Afghanistan on Edge Again

Afghanistan on the edge again. The daily demonstrations, on the streets of capital Kabul over the last week, by the supporters of Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, alleging massive frauds during the second vote to decide the winner in the Presidential elections, have sharpened the divide among Afghans.

Abdullah's supporters, who have demanded the sack of the Chief Electoral Officer, Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail, have scored a victory.

All this and Abdullah's decision not to cooperate with the Election Commission have given jitters to the UN, US, the allies and all those sympathizers of Afghanistan who wish to witness a peaceful transition on completion of Karzai's term in August.

 

Abdullah announced this week that he will not be cooperating with the Independent Election Commission and would refuse to recognize any results it releases. He accused President Karzai of engineering the rigging of the election in favour of Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai. He has demanded U.N. intervention.

The eye in the storm, Chief Electoral Officer, Zia-ul Haq Amarkhail has now resigned following the ruckus after the release of alleged phone conversations between him and Ashraf Ghani's campaign team coordinating ballot stuffing and large scale rigging.

ECC has announced that the allegation against Amarkhail would be investigated and the tapes would be taken as evidence for assessment by the Complaint Commissioners.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the international community have heaved a sigh of relief on breaking the deadlock and organized a meeting of Abdullah's team, Ashraf Ghani's team and the Afghan Independent Election Commission in an effort to restart the vote count.

"It seems that the deadlock is broken and the process should go ahead," said Idrees Zaman, an analyst at Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a think tank in Kabul. "Mr. Amarkhil's resignation has been a face-saving way for him to rejoin this process."

The move doesn't mean an end to the crisis, though. Mr. Abdullah demanded that another round of the election be carried out in the parts of the country with the most suspicious results, especially in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

Mr. Abdullah reiterated his resolve not to perpetrate the conflict and said that he isn't interested in stirring up violent protests in an attempt to increase his leverage. "Had we wanted to have created disturbances, we could have done that," he said. "We are not in that line, we are not on that path."

Meanwhile, Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) officials from southern Kandahar province have separated votes from 17 polling sites out of the vote counting process for further review after suspicions of fraud arose from complaints filed by presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah. Election officials of nearby Helmand province have said votes from 13 sites have been isolated.

Kandahar ECC head Shamsuddin Wafa said that the complaints filed by Abdullah's campaign had led to the isolation of thousands of ballots from across the province. He said one of the polling sites was in Kandahar city and the others spread across nine outlying districts.

On Election Day, reports emerged from Kandahar of observers being forced out of voting places. Abdullah supporters have also pointed to a surprisingly high turnout in Maiwand district as a sign of possible ballot stuffing, along with similar cases in a number of eastern provinces.

In the neighbouring Helmond province with predominantly Pushtun population ECC office has separated votes from 13 polling sites for further investigation. The sites in question were located in Musa Qala, Gereshk, Nad Ali and Marjeh districts.

The peaceful demonstrations had forced a closure of the airport road amid escalating tensions over the disputed vote and gave a scare to the UN and the authorities responsible for the law and order in the capital fearing that the stir may not escalate to other parts of the country.

"We gather today to protest against the election commission, which is not an independent commission at all. They are involved in a fraud for a specific candidate," said Mohammed Ghani Sharifi, a 23-year-old protester. "The people are too upset and they cannot tolerate such fraud because the people took risks to cast their votes."

There were fears that street protests could turn violent and take on an ethnic dimension, as most of Abdullah's supporters are Tajiks, the second largest ethnic group, while Ghani's supporters are mainly Pashtun, the largest group in Afghanistan. Abdullah's running mate for Senior Vice President, Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, commands tremendous influence among the Shia Hazara population.

Abdullah's supporters chanted "we will defend our vote to the last drop of blood", while blocking the road leading to the airport on the outskirts of the capital. They also brandished banners with slogans, including "Death to Karzai", "Death to Ghani". The Independent Election Commission was similarly targeted, with banners that read "Death to the IEC".

The U.N. representative in Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, told a press conference that people had a "democratic right" to protest while urging them to remain peaceful and "refrain from inflammatory statements."

A disputed outcome, some Western diplomats and Afghan officials say, could cause violent unrest as foreign troops depart. Foreign monitors, Western diplomats and the United Nations have said the country's electoral bodies should take fraud allegations seriously, and they expect fraudulent ballots to be disqualified.

Abdullah Abdullah garnered 45% of the votes in the election's first round on April 5, against ex-Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani's 31.6%. His campaign officials say they believe that, because of the alleged fraud, Mr. Ghani is winning the runoff by around a million votes. The Independent Election Commission put the turnout at more than seven million, a figure disputed by Mr. Abdullah and some independent election observers, who say they believe the actual turnout was roughly five million.

