Afghanistan gears up for an election to replace interim president Hamid Karzai. After multiple postponements due to the slow pace of voter registration and continued violence and instability, critics question whether the country is ready for an election.
KABUL
Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House in early August, President George Bush addressed the issue of the approaching first popular presidential election in Afghanistan’s history on October 9. He cited the fact that, after some initial sluggishness, 8.7 million Afghans – some 90 percent of the eligible electorate – had registered to vote and obtained voter ID cards.
“That’s an unbelievable statement, isn’t it?” Bush said of the figures. “Nine million people have said to the world, ‘We love freedom, and we’re going to vote.'”
Yet while some hold the view that the vote marks a watershed in this country’s path to peace and the international community’s efforts against terror, there are an equal number of voices that question not only the viability and legitimacy of the exercise, but its significance to Afghanistan’s future.
“It is utterly unrealistic to expect Afghanistan to build the necessary democratic pillars in a few months time when it took modern democracies decades to do so,” Ansar Rahel, an Afghan-American lawyer known for his insightful observations on the relationship between the two countries, wrote in a widely commented on op-ed in the New York Times on July 19. “Everywhere in Afghanistan, democratic principles that need to incubate are being wholly ignored or bypassed.”
Rahel and others point out that besides the security issue of the inevitability of escalating Taliban attacks aimed at disrupting the process and warlord intimidation directed at influencing it, there are inherent structural deficiencies which place the meaningfulness of the election in doubt:
A largely illiterate electorate which is almost totally ignorant of the nature of democracy;
Lax registration procedures which open up the possibility of repeat voting and other abuses;
Grim reports from the provinces of potential voters caught between Taliban threats and government aggressiveness;
The impossibility of enforcing constitutional provisions against the military affiliation of and foreign financing of political parties due to the absence of supervisory bodies with effective police power;
Accusations that the vote will institutionalize a presidential dictatorship, as parliamentary elections, for which scant provisions have been made, are not to be held until the spring.
All of these pitfalls raise the issue of whether the polling will really be a free, fair, and democratic exercise which will finally break Afghanistan’s quarter century-long cycle of violence, and transform the “failed state” conditions which allowed the Taliban and al-Qaeda to thrive there in the first place.
THE RULE OF THE GUN
Afghans have a venerable centuries-long tradition of leaders seeking legitimacy and sounding out the popular will through the jirga system of tribal assemblies, where every adult male is allowed to speak before a decision is made by acclamation. However, their one fleeting acquaintance with anything approaching modern representative democracy was King Zahir Shah’s experiment with parliamentary constitutional monarchy during the decade before he was overthrown in 1973, a move taken to accommodate the growing demands of the Afghan middle class for a voice in government. Thirty years of dictatorship and relentless war have erased this false start as a reference point for a population the majority of which was not born at the time. Even the jirga tradition has suffered heavily from the devastation of the way of life that produced it, not to mention the substitution of the rule of the gun. The only relationship most Afghans have had with authority is as fighters doing the bidding of local commanders or civilians obeying the commands of such fighters.
“No matter if there is an election or not, power will belong to he who has the gun in any area,” says Haji Abdul Jaghori, a carpet dealer from the Hazara ethnic group who has plied his trade on Chicken Street in Kabul for 40 years. “There, he will be king. But this is not what Afghanistan needs. Afghanistan needs one president, not many kings, a president who will heal the many wounds of the people.”
The question of the appropriate means of bringing about such a vital transformation here is hotly debated. Both Afghan and foreign skeptics call for a substantial period of infrastructure building that has a solid foundation in the physical, economic, and educational reconstruction of the country. Advocates of moving forward with the election now believe that only by engaging in the electoral process, reviewing it, and then making adjustments to it, can Afghans acclimatize to democracy and make subsequent development easier. They point out that the Bonn Conference which was held in the wake of the Taliban defeat in late 2001 originally scheduled elections for no later than June, 2004, and that to further postpone them would amount to a delegitimization of the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai.
