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Afghanistan

Mapping the Afghan elections

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"If I say a [fully free and fair] election is possible at this time it is merely a lie. If I say it is impossible I block the only way forward." This observation made by a provincial councilor of the insurgency-ridden Ghazni province very accurately captures the dilemma that Afghanistan faces on the eve of its most crucial elections.

The second Afghan presidential elections are scheduled for 20 August. With 4.4 million new registered voters and 41 presidential candidates - the two most prominent being the Northern Alliance leader Abdullah Abdullah and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai - and 3,300 provincial council candidates (10 per cent of them being women) in the fray, the elections are more than just about choosing the country's future leader. These elections are about choosing the future itself, for these elections will play a key role in deciding not just who leads the country, but also how and in which direction.

This US $230 million exercise - largely funded by the international community - will be an Afghan- led exercise entirely under the control of the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) which in addition to its 400 permanent staff will be assisted by165,000 personnel spread across over 7,000 polling stations guarded by the Afghan National Army and Police. However, these numbers appear inadequate in light of the deteriorating security environment and mounting civilian casualties. Further, the failure to build institutions, rampant corruption, an absence of direly needed judicial and police reforms and above all a failure to address the most basic issues of governance are just some of the daunting challenges that lie ahead.

By the IEC head Ahmed Nader Nadrey's own admission, 11 electoral districts in southern Afghanistan were under total Taliban control while another 124 out of the 390 electoral districts faced serious security threats from the Taliban. Though a military operation christened as "Operation Khanjar" - the biggest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 - was launched in the Helmand province - a hotbed for the insurgency - on 2 July, its outcome remains uncertain. In light of the security situation in southern Afghanistan, serious doubts are being cast on the ability to hold elections at all and if elections are held at all whether they will be fair and credibile.

This has serious repercussions as a majority of the insurgency-ravaged areas are demographically dominated by ethnic Pushtuns and were such a situation to materialize it could foster a perception of Pashtun disenfranchisement vis-a-vis other ethnic groups. The problem is compounded with the non-registration of refugees, the majority of whom happen to be Pashtun, in Pakistan and Iran for the voting process. These developments could potentially trigger off immense socio-political polarization and give rise to a serious credibility crisis for the new occupant of the presidential palace in Kabul.

In fact, the challenge of establishing the rule of law, upholding basic human rights and expanding and entrenching the government writ beyond the confines of Kabul has been magnified by Hamid Karzai's political alliances ahead of the polls such as his choice of Mohammed Qasim Fahim - a former Tajik warlord with a notorious human rights record - as his vice presidential nominee in the hope of expanding his vote-bank amongst the Tajiks.

However, stitching up such socio-political alliances alone will not suffice for ensuring Karzai's return to Kabul, given the tremendous growth in private media - Afghanistan has 17 private television license holders, several radio stations and hundreds of titles in print - under immensely trying circumstances, perception management will play a crucial role in moulding opinions. The media surge for the first time has exposed the populace to a plethora of information, its flow unmediated by any middleman, thus allowing a large proportion of the population to critically review the government's performance. Thus, the media, which the government has often tried to censor, is a new and important dynamic in the elections. This to large measure accounts for Karzai's refusal to sign into law a new media bill passed by the National Assembly in March 2008, which would have transformed the national broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) from a state to a public broadcaster thus allowing it greater freedom of action.

The manner of conduct and outcome of the Afghan elections will have significant political and psychological ramifications. While politically it will build on and hopefully add momentum to the political process underway since 2004. Psychologically, a successful election will play a vital role in uplifting the spirit of the Afghan people and lend some credibility to the Afghan state. However for Afghanistan, the even bigger challenge will be in the post-election phase, where it will be imperative for the new incumbent in office to build on the lost momentum and deliver decisively on issues of governance and nation-building if he wishes to turn the tide against an increasingly confident Taliban and its irredentist ideology.

Contact:

Raghav Sharma
Research Officer, IPCS
e-mail: raghav@ipcs.org