Hobson's Choice

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October '04 Elections in Afghanistan

October 10, 2004

Sorry about the dreadful pun, but presidential elections in Afghanistan have just been held and there's a problem: multiple voting. Hamid Karzai was the only candidate who neither withdrew nor boycotted the election (Daily Times, BBC, Eurasianet); the complaint is that, with logistics and the support of rival warlords, his supporters will be able to vote twice. This was supposed to have been prevented by indelible ink on voters' thumbs; alas, the ink was anything but.

This seems like sour grapes; the opposition to Karzai was already terribly splintered, and while candidates insist the winner will not be legitimate, it does seem that Afghani voters feel otherwise; they're waiting for hours to vote. Readers, however, might find this report from HRW very disturbing:

Women and Elections in Afghanistan: ...Warlords and the Taliban are undermining Afghan women’s participation in the political process through ongoing threats and attacks...
...Female journalists, activists, and government officials have reported death threats, harassment, and attacks for speaking out about sensitive women’s rights issues. Through intimidation and armed attacks, local warlord factions, the Taliban, and other insurgent forces have forced the closure of women’s development projects that provide desperately needed education, health, rights awareness, and job training to women and girls.
Security concerns have led to intermittent suspension and curtailment of civic education programs and voter registration efforts, with a particularly negative impact on women.

The full report on anti-women terrorism explains how women have been hit all the harder by attacks on multilateral organizations (e.g., the UN and the OSCE) or NGOs that are trying to help them participate.

Obstruction of women’s development projects: In May 2004, a women’s rights organization was forced to close a project in the central Panjshir region supporting internally displaced women because a group of mullahs objected to rights awareness programs conducted by the center.³⁸ Despite negotiations between U.N. and NGO officials with the local mullahs and governor, the center was closed. The center served two hundred women daily with programs including sewing, basic women’s rights, civic awareness, and health initiatives...
...Unknown attackers targeted a local women’s center in eastern Afghanistan and threw a grenade into its office on December 14, 2003, causing damage to the building.
One women’s rights activist told Human Rights Watch: "It is not the fault of NGOs, it is a result of the security problems…. There is bad security and not many NGOs operating in Kandahar, Hilmand, Farah, the eastern part [of the country], Paktia, Taloqan, Takhar, and Badakshan."

Actually, an immense number of examples were cited; also heartbreaking was endemic threats against Afghani women themselves. Violence, intimidation, and disruption also selectively target women who seek to register and vote in the elections. The reason for this is obvious: women tend to be a progressive force in any society; the practitioners of violence, in contrast, are reactionary, cowardly, and corrupt. They need to prove to all that they can deliver the votes of their fiefdom to whomever they chose.

HRW also furnishes a report on more general use of intimidation.

Parliamentary elections have been postponed until 2005 because of security concerns and logistical problems. Major security and human rights problems persist, and seriously endanger the country’s future.
Political repression by local strongmen is the principal problem... Independent political organizers unaffiliated with factions or their militia forces are facing death threats and harassment and are struggling just to organize... Potential leaders who would otherwise be eager to take part in the political life of their country, have instead already opted out of the process,... afraid for their lives. Voters in many rural areas have already been told by warlords and regional commanders how to vote and, given the general political repression and unfamiliarity with democratic processes, are likely to obey.

Everyone knows that Afghanistan has a tenuous grip—at best—on civil order; readers might wonder at how bleak the situation really is. HRW's assessment in the introductory summary is very bleak:

The question is whether the presidential election in 2004 (and local and parliamentary elections in 2005) will move the country closer towards that goal. As this report shows, it is likely it will not. Most signs suggest that warlordism and factional dominance will only increase....
Relief is not on the way. Many politically active Afghans, including presidential candidates, say they feel unprotected—and are scared. Afghanistan is still without an adequately staffed professional and independent police force, and the justice system barely functions. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and various Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), international joint military-civilian teams operated by various nations in Afghanistan, have assisted in some protection efforts but have been unable to bring an overall sense of improved security across the country. The main and continuing reason for their weakness has been the inadequate number of troops made available to their operations by NATO member nations. Amazingly, because of the inadequate provision of international forces, current security plans for the presidential election include the use of deputized warlord or factional forces to guard polling stations—the very people Afghans say they’re most afraid of.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), along with several international officials in other Kabul offices, have been working hard to combat the ongoing problems, and have intervened to support numerous vulnerable persons and groups, especially in Kabul. But international officials and agencies alone are not in a position to protect the majority of politically active Afghans.