“Certainly, elections should not wait until the circumstances are perfect, but they should be delayed at least until the country develops a minimal capacity to handle them,” writes Rahel. “Imposing impractical deadlines on Afghans, particularly as they may be seen as favoring a particular candidate, imperils the democratic development that promotes good citizenship in an organized society. Elections must be delayed until the people can vote with some understanding of and experience with their new laws and processes and principles that, when understood, compel them to vote in the first place.”
TO WAIT, OR NOT TO WAIT…
“If not now, when is the right time?” counters Grant Kippen, the country director in Afghanistan for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, an American NGO established by Congress that promotes the building of democratic institutions worldwide. “Who will judge that? Commitments were made at Bonn that elections would be held within a certain period of time. This election in and of itself is going to be a learning experience. If we’re going to be successful in building a civil society we have to make people feel good about the process, and the best way to do that is to try and engage as many groups in society to participate in the process.”
Yet it is precisely the question of whether people will feel good about the process, or be further embittered by a “democratic” experience that is profoundly shaped by the prevailing conditions of corruption and force in Afghanistan, that has many experienced observers worried. Concerns about undue influences that will make a mockery of the vote are widespread in the country, even being voiced by some of the candidates themselves.
“What makes Afghans worried is interference in the process – money, warlords, the transitional government itself. And they don’t want any superpower to come in,” says Dr. Mas’uda Jalal, a respected pediatrician and psychiatrist who is the only woman running in a field of 18 candidates.
“They want the process to be healthy, transparent, and normal. If candidates have equal access to the media and financing, this can be achieved. Such conditions will be a prerequisite to a free, fair, and democratic vote that will really express the political consciousness and feelings of responsibility of the people of Afghanistan.”
Doubts about the legitimacy of the election have been voiced over all stages of the process, beginning with the registration itself. The rudimentary status of communications, computerization, and bureaucracy in such a desperately poor and war-shattered land, combined with lax registration procedures make repeat registration and vote-selling inevitable, though there is disagreement about their possible pervasiveness. One young man related the story of an 11-member family from the village of Istalif north of Kabul that also has a home in the capital registering in both places – and selling the extra voting cards at $100 apiece.
FORCE AND FINANCE
Similar stories have been carried in both the national and international media. Since political parties can use these cards for anything from proving to the election commission that they have sufficient support to be on the ballot to the actual voting itself, one American in Kabul was heard to remark that though the last boss of Tammany Hall, Carmine G. DeSapio, had recently died in New York, the old motto of the Wigwam, “Vote `em early and often,” was alive and well in Afghanistan.
And if voter fraud connected with the voting cards was not enough, the possession of one assumes a darker significance in some places. The Taliban has killed scores of election workers and civilians participating in the process over the last few months, the worst episode being the killing of 13 men caught carrying voting cards near the southern town of Spin Boldak in July. The Taliban have vowed to intensify the attacks.
Yet, on the other hand, accusations have arisen that the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai metes out punishment to those who lack one. A few days after Bush spoke in the Rose Garden the Kabul Weekly carried an expose of conditions in southern Zabul province, a Taliban stronghold, which reported that people had claimed they had been beaten, fined, denied entry into hospitals, government offices, or even the city limits of the provincial capital of Qalat when they failed to produce a voting card. A Kabul chaikhana (teahouse) patron remarked upon reading the article that whether or not democracy was going to define the life of Afghanistan was an open question, but that this attempt to introduce it here was certainly turning into a life and death matter for many individuals.
It has been said that “force and finance” are the tutelary deities of Afghan politics, and they have shown no inclination to exempt themselves from this electoral process. Although the constitution forbids the formation of political parties based on armed groups, several prominent ones are clearly emanations of powerful militias, and many candidates are scrambling for warlord support. Likewise there is a ban on foreign financing of parties, but there are no structures in place to regulate it, in spite of the fact that the flow of outside money from a variety of quarters into the process is an open secret.