Yusuf Nuristani, chairman of the IEC, which organized the election and is counting the votes, said Saturday's turnout was up from 6.6 million in the first round. While turnout was largely the same or lower in much of the country, the IEC's initial tallies indicated an enormous surge in the areas of eastern Afghanistan that are Mr. Ghani's base.

In the eastern province of Khost, for example, initial IEC tallies showed that more than 400,000 voters cast their ballots on Saturday, up from 113,000 in the first round.

According to the 2012-13 data compiled by Afghanistan's central statistics office, Khost's entire population is 549,000-and, given Afghanistan's demographic structure, at least one-third of them are children.

In the adjoining province of Paktika, 390,000 voters cast their ballots this time, up from 180,000 in the first vote. The province's population is 414,000. "This is the worst-case scenario for the foreign community in Afghanistan," said Graeme Smith, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group in Afghanistan.

Mr. Ghani's campaign team has offered a very weak defense and tried to attribute the high turnout in eastern Afghanistan to its 'successful mobilization of voters' and rejected allegations of widespread fraud.

Faizullah Zaki, a spokesman for Mr. Ghani, on Wednesday said the authority of the election bodies should be respected. "The result must be accepted by all candidates, whatever it is," he said. "This is the job of the IEC, and we should all patiently wait for them to make their announcement."

Of paramount concern is signing a security agreement that would allow some 9,800 U.S. troops to remain after the current combat mission ends in December. President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign the Bilateral Agreement while both Abdullah and Ghani have pledged to quickly endorse the deal. But the allegation of Karzai's administration indulging in rigging the election in favour of Ghani, has forced the observers to doubt whether Ghani, winning the presidentship with Karzai's help may not sign the agreement with the US under Karzai's influence.

Mr. Karzai's office has set the inauguration of the new president for August 2. A deadline threatened by the conflict over the results. Military officials say they need the agreement in place by September at the latest.

This is the second time that Dr. Abdullah and his supporters feel frustrated and being cheated to keep him out of the Presidential palace - Arg. In 2009 also he was a very close second to Karzai in the first vote and withdrew from the second vote alleging large scale rigging fraud by the administration led by Karzai. Even the independent international observers testified that fraud was committed, but Karzai manipulated the entire thing. The electoral watchdog threw out as fraudulent more than a million ballots, most of them cast for Mr. Karzai.

This time again Dr Abdullah got the maximum votes - 45 % in the first vote whereas his nearest rival Ashraf Ghani could garner just 31.6 %.

The incumbent President, Hamid Karzai seems to be playing his own game hoping to rule by proxy. He is clearly supporting Ashraf Ghani and his administration is involved in the fraud, perpetuating the process he followed in 2009. He seems to be playing with fire and does not realize that pushed to the wall, the followers of Abdullah, mostly the Tajiks and belonging to the former Northern Alliance owing allegiance to the legendary Tajik hero Late Ahmad Shah Massoud, may take to the gun again.

Abdullah was spokesman and the closest associate of Massoud who was killed by the suicide Taliban bombers just two days before the 9/11. Though a Pushtun from his father side and Tajik mother, his ardent supporters are from among the Tajiks because of his close association with the Panjshiri leader Massoud.

The bitter events have imperiled Afghanistan's political transition at a critical time, with most foreign troops preparing to leave by the end of 2014, and the Pakistan Army and ISI backed Taliban insurgency still raging after 13 years.

Fearing the escalation of agitation, the UN Mission in Afghanistan strongly urged the candidates to "take all steps necessary to control their supporters to prevent them from making any irresponsible statements and from taking steps that could lead to civil disorder and instability."

The fear weighing on everyone's mind seems to be the possibility of a disputed result devolving into a violent conflict. Ghani is considered the candidate of the Pashtuns-Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, and traditionally the ethnicity of the country's top leader. His running mate, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, commands the Uzbeks-another of the largest ethnic populations.

Abdullah's team, on the other hand, is considered the champion of the Tajiks-the country's second biggest constituency and the dominant ethnicity in many elite circles, especially the military.

It seems unlikely the U.S. and its NATO allies would sit idly by as Afghanistan degenerates into warring ethnic factions that would weaken the central government and make life for the Taliban a hell of a lot easier.

That is only more true now, given what is going on over in Iraq.

It also seems unlikely the two lead candidates would ever issue an explicit call to arms in order to seize power. What is more probable is that the hungry power-brokers and parochial warlords that have tied their fates to those of the candidates would be the ones to spark unrest. Yet, again, the Western presence, albeit dwindling, cannot be underestimated.

Average Afghan is extremely apprehensive of the turn the events may take. Their worst fears are that the country which came out of the three decades of disturbance raising their hopes, may not swing back to chaos again.

The views expressed in the above article are that of Mr. G.S.