[Mb-civic] Voting in a warlord country

Fri Oct 8 11:36:07 PDT 2004

Voting in a warlord country

Oct 7th 2004 
>From The Economist print edition

Afghans go to the polls on Saturday to choose a president. But success hangs
on more than holding an election

PANOS

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FOR a spectacular vanishing act, take two hamfisted Afghan terrorists and
one anti-tank mine. The results, seen last week in Kulangar, a village in
south-eastern Lowgar province, were impressive. A few scraps of blue and
white cotton and a thick, livid smear were all that seemed to be left of the
pair who had tried mining the road ahead of your correspondent¹s car. A
murmuring crowd gathered, treading on fragments of campaign posters for
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan¹s American-backed ruler. A week or so before the
presidential election on Saturday October 9th, the scene suggested that
Afghanistan is not quite the shining success George Bush has called it.

Only by comparison with Iraq‹and its own former self‹could it appear so. The
resurgent Taliban have failed to grab back any towns from America¹s 18,000
troops. But, rearmed with drug money, their black-turbanned guerrillas and
other extremists are terrorising the south and south-east. Security in
northern and western Afghanistan, much of which is ruled by warlords, has
deteriorated recently, with a spate of Taliban-style executions that have
probably been carried out to guard the opium routes. So far this year, 48
aid workers, foreign road-builders and UN election staff have been murdered,
as have many local officials. Last month, Mr Karzai had to abandon his first
stab at a campaign rally outside Kabul after his helicopter came under fire.

Few of his 17 opponents even attempted to campaign. Among those few was
Rashid Dostum, a roguish Uzbek who fought for most sides during
Afghanistan¹s quarter-century of war and now rules a fief in northern
Afghanistan. He was persuaded, however, not to pose for his poster in a
cemetery; his advisers were mindful of how many people he had dispatched
there. At one rally, the general begged foreign donors to bring water to his
desert land, and then welcomed journalists to a palace boasting six swimming
pools.

Poorer candidates outlined their visions in the four live TV slots that each
candidate was allotted. Lengthy pauses and meticulous nose-picking were
commonplace. Mr Karzai, the solid favourite, recited most of his inaugural
speech twice. Massouda Jalal, the only female contender, offered her air
time to the president.

Therein, perhaps, lay a clue to Afghanistan¹s new democracy. Many of the
candidates appeared to be angling for a plum job in what is expected to be
Mr Karzai¹s next government, in return for withdrawing from the contest.
Several accused America¹s tricksy ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, of
attempting to broker such deals, a charge he rather shamefacedly denied. No
Afghan doubts that America had a firm hand in the pre-election planning, not
least the country¹s transport minister, who was unfortunately slapped by one
of Mr Karzai¹s bodyguards in the chaos of a rare presidential appearance.

Defying most predictions, none of Mr Karzai¹s opponents have backed out.
Whether pacts have been made nonetheless‹and Mr Karzai says they have
not‹will probably only be known when the next president names his cabinet,
if ever. It is only one uncertain element in an election riven with
coercion, corruption and incompetence.

 Because the UN dares not send its foreign staff into much of the south
since the murder of a French employee last year, it has relied on a few
dozen western security experts and an army of brave locals to register
voters and run the poll. In south-eastern Paktia province, Haji Hazrat, a
snowy-bearded elder, said his powerful Pushtun tribe had been compelled to
carry out its own brand of civic education. Over a dish of mutton stew in
his mud-fortress home, Mr Hazrat explained how, last month, 500 tribal
elders gathered to discuss the vote. They agreed that everyone in
Afghanistan¹s three south-eastern provinces would vote for Mr Karzai. Then
they ate, prayed and went to Kabul to inform the president. Asked whether
there would be any exceptions to this rule, Mr Hazrat replied: ³Is there not
one thief in England?²

Mr Hazrat¹s method also indicates a weakness in Afghanistan¹s traditional
ways. In neighbouring Khost province, another Pushtun tribe has decreed that
anyone who does not vote for Mr Karzai will have his house burnt down.

How many people were actually entitled to vote, to the nearest few millions,
has been something of a mystery. The UN estimated 10.5m eligible voters and,
against expectation, registered almost that number, 41% of them women. But
the original estimate was based on a 1979 census taken before a war in which
2m died and one-third of the population was displaced. Some registrations,
too, are dubious. Many voters, perhaps 30% of the total, appear to have
registered many times. Children are thought to have been registered, and, in
the wild south-eastern provinces near the border with Pakistan, foreigners
as well. Voter-registration in Paktia reached 170% of the target, but in
southern Zabul province, where the Taliban roam, it was only 55%, with 7%
women.

Indelible ink

The UN said each voter would be marked with indelible black ink, so that no
one would be able to vote twice. But that depended on the reliability of the
local officials manning 21,000, mostly observer-free, polling sites. The EU
and other foreign organisations mustered fewer than 200 election observers.
Indeed, to get round the EU¹s standards, under which the vote would have
been condemned from the outset, they were not called ³election observers²,
but ³democracy-support teams².

