By Rahimullah Yusufzai
There were hardly any celebrations, and the manner of his win caused embarrassment to him and his supporters. The 54.6 percent votes (3.1 million out of the 5.7 million valid votes) that President Karzai had won according to an announcement by the Afghan Independent Election Commission, were cut down to 49.6 percent following a recount of the disputed votes by the UN-backed Election Complaints Commission. Another 0.5 percent votes would have raised Mr Karzai’s percentage to more than 50 percent and given him a first-round win. But this didn’t happen and thus a run-off election was necessitated between Mr Karzai and the runner-up, Dr Abdullah, who received 27 percent of the vote.
But the latter (whose real name is only Abdullah, not Abdullah Abdullah that the Western media uses owing to its reluctance to accept that a person couldn’t have a single name) boycotted the second round. However, the fact that the run-off election didn’t take place triggered a debate and prompted Dr Abdullah to describe Mr Karzai’s election as illegal and unconstitutional.
The head of the Independent Election Commission Azizullah Lodin, an appointee of president Karzai, justified the decision to declare Mr Karzai re-elected under Article 61 of Afghanistan’s constitution following Dr Abdullah’s boycott. Mr Lodin’s plea was that the run-off election could only take place if there were two candidates in the field. Besides, he cited the heavy expenditure required for a second round of polling and the expected security risks as reasons for calling off the run-off election.
It wasn’t without reason that Dr Abdullah had demanded Mr Lodin’s removal and revamping of the US-funded election commission, which couldn’t really be “independent” in a country occupied by foreign forces and run by a government made up of warlords. He had also made his participation in the run-off conditional on the sacking of at least three government ministers and certain electoral reforms.
The president rejected his demands on the ground that these would be a violation of Afghanistan’s laws and constitution. This was a weak argument considering the fact that ensuring democratic and credible elections was vital to raise the trust of the Afghan people in the electoral process and Afghanistan’s nascent democracy. The fact that the turnout in the 2009 presidential poll dropped to 38.7 percent—that too despite the fraudulent figures and multiple voting, from the high of 70 percent in the 2004 election—should have been a cause for alarm as it showed the disenchantment of the Afghan people with the system of governance and justice. It also highlighted their alienation with the country’s ruling elite, almost all dependent on the US and NATO power for their survival and on international assistance for their riches.
It won’t be fair to blame only President Karzai for the fraudulent election. He obviously had more power and resources as Afghanistan’s president for the last eight years to rig the poll. His men holding the reins of power in Pakhtun-populated southern and eastern Afghanistan, and in the northern and central provinces dominated by warlords Abdur Rasheed Dostum and Karim Khalili, left no stone unturned to arm-twist, buy-off and charm voters in favour of candidate Karzai.
But powerful supporters of Dr Abdullah, the man who had been President Karzai’s foreign minister for sometime and benefited from western largesse, were not to be left behind as they hunted for votes for the half-Tajik, half-Pakhtun candidate from Panjshir Valley. One such supporter was Ata Mohammad Noor, governor of the northern Balkh province, who vigorously campaigned for Dr Abdullah and even threatened not to accept Mr Karzai as a legitimate president owing to the fraud in the election.
That anyone with the gun and the resources played a role in rigging Afghanistan’s presidential election is evident from the European Union’s report that a third of the disputed 1.5 million votes were fraudulent, and that this included one million polled for Mr Karzai and 300,000 for Dr Abdullah. Despite his victory, the electoral fraud will haunt President Karzai during his next five-year term in office. In fact, he has emerged bruised and weaker from the election. His Western backers, who not long ago were charmed by his English-speaking ability, his traditional Afghan robes and his relatively clean past compared to the other Afghans in power, are now determined to make him accountable for his actions. From President Barack Obama to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and from UN special representative in Afghanistan Kai Eide to the leaders of all Western nations with troops in the country, the message to President Karzai is loud and clear: rid your government of warlords and drug-runners and clean up corruption if you want out continued support.
It seems the criterion for backing the beleaguered Afghan president has become tougher and now he must meet certain stringent conditions to qualify for Western support in the form of troops and resources to battle the resurgent Taliban, sustain him in power, pay for the expenses of his cash-strapped government and its feeble institutions and also rebuild the war-wracked country.
It is strange that an Afghan president dependent on NATO forces and western money for survival is being tasked to do things beyond his power. It is the western powers which brought back to power the Afghan warlords who had been defeated by the Taliban and discredited due to their corrupt practices and their excesses against the Afghan people. But now they want the weak Afghan president to ditch these powerful men holding positions as governors, corps commanders, ministers and advisers.
The US and its allies with 103,000 troosps in Afghanistan are also primarily responsible for the record rise in opium-poppy production and drug-trafficking and for their failure to take action against drug barons mostly part of the Afghan government out of fear of making more enemies. But their wrath is directed against Mr Karzai, who on his own cannot do much to curtail the power of the drug-runners and warlords.
Like all rulers in countries with weak desmocracies, he had to make alliances with powerful warlords and moneyed people to win election and survive in power. It isn’t something proper and much-needed reforms, mostly written into Afghan law but not implemented, must take place in Afghanistan to give its people hope and a better life. However, expecting President Karzai to accomplish on his own the wish-list drawn for him by his western sponsors amounts to wishful thinking.
At a time when President Karzai’s government and its impatient western supporters bicker among themselves as to what needs to be done to right the wrongs in an increasingly unstable Afghanistan, the Taliban appear to be enjoying the spectacle. They were able to partially disrupt the presidential election and ensure a low turnout. The electoral fraud and the crucial western role in resolving the issue of the disputed vote validated the Taliban’s argument that the poll was a tool of foreigners aimed at installing a subservient government in Kabul. The misgivings about each other’s intentions between the Afghan government and the NATO member-states taking part in the fighting in Afghanistan will further help the Taliban cause.
Making President Karzai a scapegoat for the collective western failure in Afghanistan may help influence public opinion in western countries, but it cannot win them a decisive military victory against the Taliban. That will require acceptance of the ground realities in Afghanistan as deployment of extra western forces in the country will provoke resentment among most Afghans and give a fillip to the Taliban resistance.
The 103,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan and the over 150,000 Afghan National Army soldiers and the Afghan National Police should be more than enough to tackle the less than 20,000 Taliban if the Afghan people were convinced that the west and its partner in Kabul, President Karzai, could be trusted to put their homeland on the path of progress and prosperity. Until that happens, neither any increase in resources and troops nor the holding of elections will be able defeat the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahimyusufzai @yahoo.com