Worsening insurgent violence in many parts of the country is raising concern about Afghanistan's ability to hold a fair parliamentary election in little more than a month, a crucial test of President Hamid Karzai's ability to deliver security and a legitimate government.
After last year's troubled presidential election, both the government and its foreign supporters are under intense pressure to hold a credible vote for parliament, scheduled for September 18. Last time, insecurity, inadequate monitoring and rampant fraud led to a drawnout dispute that soured relations between Karzai and his Western backers so badly that they have yet to recover the trust lost on both sides.
As U.S. commanders look toward a deadline to begin withdrawing troops next year, they would like the election to show that the government is capable of standing on its own. But already Western diplomats and observers are lowering expectations for the election, while Afghans are increasingly disillusioned about the prospects for democracy.
Security has worsened in many places since last year, making it harder to get Afghan and international election observers to polling centres. Candidates have complained that they cannot reach districts where they need to campaign because it is too dangerous.
“In the south there will be no free, fair, acceptable elections,” said Haroun Mir, a political analyst who is running for parliament in Kabul. “You cannot open most sites there and guarantee security, so in half the country there will not be a safe election.''
Those areas, he said, now also include Kunduz and Baghlan provinces in the northeast. Nearby Badakhshan, where 10 aid workers were killed last week, now also appears troubled, and there are pockets of instability in the northwest as well.
One of the biggest concerns is that the insecurity will open fresh opportunities for fraud, especially for the creation of so called ghost polling centres. The presidential election last year was marred by numerous cases in which hundreds of ballots were recorded for a single candidate — usually Karzai — in places where no one had actually voted. Election officials ended up throwing out more than one million votes.
At the time, diplomats and international observers underestimated the potential for widespread fraud until it was too late.
Once hundreds of complaints surfaced, they took Karzai to task, something the Afghan leader considered an embarrassment and a betrayal, officials who know him say.
This time, international officials are taking a long step back from the elections, emphasising that they are “Afghan led,” partly in hopes of distancing themselves from any questionable outcome.
But that may be hard to do if fraud is rampant once again, placing the more than 1,30,000 coalition forces here in the awkward position of acting as guarantors of the survival and stability of a government of increasingly dubious legitimacy.
U.N. support
Even so, many international analysts say a high level of fraud may be impossible to prevent, especially since these elections are for provincial representatives, and even a relatively small number of illicit ballots could shift the outcomes.
“There's a good chance most of the seats will be taken by people committing fraud,” said Martine van Bijlert, a long-time observer of Afghanistan and a co-director of the Kabul based Afghanistan Analysts Network. The United Nations is playing a supporting role in the election, but its officials are speaking up early about potential problems, trying to avoid a repeat of last year's problems.
“We know it's not Switzerland,” said Staffan de Mistura, the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general for Afghanistan. “But I am concerned, and I am raising a yellow flag.”
Last year, in many cases, provincial officials — including even election officials and the police — were found to be complicit in carrying out much of the fraud. Four provincial election officers were removed and either are under investigation or have fled the country.
Under heavy international pressure, Karzai replaced the two top officials of the Afghan Independent Election Commission in April under a cloud of scandal and charges that they were too close to him.
The new chairman, Fazal Ahmad Manawi, a judge and mullah by training, has received high marks from international election experts as well as Afghan candidates.
His commission agrees with U.N. officials that much of the fraud last time was made possible because the police and the army did not decide which polling places they could guard until just a couple of days before the election.
That meant that balloting materials were sent to provincial or district capitals, where they were subject to manipulation by local officials.
It also made it harder for observers and voters to know the location of polling centres and for the local police to guard them.
Some polling places never actually opened, making it easy for ballots and boxes to be diverted, several international election analysts said.
This year, the election commission will make the final decision on which polling places will open. But the security forces have already sent a list of 6,800 polling places that they say they can guard, even more than the 5,800 last year.
Many observers, including de Mistura of the U.N., say that is probably too many. That is why he is encouraging the government to admit the limitations of the areas it controls.
“I know it may require an act of reality and an act of honesty,” he said, “but I prefer this to saying to the electorate, ‘Everything is fine' and then having ghost polling stations.”
In addition, the commission has laid out several conditions, which U.N. officials endorse, to try to prevent fraud.
It wants all sites that are supposed to open to actually open.
It wants security officials to be present from the beginning to the end of the process, so there is no time when ballots will be unattended.
And it wants the security forces — the police and the army — to remain neutral and avoid engaging in or facilitating fraud on anyone's behalf.
The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, a non-governmental election monitoring organization, will have observers in roughly 60 percent of polling centres, said Ahmad Nader Nadery, its chairman. That leaves those parts of the country that are most insecure almost certainly without observers.
“Security is a concern,” said Waheed Omar, the president's spokesman, “but what is important, and what the president will emphasise to all Afghan security forces and international partners, is to secure the election.” — © New York Times News Service
