[Mb-civic] "Imposing Imperial Democracy" - Upcoming Afghan Elections Marked by U.S. Pressure, Fraud and Corruption

[Michael Butler]

"Imposing Imperial Democracy" - Upcoming Afghan Elections Marked by U.S.
Pressure, Fraud and Corruption

Friday, October 8th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/08/1530251

As the Bush administration lauds the upcoming presidential election in
Afghanistan a success in democracy, the elections are coming under criticism
for widespread fraud, confusion and pressure from the U.S. to support
incumbent Hamid Karzai. We speak with KPFK radio host Sonali Kolhatkar and
we go to Kabul to speak Christian Parenti of The Nation. [includes rush
transcript]

 A bomb has exploded near the US military compound in Kabul, Afghanistan a
day ahead of the country's first presidential election. There are no reports
of any deaths or injuries from the bombing. But US military officials and
the current Afghan government say they are bracing for efforts to disrupt
tomorrow's vote. More than 10 million Afghans have registered and there are
some 5,700 election observers deployed throughout the country.

 The country's interim president Hamid Karzai is the frontrunner among 18
candidates. Only two other candidates are considered big names nationwide:
the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum, and the former education minister,
Yunus Qanuni. One female candidate, Massouda Jalal, is making history by
being the first woman to run for president. The vote has already been
delayed twice by violence. Karzai survived an attack last month, and on
Wednesday, a convoy carrying his running mate was hit.

    €      Christian Parenti, correspondent for the Nation Magazine speaking
to us from Kabul. His latest article is titled "What 'Democracy' Looks
Like".
    €      Sonali Kolhatkar, host of the popular Pacifica Radio Show,
Uprising on KPFK. She is also Vice President of the Afghan Women"s Mission,
a group that works in solidarity with Afghans to help improve health and
educational facilities for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT 

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AMY GOODMAN:  We go first to Kabul, to Christian Parenti reporting for The
Nation magazine. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Christian.

 CHRISTIAN PARENTI:  Thank you for having me on.

 AMY GOODMAN:  Can you tell us about what's happening in this lead up to
Saturday's election?

 CHRISTIAN PARENTI:  Well, Kabul is very quiet today. The whole city is sort
of on lockdown. Flights inside the country have been canceled and there
hasn't been as much violence as people expect. There was a rocket attack
last night. Two rockets came in towards the U.S. base, as you said earlier,
and landed nearby and one went off and one didn't. Other than that, things
have been fairly quiet. The overall thing to report is that Afghans are not
as excited about this election as international observers are. Most Afghans
are very, very ­ cynical would actually be too strong a word, they¹re just
very apathetic about the whole process. To start with, the voter
registration numbers are totally, either inaccurate or fabricated. I, for
example, as I said in a recent piece in The Nation, I have two valid voter
registration cards and I'm a foreign correspondent. These were given to me
by one of the parties that's running, the party of Syed Gilani. They were
making the point that there is a lot of evidence of vote fraud and much of
it favoring Karzai. Although all parties will be participating in this, all
warlords, that is, will be trying to deliver blocks of votes. And it's
basically seen that Karzai will definitely win. The only question is whether
there will have to be a runoff. If there is a runoff, between Yunus Qanuni
and Karzai, that will be a real disaster for the Americans. A source told me
that the American Embassy actually doesn't even have contingency plans for
that. The Afghan Joint Election Management Board, which is running elections
here, doesn't have plans for how to do a runoff. So there's been this
massive push, both above board and, you know, pretty underhanded, buying off
warlords and using local warlords to intimidate people to get the vote out
for Karzai. There's been a lot of sort of shuffling of leaders recently.
People have gotten new posts and some of this is seen as deal-making with
Karzai. So, this party that gave me the voter cards was making the point
that, you know, that there's just way too much ­ way too high voter
registration and there are all these fake cards floating around and fake
ballots and I said, ³Well, how can you prove that?² and they said ³Well we
have a whole bunch of them right here.² So I asked for one and then I asked
for two and they gave them to me, and they are real voter registration cards
and I can attach my photograph and I can vote. Because there is also no way
to verify the identity of people who are voting. So, basically the election
is going to be a fiasco. But the reality is that most Afghans don't care
that much about that because they're so sick of war and they're so sick of
poverty that all they want is peace. And, again and again, both in Kabul ­
I¹ve been in Kabul and I've been in a province called Wardak which is toward
the central highlands, and I¹ve been out near the Pakistani border in
Nangarhar province where Jalalabad is, out in the countryside, and in every
place people are just saying, ³Well, you know, that's the price of peace.
All we want is peace and all we want is development.²

 JUAN GONZALEZ:  Christian, if I can ask you what about the reports of the
United States officials getting involved in trying to pressure candidates or
having a much more active role in these elections?

