For whom the Afghan poll tolls

Asia Times, October 21, 2009

By Aunohita Mojumdar

KABUL - Whatever the August 2009 elections in Afghanistan were to begin with, they have, in the weeks since the polling day, turned into a completely different beast.

Based initially on the premise that Afghans needed to have a voice and say in political participation, the fraud, allegations, counter-allegations, poor management and even poorer leadership have now brought the entire exercise to a state where the only way to validate the elections is to ignore the elections altogether and revert to some pre-electoral system of power-sharing.

On Monday, after weeks of investigation, the United Nations' Electoral Complaints Commission said that many of President



Hamid Karzai's votes would have to be declared invalid as a result of fraud. This would most likely bring the total number of his votes below the 50% mark, which he needs to avoid a run-off against the second-placed candidate, Abdullah Abdullah. Latest reports indicate Karzai is ready to accept that he fell short of the votes needed to win an outright victory, which would set the stage for a possible power-sharing deal with Abdullah.

Initially, the elections were seen as a means of validating a fast unraveling compact on Afghanistan. The elections were a necessary component for the international community which needed a signpost of progress in the midst of a rapidly deteriorating security situation and bad governance, a symbol that would justify "project Afghanistan" to the increasingly critical domestic opinion.

At the outset, therefore, the elections were treated by the international community as a component of the "war against terror" and the Taliban-led insurgency. Just the exercise of voting was treated as an end in itself, with Afghans feted for having come out to vote against the insurgents.

In the event, the ballot was neither for nor against the insurgents, but rather a victory for the efforts of Afghans to exercise their rights to choose elected representatives, something that was almost ignored in the hurried efforts to claim victory over the Taliban.

This rush proved counter-productive. Clear evidence of widespread fraud began to emerge even in the hours after polling, giving rise to the appearance that the internationals had endorsed a flawed election. It took several days for the international community to drop its stance that it was for Afghans to determine the credibility of the elections.

While a section of the international community tried to regain its credibility by going to the other extreme and declaring immense fraud had taken place, another section, which had little appetite for a second round of polling, tried to push for a limited procedure to deal with complaints.

The message was that while Afghans could aspire to polling, the logical continuum, whether of thorough investigations or re-polling or a run-off, was far too much of a luxury and one to which a conflict-ridden country should not aspire, even if it were constitutionally mandated.

It became clear very quickly that the international community had made no preparation for dealing with the anticipated fraud, having failed to coordinate even their public responses within their respective organizations, let alone their approaches. The result was an unprecedented public display of disarray, compounded by exhibitions of bad behavior, large egos and hubris.

It would be easy to dismiss the clash as one of personalities, except for the fact that the spectacle, displayed most evidently in the fallout between the United Nations' top man in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and his deputy, Peter Galbraith, was allowed to carry on for several weeks unchecked.

While the UN acted relatively quickly for a massively bureaucratic organization, by first removing Galbraith from Afghanistan and then dismissing him, the United States appeared paralyzed, refusing to rein in Galbraith until well after the damage was done. European nations appeared to be mute spectators, apparently either unwilling or unable to exercise their influence to stem this hemorrhage.

There is speculation that the entire performance was well-choreographed from the beginning, to force an electoral outcome that would necessitate a second round of polling, thus weakening Karzai and making him more pliable.

However, the price for this has been steep, weakening the international community's influence in general and the UN's neutrality in particular, while eroding the credibility of the electoral exercise. Moreover, the internationals have, over the past few weeks, found themselves completely outmaneuvered by brilliant tacticians within the Afghan polity who have used the unfolding events and the international community's disarray to spectacular advantage.

Karzai and his supporters have used the anti-foreigner card as a pressure tactic, completely ignoring the ground realities which do not conform to a Afghan-foreigner divide, but rather to internal divides both between Afghans and within the international community. A section of the internationals has backed the president, while another section backs Abdullah.

Abdullah, a former foreign minister, has used the elections to reposition himself, thus getting enormous mileage for his anti-Taliban Northern Alliance colleagues who have been out in the cold in recent years. Though the current political system in which the winner takes all would ensure that Abdullah would gain nothing from a second round of polling - it would most likely endorse Karzai - the allegations of fraud and the reluctance of all players to go for a second round have helped provide enormous leverage to Abdullah.

He alone is now in the position of validating the credibility of the results that are declared and of forgoing the dreaded second round of polling in lieu of a share in governance.

Lost in the midst of all this politicking is the oft-mentioned Afghan voter: the same Afghan voter whose name was evoked to justify the necessity of holding elections, despite the conditions which suggested that a free and fair franchise would not be possible, and the same Afghan voter whose bravery was lauded as the raison d'etre of declaring the polls a success.

With a division of the spoils underway to paper over the seminal problems of the electoral exercise, the Afghan voter's right to a democratic exercise now seems far and away the least of considerations, leaving a number of questions unanswered: how many Afghans were excluded from voting by poor management and insecurity? What of the women voters whose votes were either cast for them or whose identities were stolen to perpetuate fraud? What of the millions of voters who did go and vote against the odds, only to find backroom deals among Afghan and international decision-makers replacing their right to choose?

While most Afghans may have expected Karzai to be reconfirmed as their president, they would probably have liked their votes to be counted accurately, just as Republican voters in the US would, despite the overwhelming landslide victory that Democrat Barack Obama received. Afghan voters might, not unsurprisingly, also want their simultaneous votes for electing provincial council members, where victory margins can be as slender as one or two votes, not to be vitiated by fraud.

The entire exercise raises the question as to why elections were held at all if there was no appetite or capacity to see the electoral exercise through to its logical conclusion by ensuring political participation, a credible complaints process, the space for a second round and mechanisms for an acceptable interim arrangement?

At a nascent juncture in efforts to build the Afghan state, where increasing violence makes it even more important to convince Afghans of the need for peaceful democratic means of power-sharing, decision-making and transfer of power, the vitiated election Afghanistan has just completed can be ill-afforded.

The cost of an election which was not inclusive and spectacularly marred by perceptions of fraud and cover-ups will be paid for in the future by the loss of faith of ordinary Afghans in their government, their leaders, the state-building exercise and democratic processes. However, for those with their eyes focused on short-term fixes and exit strategies, this has never been the fundamental issue.

Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian journalist who has reported on South Asia for 19 years and currently lives and reports from Kabul.