Eurasia Insight:
AFGHANISTAN’S BRACES FOR CHAOTIC AND POTENTIALLY VIOLENT PARLIAMENTARY VOTE
Camelia Entekhabi-Fard: 9/15/05

Afghanistan’s parliamentary and provincial council elections on September 18 promise to be a chaotic affair. Out of what could be described as the country’s existing primordial political soup, international donors hope a functional political system can evolve.

Campaigning will culminate September 16, two days before the polls open. Over the past month, much of the country has been papered over by campaign posters, as Afghans have embraced the campaign season with a mixture of anticipation over the possibility of a more stable future, and anxiety over the high potential for election-day violence.

Roughly 2,800 candidates are vying for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of parliament. Another 3,000 or so candidates hope to win positions on 34 provincial councils. Roughly 10 percent of the candidates are women, who just four years ago suffered under the ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam enforced by the Taliban. Women are guaranteed 68 seats in parliament.

The most controversial aspect of the campaign concerns the participation of individuals who are widely viewed as opponents of the country’s democratization experiment, including warlords and former top-ranking Taliban leaders. Among the high-profile former Taliban candidates is Mohammad Khaksar, who served as the Islamic radical regime’s deputy interior minister.

Under Afghan election law, an individual must never have been convicted of a crime, and must renounce links to armed militia groups to be eligible for elective office. So far, the country’s Electoral Complaints Commission has banned 32 candidates for maintaining ties to armed bands. Despite this, human rights groups complain that a significant number of warlords and war criminals remain in the race.

“Many individuals with continuing political aspirations are connected to events or groups with records of abuse [during the past 25 years of conflict in Afghanistan],” Human Rights Watch said in a report examining the country’s pre-election environment. “Commanders who are still linked with, or control armed groups have all too easily formally shed their links or control by announcing that they have resigned from their party and handing in some of their weapons to Afghanistan’s disarmament program (even as they secretly retain others).”

The elections mark the culmination of the transitional political process established during the Bonn conference in late 2001. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Chronic instability has forced repeated revisions in the Bonn process’ timetable, which originally envisioned the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections to be held simultaneously in spring 2004. Ultimately, the presidential election was held in last October, with interim leader Hamid Karzai gaining a popular mandate for his administration. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Afghanistan’s international sponsors, who have pumped billions into the reconstruction effort, are hopeful that the parliamentary vote will prove a success over the medium term, but they are bracing for a confusing, if not violent election day. Radical Islamic insurgents have stepped up their attacks in recent months.

During a news conference September 15, US ambassador Ronald Neumann acknowledged the potential for “some large violence,” while emphasizing that any potential terrorist attack would not be sufficient in scale to derail the electoral process at this late stage. Neumann also downplayed expectations about the conduct of the vote, hinting that, given the logistical hurdles, some blemishes might be unavoidable.

“There is one standard that is going to really count for this election and that is whether the Afghan people come out of it feeling that they have had a credible process,” Neumann said. “If the Afghan people believe that this election has, with reasonable credibility, met their expectations, then that is going to be a successful election. I think that will happen.”

Some Afghans are not so sure. Suspicion about the fairness of the process runs especially high among Tajiks, who comprise one of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic groups. Tajiks -- who live mainly in northern regions, such as the Panshir Valley – have grown increasingly hostile to Karzai’s administration in recent years. Tajiks comprised the backbone of the Northern Alliance, which served as the main armed opposition to the Taliban during the late 1990s. Since the Taliban’s ouster from power in late 2001, however, Tajik influence in Kabul has steadily declined.

Tajik political leaders see the parliamentary elections as a chance to regain the political influence that they think is their due. Some express a desire to mobilize a parliamentary faction against Karzai’s administration. Burhanuddin Rabbani, a Tajik political leader who served as Afghanistan’s president from 1992-96, said Tajik MPs should press for immediate changes in the composition of Karzai’s cabinet. “Some of the cabinet members are not suitably qualified, and I believe the parliament should remove them,” Rabbani said in an interview conducted in the United Arab Emirates, said in an interview.

Because of their open opposition to Karzai’s administration, some Tajiks feel that vote totals could be manipulated to keep their representation in parliament down. Many Tajiks harbor lingering doubts about the accuracy of last October’s presidential vote, in which Karzai beat Yunus Qanooni, a Tajik and former minister in Karzai’s cabinet. Rightly or wrongly, a broadly held impression in northern Afghanistan is that Qanooni might have been the actual winner.

Afghanistan’s poor infrastructure potentially could provide room for election critics, including Qanooni, to call the results into question. It will take weeks for election officials to collect and tabulate all the ballots from the 6,300 polling stations expected to operate on September 18. Provisional results for both the legislative and provincial council elections are expected to be ready only on October 10, with final results slated to be released on October 22. The time lag between the balloting and the announcement of the results, though largely unavoidable, could heighten the chances of irregularities.

Editor’s Note: Camelia Entekhabi-Fard has reported from Afghanistan and Iran for EurasiaNet.