Even if Afghanistan were at peace, the organization of the first-ever presidential election would be a challenge. Originally the UN reckoned around 9.9 million Afghans were eligible to vote including some 1.5 million refugees in Pakistan and another 800,000 in Iran. Registered voters would use 25,000 polling stations to choose from the slate of no less than 18 presidential candidates.
The registration process quickly proved to be fraught with danger. UN workers were murdered and others driven from some provinces. It was feared this summer that collapsing security meant insufficient numbers of voters would have been recorded to make the election credible. Now it appears that far more voters have been registered than there are eligible Afghans. There must therefore be justifiable suspicion that a fair amount of deception and fraud has gone into the registration process. If that is so the result is likely to be challenged by some of the losing candidates and this could dangerously undermine the mandate of Afghanistan’s first “free-elected” president.
The remnants of the Taleban and the Al-Qaeda allies are clearly intent on disrupting the election, however flawed the process. It is unlikely that what looks like a rare defeat yesterday for the militants in Kabul province will slow up their campaign against October’s vote. The attack on a US patrol by 40 insurgents reportedly resulted in 22 militants being killed and three, including an Arab being captured. It must be wondered how many eligible Afghans in this strife-torn southeastern province have in reality dared to put their names down to vote.
President Hamid Karzai’s sacking of Herat’s Governor Ismail Khan has produced an even bigger problem in the west of the country. Khan is one of the traditional leaders whom the Americans prefer to call warlords whose power Karzai promised to break. It was always debatable if the Afghan government whose writ runs most strongly only around the capital Kabul, could exert its authority elsewhere. The firing of Khan is a dangerous move at a sensitive time. The first impact was upon UN personnel in the city, including election officials. Rioting supporters of the ousted city governor ransacked the organization’s premises and forced the evacuation of the entire UN contingent.
Clearly unless the UN can return to Herat soon to organize the elections in this western province, the campaigning and the actual voting in this region may be in serious doubt. It is certainly curious that the Afghan president chose this precise moment to take on Ismail Khan.
The angry and violent reaction of his supporters was entirely predictable. Unless the Afghan government is able to complete Khan’s ouster and quell unrest, it is likely that Herat province and possibly its neighbors Farah, Zaranji and Kaleh-Ye-Now will have such unrest the elections cannot be held there. This could expose President Karzai to the allegation that he is seeking to delay the day he must seek re-election.