In all but the most perilous places, German-trained police were charged with
guarding voters against intimidation and Taliban attacks. But as only two
policemen existed for each polling site, and as many had received only a
fortnight¹s training, accidents seemed likely. In the town of Balkh, on the
fault-line between the domains of Mr Dostum and his warlord neighbour, one
would-be voter, 21-year-old Rahmatullah, supposed that people would be
pressured to vote for the local commander¹s candidate. The last time
Rahmatullah defied this strongman, by asking to be paid for slaving in his
poppy fields, his house was blown up.

Given these potential snags, and that many Afghans were voting for a leader
who would barely affect their daily lives, the election posed a question:
why on earth was it being held? Because Afghans wanted it to be held, is one
answer. For Mr Bush and his election campaign, is another. After several
postponements, Mr Karzai called the poll against the advice of the UN, which
wanted it delayed again, and at the bidding of his patrons in Washington.
Doubtless, they wanted Mr Karzai to accrue some legitimacy. But they also
wanted to show America¹s voters a cheerier image of Mr Bush¹s foreign policy
than Iraq can provide.

The election that Afghans have been given, however, is not what they were
promised at last year¹s loya jirga to enshrine their new constitution. The
presidential poll was to be in tandem with a parliamentary election, which
would have meant much more to rural Afghans. The parliamentary poll is
currently due in April. But since constituencies have not yet been marked
out, and since to do so will require a much more precise electoral roll,
this looks unlikely. Very possibly, the first act of Afghanistan¹s first
democratically elected leader will be to postpone the parliamentary election
yet again, and so extend his rule-by-decree.

 Mitigated happiness

The election is thus not exactly a vindication of the policies America and
its allies have pursued in Afghanistan. But, as the first nationwide comment
on them, it is an apt moment to consider their progress. And the conclusion
must begin with the fact that, despite many troubles, most Afghans are much
happier and more hopeful than they were under Taliban rule, which is why Mr
Karzai should win. Three million returnees have indicated as much, flooding
back from Iran and Pakistan. Under a NATO-led peacekeeping force, ISAF,
Kabul is booming. A group of overseas Afghan businessmen felt sufficiently
confident in their country¹s future to invest $25m in a new Coca-Cola plant.
In the last fiscal year, the economy grew by 20%.

Yet these successes may be misleading. Protected by two first-world armies,
richer by over $2 billion a year in aid cash, and massively supportive of
the reconstruction effort, Afghans should be happier. A better question is
this: is the rebuilding on track to create a plausible, terror-free Afghan
state in the few years before the donors lose interest and move away?

The government has been defined by the efforts of some of its members to
squander aid money, peddle opium and maintain militias, and by the efforts
of a handful of reformers to stop them

To appreciate the scale of that task, ponder Afghanistan¹s recent history.
Fifteen years ago, the Soviet army withdrew from the country, ending a
bitter decade-long occupation. Bands of mujahideen, formerly based in
Pakistan and backed by Saudi Arabia and America, charged in. A vile civil
war ensued, in which the average top-level holy warrior revealed himself to
be a depraved tribal warlord. In 1992-96, according to the Red Cross, 50,000
civilians were killed in Kabul alone, and the city was flattened.

 To end the chaos, Pakistan armed a band of bumpkin Pushtun clerics, the
Taliban. As they swept northwards, ecstatic Afghans threw flowers at their
feet, and the warlords fled into northern Afghanistan, Iran and Central
Asia. There they remained until October 2001, when the CIA came calling. To
avoid putting its own boys in harm¹s way, America required gunmen to remove
the Taliban. The warlords duly obliged.

America¹s policy of employing Afghan militias won it a swift victory,
although it probably enabled senior al-Qaeda and Taliban figures to escape
by paying fat bribes. After the Tajik-based Northern Alliance was permitted
to take Kabul, it also ensured that men with no technical expertise, except
prowess in killing Soviet conscripts, could claim powerful jobs in
Afghanistan¹s transitional government.

 That government has since been defined by the efforts of some of its
members to squander aid money, peddle opium and maintain militias, and by
the efforts of a handful of reformers to stop them. Chief among the latter
is Ashraf Ghani, the finance minister, a frail visionary who is responsible
for most of the government¹s achievements. These include a stable currency,
a single treasury account and a rigidly implemented budget. Mr Karzai,
meanwhile, has presided beatifically over the chaos. A decent fellow, he
appears sympathetic to the reformers, but has not given them full support.
He has reason for caution. The bigger warlords, and the Taliban, have
retained their foreign backers: over the past three years, guns and cash
have flowed in from Iran, and from Islamic groups in Turkey, Uzbekistan,
Russia and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Mr Karzai must often have wondered how
serious his sponsors really were.

