ONLY WEEKS after Iran’s disputed elections prompted turmoil, mass demonstrations in the streets, a crackdown and a real crisis of legitimacy in Tehran, is recent history about to repeat itself in neighbouring Afghanistan? In truth, the next few weeks promise to be turbulent times in Kabul where a president likely to be “re-elected” is also mired in corruption, nepotism, and incompetence and is as much a part of the problem as of any solution.
Early tallies put the turnout in Thursday’s elections at between 40 and 50 per cent, a far cry from the 70 per cent who cast votes in the 2004 polls. In a state at war, with UN maps showing that the Taliban and other jihadists posing a threat in roughly 40 per cent of the country, such figures will be claimed by some to have been a relative success. Officials say there were 73 attacks in 15 provinces on the day, but that 94 per cent of polling centres opened. No election could be perfect under such conditions.
But the low poll has been combined with credible allegations of widespread voter intimidation, notably in the south, and fraud – up to three million fraudulent ballot papers are said to have been on the market for anyone who cared to buy them. Voting by women is reported to have been particularly low. Most worrying for President Hamid Karzai will also be the reality that polling appears to have been particularly poor in his Pashtun communities of the south while the predominantly Tajik voters of former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah turned out in strength.
Such realities will do little for Mr Karzai’s threadbare authority or legitimacy if, as expected, he is re-elected either on the first count or a run-off ballot if no candidate makes the required 50 per cent first time round. Or indeed for the legitimacy of the US-led campaign against the Taliban. On Friday, both his campaign and that of his main rival, former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdulllah, were claiming victory – preliminary results should be out today, although it will be a full two weeks before the official results are declared.
The danger is that the election itself, instead of providing a stabilising, legitimising sea anchor for Afghanistan’s political class, may prove a lance that again opens bare the country’s old tribal fault lines. As we wait for final results, and then possibly prepare for a fraught re-run, Kabul’s demonstration-prone streets will almost certainly rehearse the arguments and battles that convulsed Tehran in the wake of its “stolen” election. Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistan author who knows Afghanistan well, warns that if a run-off becomes necessary, “it will be a very dangerous moment for Afghanistan . . . Now, that will create a gap of two months. There will be chaos and political confusion.”
On the military front such instability and arguments about legitimacy can only prove grist to the Taliban mill. Afghanistan’s army remains far from capable of taking them on, and the new US commander Gen Stanley McChrystal is expected shortly to have to urge President Barack Obama to send another 20,000 US troops to a war that is increasingly unpopular back home.