Corruption and Massive Fraud Drive Afghan Electon Results
The voting is over and some results are coming in. The widespread belief that Hamad Karzai will easily win the election for the President of Afghanistan without a second ballot is doubtful . As of August 27th, with 17% of the votes counted, he and his closest contender are are close with 44% and 35% respectively. While Karzai’s share could go higher that will not be due to voter popularity. Given the extent of his fraud, he will receive the largest block of reported votes when all the numbers are in because he made it that way. But that will not be a credible result. His well oiled campaign has left no stone unturned to ensure that he is once again elected. Distasteful deals, a feature of his governing style, have been made with tribal leaders, warlords and other powerful groups. Millions of phantom voters have been falsely registered. Money flows freely to cement relationships founded on networks of corruption and patronage. The fact that Karzai has largely failed to establish an effective, working government is of no interest to power brokers who bet their money on Karzai in a desperate effort to avoid a collapse of the Karzai client state.
Other than the Karzai camp’s frauds and corruption – a big other – the election vote itself went reasonably well. The Taliban’s effort to drive down the turn out with fear did not have a large affect except in some southern provinces. There was relatively little violence on election day, and the turn out while variable by region may reach 50%, which is a success of sorts under the circumstances.
International observers are now digesting and reporting on what they saw. Generally closer examination shows it is not a pretty sight and one wonder’s how there can be anything but very negative reports on the standards election honesty.
The big story in this election is that even with the fraud, Karzai’s often predicted electoral success is proving to be less than a sure thing. He is facing a real challenge from Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a telegenic and experienced candidate with a long history in the internecine battles to control the country. Those who have followed these pages will know that I have been predicting this for some weeks.
To be able to declare himself the legitimate winner, Karzai needs three things. He needs the turnout to be sufficiently high to make the result credible. The Taliban tried their best to scare people, solely to drive down the turnout. They had some success, driving down turnout in some provinces, but as I have already observed it appears voters did turn out generally in numbers sufficient to make the results credible. Second, he needs to have the international community declare the election itself to be legitimate. This is far from certain giving his obvious electoral fraud, corruption and manipulation. There are serious reservations among international observers, but the usual test of free and fair elections will not be the standard here. Instead they will try hard to find it flawed but acceptable in order to justify the west’s large investment in the country. Thus while Karzai’s campaign has clearly practiced widespread fraud, most seem to believe that it is likely that the green light is going to be given, albeit with serious reservations. Third, he needs a convincing margin of victory without it being so large as to not be believable. Anything else will lead to a conviction that his frauds went too far to ignore.
An honest count of the ballots will almost certainly give Karzai less than 50% of the vote,which will be consistent with pre-election polls. This will force a run0ff between him and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. By any measure this is a major loss by Karzai. A free and f air election would obviously have given Abdullah a clear victory in the first round.
As much as Karzai wants an official 50%+ result and a first round announced victory, in many ways he will be better off if there is a run-off. Without a run off, Dr. Abdullah will vigorously and correctly challenge the legitimacy of the outcome . The possibility of Iran style protests makes many western nations very nervous. It is not clear the country could withstand such a challenge.
Many westerners will remember Dr. Abdullah Abdullah as the public face of the country in the period following the fall of the Taliban, when he was the international spokesperson and Foreign Minister. Before that he was Foreign Minister in the pre-Taliban government dominated by Ahmad Shah Massoud, now best known as leader of the Northern Alliance, which claimed to be the legitimate government of Afghanistan during the Taliban period. Massoud was killed by Taliban agents in his northern hide-out on September 13, 2001. Massoud was Defense Minister for a time before the Taliban took over. His army fought the destructive battle for Kabul with the competing war lord, then Prime Minister and known Taliban sympathizer and collaborator Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. This senseless fight was responsible for reducing Kabul to the rubble it is today. In the end neither won – the Taliban moved in and were welcomed by a completely demoralized city.
Abdullah was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the post-Taliban Interim Administration in December 2001, and after the Loya jirga in 2002, became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Transition Administration that governed until the elections of 2004, when Karzai was elected. He continued for a time as Foreign Minister, but not being a warlord with control over an army and a tribal region, he was seen by Karzai as being of little value. Most of the remainder of the Northern Alliance leaders, including the warlords, became members of parliament, forming the “official opposition” to Karzai and further isolating Abdullah.
This time Abdullah is the nominee of the United National Front, which is essentially the the old Northern Alliance. But with one big difference. The powerful war lords – Dostum and Fahim in particular – have gone over to Karzai. However it does include Rabanni, a powerful political leader of the Northern Alliance and President of Afghanistan during the notorious pre-Taliban period when Hekmatyar was Prime Minister and Massoud was Defense Minister, and Kabul was bombarded by the competing forces of Hekmatyar and Massound,
Abdullah left the government in 2006. He now is a strong critic of the Karzai’s leadership. Turning down a chance to become Mr. Karzai’s running mate this year, he attacks him for polarizing the country, making deals with warlords and engaging in massive corruption.
He is positioning himself as leader of a younger generation of Afghans fed up with warlords, mujahedeen leaders clinging to the past and corruption. He represents the first serious challenge to a power system that has existed since the fall of the Soviets, aside from the Taliban during their disastrous backward looking adventure in government.
His main challenge is to prevent Karzai from getting over 50% of the votes and thus to force a run-off. This is not the first time that Abdullah has looked to be a promising option for Afghanistan. He speaks the language of educated westerners, and was touted by the western media back in the early part of the decade as a coming force. However he had no real power base, the position of warlord and leader of the Northern Alliance having been shared out among Abdul Rashid Dostum, Yunus Qanuni, and Qasim Fahim. He is also known as a Tajik. Many believe that Afghanistan’s president has to come from the Pashtun ethnic group.
