoverished countryside. There is also a war to be fought. The Taliban have been making gains, Pakistan continues to meddle, and Afghan security forces are not in good heart. But the Taliban are far from popular, as revolts against their control have demonstrated. If President Ghani and Mr Abdullah, both egotistical men, can really join forces, they could give Afghanistan a real chance of emerging from the chaos and violence that have characterised its life for too many years.