 CHRISTIAN PARENTI:  Well, definitely there's a lot of those rumors
circulating. That's not really been what I've been following up on. I've
been sort of being out of Kabul more. But, yeah, there's ­ the word on the
street is that the U.S. Ambassador, who is the real power behind the throne
here, is pressuring and cutting deals with all of these former
commander/warlords like Rashid Dostum and others to get people to turn out
the vote for Karzai. Not that Dostum won¹t turn out the vote for Karzai, but
more minor players whose names are unknown outside of their region.

 JUAN GONZALEZ:  There was a front page story in the Los Angeles Times,
Christian ­

 CHRISTIAN PARENTI:  And the thing that will come out of this ­ the real
something ­

 JUAN GONZALEZ:  Christian, there was a front page story in the Los Angeles
Times on September 23 that quoted Mohammed Mohaqeq, one of the Afghan
candidates, saying that the U.S. Ambassador had dropped by his campaign
office and proposed a deal, quote: ³He told me to drop out of the elections,
but not in a way to put pressure. It was like a request,² According to
Mohaqeq.

 CHRISTIAN PARENTI:  Yes. That's what's going on. The proof of all this deal
making, I think, will be seen after Karzai wins when he forms his cabinet
and that is also a dangerous moment when people ­ if they see all the same
faces, that is to say all the faces of the Mujahedin commanders that were
backed by the United States against the Soviet Union during the 1980's and
then between 1992 and 1994 and 1996, just destroyed much of the country and
destroyed half of Kabul, these people are now ­ they were beaten by the
Taliban, cornered in Northern Afghanistan, reinvented as the Northern
Alliance and lost the war with U.S. air power. And everybody hates these
quote-unquote commanders, despite there being incredible fear in
Afghanistan. It reminds me a lot of Guatemala, people are very afraid to
talk. But people are very open about how much they resent commanders, this
from former Mujahedin soldiers. The fear is that Karzai will appoint a
cabinet full of war criminals and that will send a message to the people
that they have no voice and no hope for any kind of real development in the
future.

 AMY GOODMAN:  Christian ­

 CHRISTIAN PARENTI:  All of these Mujahedin commanders are, you know,
involved in drug running, extortion and land theft. There's a massive
problem right now with enclosures of common lands. The warlords of the
Northern Alliance are back in power and they are ­ many of them, you know,
are now pawning themselves off as police officials and governors and they
have a new legitimacy and they have uniforms to go along with their informal
power in guns, and they are seizing poor people's property and seizing
common property. And part of the impetus for that is that there's so much
money to be made in poppy that ­ opium poppy that ­

 AMY GOODMAN:  Christian?

 CHRISTIAN PARENTI:  That all land ­ The land is going through the roof ­

 AMY GOODMAN:  Christian, we want to turn for a moment ­ Christian is
speaking to us from Kabul, Afghanistan. We also want to turn to Sonali
Kolhatkar, who is host of the popular KPFK program ³Uprising² on the
Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles. She is also President of the Afghan
Women¹s Mission, a group that works in solidarity with Afghans to improve
health and educational facilities for Afghan refugees in Pakistan and is
writing a book on Afghanistan. Sonali, you have written a piece called
³Afghan Elections: A U.S. Solution to a U.S. Problem.² Explain.

