KABUL, 11 August 2004 — Afghanistan’s US-backed President Hamid Karzai will face 17 challengers including former ally and Education Minister Yunus Qanuni in historic presidential elections, the electoral commission announced yesterday.
The final list of 18 candidates for the Oct. 9 polls, announced by the Joint Electoral Management Body in Kabul, also includes northern warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, one woman and a poet.
The main contest is expected to be between Karzai and Qanuni, who is part of the powerful ethnic Tajik bloc of former anti-Taleban commanders from the Northern Alliance.
An original total of 23 had registered to run for the elections. Chairman of the JEMB, Zakim Shah said three withdrew, and two could not meet JEMB conditions.
Shah said that the JEMB had received 115 objections regarding 11 candidates, including human rights violations, crimes against civil rights, looting and political objections.
Shah said that the JEMB had asked the Afghan Supreme Court and other related organizations whether the candidates had been convicted of the relevant crimes. He said the JEMB did not receive proof of the allegations and so, according to law, the JEMB was not in a position to disqualify any of the candidates.
The joint UN-Afghan commission has decided “that three of them were to be rejected for failure to comply with the nomination procedures,” it said in a press statement.
The sole woman candidate is a doctor, Massouda Jalal. Candidates had to prove they had the support of at least 10,000 voters by showing their registration cards.
Some candidates failed to gather the requisite number of supporters’ cards, while others have dual citizenship, which also disqualifies them from running, officials close to the process told AFP.
Speaking to Reuters days earlier, Massouda, in halting English, made a vow. “If they give this historical trust I will give myself and this body...” she said. The 41-year-old doctor and mother of three leaned forward to add: “And with the courage of a lion.”
Her experience working as a pediatrician with the United Nations during the Taleban’s harsh rule from 1996 to 2001 has made her determined to stand up for women’s rights in a country dominated not only by men, but men with guns.
Her main vote bank will be women who have had little political say in the country but now make up 42 percent of the 9.4 million Afghans who have registered to vote so far. She is from a line of strong women.
Massouda’s mother, almost uniquely in Afghanistan’s male dominated society, led her tribe after her husband died. Defeatism is not in her character and she firmly rejects notions that she is a no-hoper despite being an independent.
“I have no press power, no financial power, I have no military power, no political organization - but this voice and picture of me has gone to the very far places of the country. Who is doing this, the people, the communities are doing this.”
Two years ago she came a distant second to Karzai in a vote by 1,700 representatives of Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) to choose a president. She refused to serve in Karzai’s government as it would have been, in her view, a betrayal of her supporters. But her election as a Loya Jirga delegate, after a campaign lasting just one day, fired her supporters’ ambitions.
Backed by the international community and hailing from Afghanistan’s largest ethnic Pushtun group, Karzai is seen as capable of heading a multi-ethnic government and is still the favorite to win the presidential race. But in recent weeks the president, elected as transitional leader by a traditional council of tribal leaders in 2002, has lost the backing of some of his former allies.
Qanuni, who has the support of powerful Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, was expected to pose a serious challenge to Karzai.
The trio of Qanuni, Fahim and Abdullah — ethnic Tajiks from northern Afghanistan’s Panjsher Valley — were senior members of the Northern Alliance that joined with US-led troops to topple the fundamentalist Taleban regime in 2001.
Tajiks are Afghanistan’s second largest ethnic group, standing at between 12 and 25 percent of the population. However, the inclusion of other commanders such as Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek who was also part of the Northern Alliance, has the potential to divide any anti-Karzai movement.
Dostum commands the support of both the Uzbek and Turkmen ethnic minorities and is based near Afghanistan’s largest northern city Mazar-e-Sharif.
Also standing is ethnic Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqeq. The Hazaras - Afghanistan’s largest Shia minority, represent around eight percent of the population. Some of the northern Afghan candidates command large militias, giving rise to fears that rivalry between Karzai and the northern bloc could spawn violence.
“Many times people have expressed that security is their most important concern. They can’t trust pledges of nonviolence from candidates because (violence) has been a way of life,” said Telibert Laoc, of the US-based National Democratic Institute in Kabul.
Parliamentary elections have been pushed back to April 2005 due to rife insecurity, largely the result of a rising insurgency by Taleban loyalists in the south and southeast.
On Saturday, two electoral workers were slain in an ambush in southern Afghanistan, bringing to 12 the number of electoral staff killed in pre-poll violence.
Since July 29, when the preliminary list of candidates was published, the process has been marked by horse trading between key political players trying to garner support from other potential candidates, analysts have said.
Karzai’s chosen running mate Abdul Karim Khalili was also allowed to stay on the president’s ticket despite being accused of past crimes.
US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad says he has assurances from Fahim that he will honor the political process, but there are still fears that rivalries could turn violent in the heat of elections, especially if the vote is close-run.
Some 20,000 US-led troops are hunting the Taleban and its allies in the south and east, while a NATO peacekeeping force will be reinforced to total around 8,500 by the time the elections begin.
