LONDON, 13 August 2004 — As Afghanistan moves toward its first presidential election, scheduled for Oct. 9, an international cacophony is calling for the exercise to be scrapped or postponed.
Having started within the international aid community, the cacophony is now spreading to policymaking circles in the European Union and the United Nations.
Some Europeans fear that images of Afghans, especially women, going to the polls would portray Afghanistan as a success story for President George W. Bush thus helping his re-election bid in November. They want the Americans to see a different image of Afghanistan, one of mayhem, so as to prove that Bush was wrong in going to war in Afghanistan just as he was wrong in going to war in Iraq.
It is no surprise that those who see the Afghan elections as a new version of the mythical “October Surprise” want the exercise postponed until after the American presidential election.
Whether or not Bush strategists chose the Afghan election date for electoral reasons of their own, what matters is that Washington should stick to a timetable that is almost unanimously accepted by the Afghans.
Until a month ago, opponents of the Afghan elections claimed that the exercise would be impossible because the remnants of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda would not allow enough voters to register. Some predicted that 10 percent of Afghans eligible to vote would obtain voting papers before October. Now, however, figures published by the United Nations team that helps organize the elections show that nearly 90 percent of those eligible have registered. By polling day registration may be close to 100 percent.
Another argument advanced in favor of canceling or postponing the elections is that the Afghans are not ready for democracy.
Such a claim, however, is too vague to examine in a serious way.
In what way are the Afghans not ready?
It is true that a majority of Afghans are poor and illiterate. But does one need to be rich and well educated to have a say in shaping decisions that concern one? A majority of voters in India and Bangladesh, for example, are also poor and illiterate. But that has not prevented either nation from holding regular elections.
Yet another argument is that Afghan politics is dominated by “warlords” whose presence renders elections meaningless.
The term “warlord”, however, is misplaced in the context of current Afghan politics. Since the late 1970s and until liberation in 2002, Afghanistan did not have a normal political life. It was a nation at war, first against the Soviet invaders, then among rival groups fighting for power, and finally against the Taleban and their Pakistani and Arab terrorist allies.
As a result all the leaders who emerged from those years had a war background.
Who are the “warlords” we hear about so much?
There is Gen. Muhammad Qassim Fahim, a leader of the ethnic Tajiks who claims to be political heir to the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of modern Afghanistan’s anti-Communist national heroes.
Fahim is currently vice president and defense minister. Until last week everyone expected him to be a vice presidential running-mate for President Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pushtun, who enjoys American support.
Last week, however, Karzai decided to leave Fahim out. Instead he put Ahmad Zia Massoud, a brother of Ahmad Shah Massoud, on the ticket.
Unhappy at being left out, Fahim encouraged another ethnic Tajik leader, Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, to announce his own bid for the presidency. Qanooni is backed by several prominent ethnic Tajik leaders, including Foreign Minister Abdullah Zamariani.
With a Pushtun candidate, Karzai, and a Tajik one, Qanooni, in the field, it was no surprise that the country’s two other big ethnic groups, the Uzbeks and the Hazara, would also field candidates.
The Uzbeks are fielding Abdul Rashid Dostum, who could also be described as a “warlord” because he was a militia commander under the Communist regime before breaking with it to lead his forces against them. But Dostum is also the founder and leader of a bona fide political party with genuine support in parts of the north.
Finally, the Hazara, Persian-speaking Shiites of Mongol origin, will have their favorite son candidate in the person of another “warlord”, Muhammad Muhaqqiq.
Let us not forget that Karzai himself could also be described as a “warlord”. He, too, was a commander in a guerrilla group fighting the Soviet-backed Communists. Before liberation he could not have gained normal political experience because there was no normal politics in Afghanistan. And everyone knows that he was named president as a result of a compromise between the US military and the Afghan “warlords” in the immediate post-Taleban era. All that does not diminish Karzai’s achievements and the popular base he has built in parts of the country.
That all the main ethnic groups have candidates of their own need not be seen as a negative factor.
The Afghan presidential election, designed on the French model, will take place in two rounds. If no candidate wins the first round with more than 50 percent of the votes, a second round is held two weeks later. It is thus natural that all communities should wish to show their respective strength in the primary round of the election, and then seek concessions from the two candidates that remain in the run-off.
This means that no candidate could win without attracting some votes from other ethnic groups.
Another argument used by those who want the elections canceled or postponed is that Iran and Pakistan try to affect the outcome. This is a real concern. Under the electoral law drafted earlier this year, Afghan refugees in both Iran and Pakistan will be able to vote in October.
Afghan refugees in Iran number 1.2 million of which some 500,000 can vote. It is possible that Iranian agents, using money or intimidation, might encourage the Afghan voters in refugee camps to cast ballots for Muhaqqiq, the candidate that Tehran favors. But Muhaqqiq’s own Hazara base, some 10 percent of the total Afghan population, is too small to enable him to win the presidency even with electoral fraud organized by the Iranians.
The problem of Afghan refugees in Pakistan is more complex.
In Iran all Afghan refugees have identity cards issued by the Iranian authorities and are thus readily recognized. In Pakistan Afghan refugees have no official papers. It is thus possible for the Pakistanis to inflate the number of Afghan voters in the refugee camps by sending large numbers of Pakistani Pushtuns to the polling stations ran by the UN.
Since there is no way of distinguishing an Afghan Pushtun from a Pakistani one, it would be hard for the UN team to prevent such fraud.
The question, however, is: Who will benefit from fake-Afghan voters in Pakistan? The answer is: Karzai, the only prominent Pushtun candidate. Fraud in Pakistan could only harm the chances of other ethnic candidates, especially Qanooni and Dostum. At the same time, however, fraud in Pakistan could cancel fraud in Iran.
There is, to be sure, a great deal of political chicanery going on in which the various powers interested in Afghanistan play a part. Nevertheless, it is vital to let the Afghans feel that they control their destiny.
Afghanistan’s first ever elections will not be as clean and as free as the Swiss. But nor would it be as dull. Let the Afghans vote.