 SONALI KOLHATKAR:  Well, really this whole election has been organized by
the United States. The Afghan people have not had any hand in organizing
their own election, the timeline of the election. The United States decided
what form the election should take, what timeline it should take and that's
really an indication of the fact that this election is not really a test of
Afghan democracy. You hear a lot of media pundits talk about, you know, this
is a test of Afghans, meaning if the elections spiral into violence, the
implication is that it will be the fault of the Afghans, and Afghans maybe
just can't handle democracy. Well, we really have to look at it as a test of
the Bush administration to impose its model of imperial democracy onto poor
countries and Bush has very clearly said that these elections will be the
first step and sort of a model for what will happen in Iraq. All along,
Afghanistan has been sort of a blueprint for Iraq, a testing ground for
Iraq, and the elections in Iraq are going to be the next in line. It's very
clear if you look at what Christian said about Zalmay Khalilzad is
absolutely true. Khalilzad, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, a U.S.
Citizen, is pulling the strings in this country. We found in my research
with my partner, we found a blueprint written by him in 2000 in the
Washington Quarterly where he had laid out how the United States should
approach Afghanistan. It's called ³Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue
State,² where he basically talks initially about, you know, why not extend
an olive branch to the Taliban, why not engage the Taliban? And then his
other scenario was to create a military stalemate. The United States should
offer existing foes of the Taliban assistance, meaning the Northern
Alliance. All of this has been drawn out. Interestingly enough, he also says
in this blueprint the Clinton Administration, because this was written up
during Clinton's era. The Clinton administration should appoint a high level
envoy for Afghanistan who can coordinate overall U.S. policy. His own job
description. He started out as a U.S. Envoy to Afghanistan. He is now the
U.S. Ambassador, and he is really pulling the strings. He is pressuring
candidates and in Afghanistan, according the Los Angeles Times article by
Paul Watson, he is known as a Viceroy. The Viceroy, reminiscent of the
British colonialist era. He is telling Karzai what to do, and the voter
intimidation that Christian was talking about is so real, and this is all
with the blessing of Karzai and Khalilzad. One example was that there was a
gathering of about 300 clan leaders from a Terazai tribe in Paktia province
who decided to throw their support behind Karzai, and they made a radio
announcement saying all Terazai tribes people should vote for Karzai and
said, if any people vote for other candidates, the tribe will burn their
houses. What did Karzai do? He welcomed their support. He extended an
invitation to the leaders to visit Kabul. He brushed aside any criticism of
the radio broadcast saying, ³Such warnings are just a tradition, they¹re not
meant as a serious threat. So Karzai is having his strings pulled by
Khalilzad who is the U.S. ambassador. This election is for U.S. purposes
alone and it's meant to solve the U.S. problem of the Bush administration
not having enough of a success in Iraq to point to, as he goes into
election, this November.

 AMY GOODMAN:  Sonali, we just have 30 seconds. But what about the one
female candidate, Massouda Jalal?

 SONALI KOLHATKAR:  Well, Massouda Jalal, the fact that she can run, is a
wonderful thing. I wish there were some women running in the U.S. Election.
But it is a token, it is paying lip service. It is giving people around the
world what we want to hear. We want to be convinced that women have been
liberated. But just like in 2001, women are just pawns in this election.
They are under-represented by about one third. They are 60% of the
population, but apparently only 40% of them vote, but only 10% of them can
even read or write. The infrastructure in this country cannot support
women's rights, and so the fact that they're supposedly voting in this
election is being made a big deal of. Women can't even vote, they need
permission of their husbands to vote, according to survey results from the
Asia Foundation. So, who's going to vote for Massouda Jalal? Even women who
may want to vote for her are not going to be able to. One man, Latif Pedram,
who was a candidate in the election, he made a suggestion that, you know,
polygamy, the issue of polygamy, which is rampant in Afghanistan, might be
unfair to women. Well, he was disqualified from the election and accused of
blasphemy by the court. The court that was appointed by Karzai, a very
fundamentalist Chief Justice. So, the whole infrastructure in Afghanistan is
stacked against women. The fact that one woman is running doesn't mean
anything else. Again, it is a show for the Bush administration to say,
³Look, we¹ve liberated Afghan women.²

 AMY GOODMAN:  Sonali Kolhatkar, thank you for being with us. Vice president
of the Afghan's Women Mission and popular talk show host, journalist on
Pacifica station WPFK in Los Angeles where she is speaking to us from. And
Christian Parenti talking to us from Kabul, Afghanistan, writing for The
Nation magazine. This is Democracy Now!

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