Afghanistan: Blanket Election Support Damaging Internationals’ Credibility

Aunohita Mojumdar

After rushing to endorse the Afghan elections, the international community may emerge from the process with its image scathed, having squandered a valuable opportunity to improve its bona fides. In their hurry to score quick gains, some international observers and diplomats have placed a stamp of approval over a process that looks patently flawed. Now they find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place: unable to swallow their early cheerleading statements or take a more critical stance without offending the Afghan government.

“They were too quick to endorse the elections. All they need have done was make their approval more conditional,” said a diplomat who requested anonymity, speaking on an issue growing more sensitive each passing day. A conditional approval would have provided internationals the elbowroom to modulate responses according to emerging realities, a space that was nearly closed off by the early ringing approval, the diplomat added.

“In terms of the international community and its role in the elections, its reputation in Afghanistan and worldwide very much depends on the success of the rest of the process and also on the aggressiveness and comprehensiveness of the Electoral Complaints Commission’s [ECC] review of claims and frauds,” said Candace Rondeaux of the Brussels based International Crisis Group.

Observers have questioned the capacity of the ECC to address these complaints, both because of the limitations of its mandate and its resources. While saying he had no doubt about the intentions and credibility of the ECC, Hamid Karzai’s main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, in response to a question from EurasiaNet, said, “their capability remains to be seen.”

“If we see, as in the past, patterns which indicate that bodies like the IEC [Independent Election Commission] and the ECC remain under-resourced and unsupported, then investigating these claims would remain a challenge and yet everything depends on the sanctity of this process,” Rondeaux added.

The international community’s early endorsement the elections, she said, had been disappointing: “The risk of appearing too enthusiastic too soon is that you undermine your own credibility as an impartial observer and guarantor of the democratic processes.”

While diplomats have stressed that the elections were Afghan-led for the first time, this hardly absolves foreigners of their perceived influence and role. Afghans have a complicated relationship with the international community, seeing foreigners as having undue influence over their lives, while still looking towards them as impartial arbitrators. That much of the anger until now has been directed at the internationals rather than the national players who are accused of having vitiated the democratic process, underlines this tendency.

Though most of the diplomatic community’s comments have been confined to celebrating that the elections took place at all, the endorsement of selective facts about the elections, on a day when a large section of the Afghan voters found their voice hushed either through inability to access the vote or through fraud, has lent credence to charges that the international community has biases.

The attempts to pass off the elections as a success against the Taliban have not surprised observers who see domestic political agendas of the donor countries lurking behind such statements. “What does it say about the British-American effort in Helmand if days after they poured troops into the province in order to make it safer for people to vote, the turnout is a bare 5 percent? Can they admit it was a failure?” asked an international analyst.

Yet not everyone agrees about the international community’s motivations. “The internationals probably spoke too soon and should have acknowledged early on that there were allegations of widespread irregularities that needed to be addressed before issuing an elections report card,” said John Dempsey, the Kabul director for the U.S. Institute of Peace. “But again, I think that they wanted to mute any potential violent reaction from supporters of one candidate or another on polling day as well as acknowledge that millions still turned out in the face of security threats and that there were no spectacular mega attacks.”

Efforts to minimize the impact of flawed elections have helped introduce imaginative arguments into the mix. New buzz amongst internationals in Kabul has it that since most of the disenfranchisement took place in southern provinces where the bulk of Karzai’s voter base is supposed to be, ballot stuffing has merely made up for the votes that were rightfully his in the first place.

Long before the votes have even been counted, moreover, the internationally community has also begun pushing for a “government of national unity.” While the rationale for such a move, which attempts to bring leaders above self-serving political divides, is laudable in theory, it cannot replace the electoral mandate to which Afghans are entitled.

Responding to a flawed election by telling the major candidates to go beyond the results may help silence the losers. However such unity of purpose should come from processes that are based either on post-conflict peace agreements, such as were decided in 2001 at Bonn, or be based on initiatives of legitimately elected governments. A unified government cannot succeed an electoral process in which millions of Afghans risked their lives to cast votes which were subsequently ignored.

Editor’s Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.