But the President is chosen by direct election. Abdullah’s message is appealing to those who see little good coming from the Karzai government. The Northern Alliance, minus the main warlords, is supporting him. While identified as Tajik, he is in fact half Pashtun. He has appeal across ethnic groupings. Many voters want change. Abdullah is clearly the choice of a majority of Afghans. His election will be by far the best result. A first round win for Karzai will at a minimum entrench cynicism and a deep sense of failure among those hoping for a strong and robust democratic state. At worst it will see the fragile nation come apart at the seams. The centre could not hold. It will be the end of the western effort to implant democracy.
Doug McArthur, Aug 26, 2009
The following is an Associated Press report filed Sunday, August 30. It confirms the reports I have provided over the last few days of massive fraud in the election. Doug McArthur.
Kabul — The Associated Press Last updated on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009 12:47PM EDT
Major allegations of fraud in Afghanistan’s presidential election topped 550 by Sunday, more than doubling the figure investigators reported just two days earlier, officials said.
The spike indicates just how pervasive ballot box stuffing and voter intimidation may have been during the country’s Aug. 20 vote, threatening the legitimacy of the election.
The hundreds of complaints could also greatly delay final results, which cannot be announced until major fraud allegations have been investigated, and are already not expected until mid-September at the earliest.
A delay could create a power vacuum in Afghanistan and the volume of allegations could foment violence if people feel they have been cheated.
On Sunday, an election official was attacked in the south. Gunmen on motorbikes drove up to the home of the second-highest electoral official in Kandahar province and shot him as he walked out of his front gate to go to work, said Mohammad Samimi, a spokesman for the provincial electoral commission.
Sharafuddin, who only goes by one name, was seriously wounded and is being treated in a military hospital, he said.
Sharafuddin was the operations manager for the provincial commission, meaning he was in charge of the logistics of how polling stations would operate and how ballots would be handled.
Partial results of the vote so far show President Hamid Karzai leading with 46.2 per cent of votes, and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah with 31.4 per cent. The count is based on votes from 35 per cent of the country’s polling stations. Mr. Karzai will need to reach 50 per cent of the votes to avoid a two-man run-off.
Polls had favoured Mr. Karzai to win the election, though not necessarily in a single round. Mr. Karzai’s popularity has waned in recent years over concerns about corruption and resurgent violence. He also has been criticized for recruiting former warlords to gain the votes they control.
One of the most controversial of these, Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, flew into Afghanistan from Turkey shortly before election day to show his support for Mr. Karzai and left late last week, a representative said.
“The purpose of his coming to Afghanistan was to participate in the election and to support Karzai,” said Sayed Noorullah Sadat, the chief of Gen. Dostum’s political party.
Gen. Dostum is alleged to have been responsible for the deaths of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners early in the Afghan war, and U.S. officials were critical of the decision to allow him to return.
“The United States maintains serious concerns about the prospective role of Mr. Dostum in today’s Afghanistan,” the embassy said in a statement Sunday.
Mr. Sadat said Gen. Dostum has no immediate plans to return to Afghanistan. Asked if a second round of voting might bring Dostum back, Sadat said it was premature to talk about a runoff with votes still being counted. He added that Turkey is Dostum’s home and that Dostum has a medical condition that is easier to treat in Turkey. He did not provide further details.
The independent Electoral Complaints Commission has received more than 2,000 allegations of fraud and intimidation on voting day or during the subsequent counting of ballots, said Nellika Little, a spokeswoman for the group.
Of those, 567 have been deemed serious enough to affect the outcome of the poll if proved true, Little said. The commission had reported 270 major allegations on Friday.
The commission is still evaluating complaints, so the figure could rise further.
The widespread fraud allegations have raised concerns about whether Afghans will accept the certified results. Voting day was marred by low turnout amid Taliban threats and attacks.
Fraud allegations against Mr. Karzai were also raised in the 2004 election. A joint UN-Afghan panel found many cases of ballot-box stuffing, but said there was no evidence it was widespread and only favoured Mr. Karzai. Mr. Karzai received 55.4 per cent of the votes in the 2004 election — 39 percentage points ahead of his closest challenger.
This time, several presidential candidates have levelled accusations of fraud, including allegations that electoral officials forced voters to cast ballots for certain candidates and marked unused ballots for their candidate after election day.
Mr. Abdullah and other candidates have produced videos documenting many allegations and Mr. Abdullah has charged Mr. Karzai of mobilizing state resources to steal the election. Karzai’s campaign has denied that and countered by accusing Abdullah’s campaign of fraud.
Both camps have urged the country to wait for the complaints commission to finish its work.
Military operations and violent insurgent attacks have continued in the interim. On Saturday, militants killed a provincial counterterrorism chief in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan. Fayez Khan, who headed counterterrorism operations for Khost province, was driving home in a convoy with police and bodyguards when he was ambushed, said Tahir Khan Sabari, the province’s deputy governor.
On the same day in Kandahar, three civilians died in the blast of a roadside bomb struck by a police vehicle, said Fazen Mohammad Sherzad, the deputy police chief. Two police officers were wounded but none killed.
Afghan and international forces battled insurgents on Friday in eastern Paktika province, killing about three dozen militants, said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces. A NATO statement said the Afghan and international troops also destroyed weapons and a complex of bunkers belonging to the Haqqani militant network, which operates across the Afghan-Pakistan border.
No casualties were reported for international or Afghan troops, nor for civilians.