Why does HRW think the situation is so bad? It conducted interviews with several hundred Afghanis in different regions to find out who was identified as a threat to non-violent political participation. While most media coverage of Afghanistan refers to Taliban residuals—mainly, it seems, because they've been killing most of the foreigners there—it seems that the ordinary villagers and urban residents are intimidated by warlord, including thoseaffiliated with the coalition forces there:

Regional Problems: Human Rights Watch found serious problems in the east of the country. In the eastern provinces of Nangahar and Laghman, including Nangahar’s capital, Jalalabad, Afghan militia forces remain under the de facto control of military commanders, including Hazrat Ali, who cooperates with U.S. and coalition forces operating in the area, and Haji Zahir, the son of the Haji Qadir, a former mujahidin commander and member of President Karzai’s cabinet who was assassinated in Kabul in 2002.
Hazrat Ali and Haji Zahir’s commanders throughout the Nangahar area operate criminal enterprises and continue to engage in numerous human rights abuses, including the seizure of land and other property, kidnapping civilians for ransom, and extorting money—as Human Rights Watch has previously documented.⁷ As noted below, U.S. and coalition forces continue to cooperate with these forces in operations against the Taliban and other insurgent groups.
[..]
Two of Hazrat Ali’s most infamous commanders, Commander Musa and Commander Sami (whose abuses have been documented by both Human Rights Watch and the AIHRC) have continued to operate with impunity...Hazrat Ali and Haji Zahir’s forces have both been involved in political abuses, including past threats against Loya Jirga candidates and purchasing of votes.

That's the southeast. In the northern part, Rashid Dostum is the main liaison with US forces:

The northern city of Mazar-e Sharif has a relatively freer political environment, but there are still major problems in rural areas around the city and some abuses in the city by military factions. For the most part, military, police, and intelligence forces in the north are allied with the leader of the Junbish faction, General Rashid Dostum, or to a lesser degree with the Jamiat-allied commander Atta Mohammad or the Hezb-e Wahdat commander Mohammad Mohaqqiq. (For more on these factions, see Appendix A.)
All three of these forces have been implicated in widespread abuses against ethnic Pashtun villagers in the north in the wake of the Taliban’s defeat in 2001, as Human Rights Watch has documented in a previous report.²⁴

The situation in Herat is said to be especially bad:

Ismail Khan continued to maintain his own governmental administration in Herat, and defied the Karzai government repeatedly, refusing to allow local Karzai appointees to take up positions in Herat city and disobeying several of Karzai’s decrees on customs revenue.
Human Rights Watch received consistent and repeated testimony through August 2004 that local military, police, and intelligence forces under Ismail Khan were continuing to threaten independent political activity and stifle free speech.
On September 11, 2004, Karzai appointed a new governor for Herat, Sayed Mohammad Khairkwa, and relieved Ismail Khan of his post (the United States had apparently refused to support a 2003 plan by Karzai to remove Ismail Khan). The same day the new governor took office, September 12, supporters of Ismail Khan attacked, looted, or burned five U.N. offices, including the headquarters of UNAMA, and AIHRC. The situation has stabilized, but Ismail Khan still controls some militia forces around Herat, and it is unclear who holds real power in Herat.

The failure of US forces to support Karzai on this is odd, since American authorites harbor a peculiar mistrust of Ismail.

Similarly bleak reports for other regions of the country suggest that the local leaders not only ignore Pres. Karzai and threaten opponents, they act pre-emptively to ensure no opposition or criticism exists. In other words, Afghanistan seems to have become a miniature, very poor, version of Soviet Central Asia, with a cluster of ethnically distinct fiefdoms politically friendly to Washington yet intensely repressive in the cities; the countryside is entirely without safety, since the Taliban and the local warlords compete to intimidate the peasants.

The problem is that the interested powers sought to do everything on the cheap by retaining the services of warlords and skimping on assistance to training, health, education, logistics and famine relief. Afghanistan makes a terrible object of colonial rule, but it's been in the way for many would-be imperialists in the past.

Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) page for Afghanistan. This covers news about ecological issues facing the country (as well as many others), and there I noticed this exceptionally good article on Afghani food security.