America¹s priorities

It took no time for the vaunted strength of the rescue effort in
Afghanistan‹the involvement of most of the world¹s rich countries‹to prove a
weakness. With no agile power willing to take charge, bilateral
contributions have often been derisory and poorly co-ordinated. ISAF is the
epitome of a collective failure. A year after taking charge of the
multinational force in Kabul, NATO has managed to coax 250 German soldiers
to leave the capital for one of the most peaceful towns in the provinces‹and
little else. With orders to ignore the opium trade, the Germans appear
terrified of confrontation‹except for their elite health and safety team,
which snatched a perfectly good slice of pizza from your correspondent in
the ISAF mess.

The agile leadership that Afghanistan has needed, only America has had the
resources to provide. But, until recently at least, America has not
provided. It has focused on waging a war in the south, not on
state-building. America was unconcerned at first, for example, by the
explosion in opium production that followed the Taliban¹s demise: after all,
most Afghan heroin ends up in Europe.

AP

Karzai presides beatifically over chaos

In recent months, however, its attitude has changed. Pentagon officials have
begun to realise that Afghanistan¹s problems are profoundly inter-connected.
Insecurity feeds off drug production and drought. Opium money emboldens
warlords, which weakens the government. It also buys bullets for the Taliban
to kill American troops. In March, extremist Islamic schools in Pakistan
closed to provide labour for the poppy harvest in Helmand, a province of
southern Afghanistan and a Taliban hotbed. America still has no useful
policy on counter-narcotics, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, has
said he would like one.

His epiphany was not before time. America¹s $10 billion-a-year military
campaign appears to have been hugely unproductive. No notable al-Qaeda
figures have been found in Afghanistan for two years. Early this year,
American army officials in Afghanistan vowed that Osama bin Laden would be
snared before the year¹s end, but they have not repeated their pledge.
Instead of hunting al-Qaeda, American troops seem to be fighting an
inexhaustible supply of Taliban and other small-time crazies, drug
traffickers, bandit gangs and local men whom they have enraged by blowing in
their front doors and searching their women¹s quarters for arms.

As helpers leave

Wanting to be liked, American troops have drilled wells and built schools
across the south. As a result, aid agencies are now hated. In June, Médecins
Sans Frontières, a courageous aid group, quit the country after five of its
staff were killed in north-western Badghis, and denounced America for
blurring the distinction between aid workers and soldiers. Most aid agencies
pulled out of the south last year; many are now wondering what it would take
for them to leave Afghanistan altogether.

A Danish agency, DACAAR, has enjoyed a typical past month. One of its houses
in Kabul was flattened by a suicide bomb. Its compound in south-eastern
Laghman province was bombarded with rockets, and its staff were forced to
flee Badghis province. An American warplane mistakenly bombed DACAAR¹s camp
in eastern Kunar province, killing six people. Violent, parched and deprived
of aid, much of southern Afghanistan mirrors the conditions that spawned the
Taliban. In southern Zabul, one aid worker was told: ³We are so desperate,
we would take help from the Devil.²

Afghans know little about democracy. But they know when they are being sold
a dud

But there is hope. If America seems unable to reverse its military
juggernaut, it has adopted better policies in other areas. In the last
fiscal year, the United States spent $500m on reconstruction; this fiscal
year, it is spending $2.3 billion. Greater American effort on training the
new Afghan army is yielding better results. Last year, when the first army
units emerged, up to half were liable to desert. With improved pay of $70
per month, and an emerging esprit de corps, new recruits are less likely to
leg it. The army is currently 15,000 strong, big enough to give any warlord
pause.

 Big enough, even, to encourage Mr Karzai to start throwing his weight
about. In July he dropped Mohammed Fahim, the defence minister and the man
most likely to make donors¹ toes curl, as his running mate. He also
exploited a series of battles between warlords in western Afghanistan, which
led to the removal of Herat¹s troublesome warlord-governor, Ismail Khan.

As the violence cooled, frightened Heratis revealed much about the state of
Afghanistan. On the edge of the city, a group of impoverished Pushtun
refugees complained that Mr Khan had bulldozed their mud homes to grab land
for his Tajik fighters. In nearby Shindand, where Mr Khan¹s militia suffered
defeat, an elderly Tajik complained that marauding Pushtuns had garrotted
his brother with a turban. No one had much love for the deposed tyrant. But
everyone was concerned that Mr Karzai should be able to deliver at least the
oppressive calm Mr Khan had imposed.

 Whether Mr Karzai, or whoever is elected president, will eventually calm
the parts of Afghanistan beyond the control of Kabul remains to be seen. The
first clue should appear in the line-up of the new government. A smaller,
cleaner cabinet, and fewer drug-peddling provincial governors, would look
good to many Afghans. The same line-up, mostly a rabble whose jobs have been
secured by pre-election pacts, would not. Afghans know little about
democracy. But, after their experiences of communism and Islamic
fundamentalism, they know when they are being sold a dud.