KARZAI’S SURPRISE
However, a seismic political development which occurred in late July has added weight to the arguments of those who insist that the election will signify a break with business as usual. Spurning pleas not to rock the boat and upset the tenuous ethno-political truce agreed to at Bonn, President Hamid Karzai refused the demand of his powerful Defense Minister, the northern Tajik warlord Marshal Mohammad Fahim, to be accepted as his running mate. But, ever-mindful of the necessity of ethnic bridge-building, he selected Ahmad Zia Mas’ud, another Tajik from Fahim’s own Panjshir Valley. Mas’ud is the brother of the legendary mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Mas’ud, whose assassination by al-Qaeda two days before the September 11 attacks is widely considered to have been the first phase of the plot to strike America while diminishing its capacity to respond by eliminating the most formidable potential Afghan ally. The southern Pashtun Karzai’s deft move has been hailed as both a democratic insistence that warlords will not dictate the shape of the new Afghanistan and an affirmation that this emerging polity must be characterized by close inter-ethnic cooperation.
“It is a very positive development,” says Shah Mohammad Rais, Kabul’s pre-eminent bookseller and a quotable sage to a generation of Western journalists in Afghanistan. “Fahim is a warlord, and the majority of Afghans are against him. But this move’s success is dependent on the backing of the United States. I believe the Americans have decided that they do not need Fahim anymore, because the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda has entered a new phase. US backing of Fahim created a perception not only in Afghanistan but in the world that the Americans back violent warlords. And Fahim is, after all, a fundamentalist himself. With a democratic election at hand, the Americans are eager to distance themselves from such negative forces.”
Yet the fact that the parliamentary elections, which were originally scheduled to be held simultaneously with the presidential one, have been separated from it and pushed back until next spring has raised concerns that whoever wins will be in a position to institutionalize a dictatorship. According to critics, with no boundary lines of the constituencies drawn yet, the potential for presidential gerrymandering and other chicanery is quite high, critics say. “With no parliament to check, there will be no accountability on anything,” says General Haji Almos, one of Fahim’s top commanders. “The potential for abuse and dictatorship is quite high. Even if he wins with many votes, it will be one more thing alienating the people from Karzai.”
A MOVE TOWARD DEMOCRACY
But the separation of the elections has its defenders.
“The split is good,” says Kippen. “To have held them together would have been too overwhelming for a population unused to elections. There is a political verification process jointly managed by the Afghan Human Rights Commission and the UN that will monitor this aspect of the process. Still, the onus is on all of the presidential candidates to alleviate concerns.”
Nevertheless the jinn of force and finance continues to trouble Afghan democrats, despite the moves that have been made to counteract their influence.
“There are candidates registered who have frequently violated human rights, even though they are banned by law from participating,” affirms Dr. Jalal. “There are criminals in the list. Do we want peace so badly that civil society must be sacrificed to criminals? Their very criminality has given them a financial advantage in the campaign. We expect the United Nations to provide equal funds for all candidates to counteract this.” Whether a cash-strapped UN, facing calls from its own staff to pull out of Afghanistan in the face of rising Taliban attacks will even consider this request remains to be seen.
When all of the complexities of the Afghan scene are taken into account, any enthusiasm for democracy in Afghanistan must in the end come to terms with a simple, defining question: Is the country prepared for a democratic exercise?
“In a word, no,” says Vikram Parekh, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization that has issued several comprehensive reports on Afghanistan. “I think there is much greater investment that needs to be made by the international community to allow democratic institutions to take root. When you have a climate of security, free and open access to the media, then you can begin to have a real debate about corruption, ethnic relations, etc. It has been said that the election will be a learning experience, but what exactly are people going to learn? About voting fraud? Financial corruption? Violence at the polls? These things may amount to an adverse learning experience. The election may end up discrediting the democratic process in people’s minds.”
OTHERS HOLD A DIFFERENT VIEW.
“For Afghanistan, this election represents a first step towards democracy,” says Kippen. “We’re probably not going to have a vote to the degree of freedom and fairness that you see in North America. But if people come out in the numbers that they have registered, it will be a very good omen for the future of the country – a signal to the world that Afghanistan is moving towards democracy.”
This article appears in January 2004.
