Workers bake bricks at a factory on the outskirts of Kabul, as laborers work at a residential development under construction within the capital.
Afghanistan’s two presidential candidates pledged to respect the result of a vote audit and try install the winner by the end of August after meetings with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai set up a commission to agree on an inauguration date, Ghani said in a recent statement. Both have also agreed on a framework for a national unity government, Abdullah said.
More from the Bloomberg News report by Sangwon Yoon and Eltaf Najafizada:
Time is running short for the U.S. and Afghanistan to sign a pact that would keep American troops in the war-torn country beyond this year. Failure to reach a deal would elevate concerns that Afghanistan may go the way of Iraq, where militants have made gains against government forces after a U.S. withdrawal.
President Barack Obama is reviewing security measures after an Afghan soldier this past week shot dead the highest ranking U.S. military officer in 13 years of war. Obama plans to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 9,800 by the end of this year, with only a small force at the embassy by the end of 2016, when he will be preparing to leave office.
Thirteen years of the U.S. fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan has cost 2,339 American lives, as of Aug. 6, according to date compiled by Bloomberg. Afghan civilian casualties rose 24 percent in the first half of 2014 from the same period a year earlier, according to a report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Kabul.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
