Rigged vote sharpens strategic challenge
The challenges facing Western nations in Afghanistan have been vividly highlighted by the summer’s death toll and the rigging of the August presidential election. In countries contributing the largest number of troops – the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and Italy – debate has been sparked about the fundamentals of the mission: its purpose, strategy and execution, and the resources it requires. Governments and military commanders are agreed that success is eluding them. No wavering in their determination to achieve it is evident, but there are indications of a shift in approach that will put greater emphasis on political factors within Afghanistan.
A request by commanders for more troops is likely to bring the current discussion to a head. US President Barack Obama made clear in television appearances on 20 September that he wished to ensure that there was a clear strategy to reach the objectives before sending more troops. But General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), has called for a ‘jump’ in forces in order to gain the initiative against the Taliban-led insurgency. In an assessment revealed by the Washington Post on 21 September, he wrote: ‘success is not ensured by additional forces alone, but continued under-resourcing will likely cause failure’. McChrystal sought a complete change in the ‘operational culture’ of ISAF, ‘how ISAF understands the environment and defines the fight, how it interacts with the Afghan people and government, and how it operates on the ground and within the coalition’. There must be much more ‘unity of effort’, he said.
While American and other Western politicians may accept the logic of McChrystal’s recommendations, they face electorates that seem increasingly to doubt that, after eight years, success can be achieved in the foreseeable future and that the West’s sacrifices can be justified. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a speech on 4 September to the IISS that attempted to re-articulate Britain’s Afghan strategy, laid emphasis on ‘Afghanisation’ as offering the route to an eventual exit. A White Paper from the Obama administration in March had not used the same word (with its echoes of Vietnam) but had put similar stress on promoting effective government and developing Afghan security forces. Against this background, the alleged fraud in the presidential election appeared severely to undermine Western strategy.
Electoral malpractice
As of 21 September, returns were showing President Hamid Karzai with 54.6% of the votes, enough to win the election outright without a second-round run-off vote against his closest challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. However, the Electoral Complaints Commission, which is working with the help of the United Nations, ordered a recount of the votes from about 10% of polling stations after finding what it said was ‘clear and convincing evidence of fraud’. The European Union’s observer mission found more than a third of the votes cast for Karzai to be suspicious. If the recount results in Karzai’s vote falling below 50%, a run-off vote could be held, perhaps in October.
The vote-rigging was disappointing in view of positive signs in the run-up to the 20 August election, including a large increase in voter registrations. In March, the Independent Electoral Commission reported that more than four million new voters had registered, to add to the 12m who registered in 2005, and that 38% of these new voters were women. But as the votes were counted, stuffing of ballot boxes became apparent. Some Pashtun tribal leaders protested that votes from their communities cast in the name of Karzai were fraudulent. Abdullah accused Karzai of ‘state-engineered fraud’.
During the campaign Karzai, a Pashtun, had struck political deals with powerful figures across Afghanistan’s ethnic spectrum in order to bolster his position. Among these were Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the Tajik warlord and former defence minister, who became first vice president and Karzai’s running mate. Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqeq offered his support to the president, even though he had been sacked from his first cabinet. More contentiously, Karzai reinstated the Uzbek warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, as his military chief of staff. Dostum, who was living in exile in Turkey, had been removed from this post following his involvement in a kidnapping incident, and is accused by human-rights groups of war crimes and civil-rights abuses. Karzai also struck a deal with Gul Agha Sherzai, the Pashtun governor of Nangahar province, who might have won a significant portion of Pashtun votes but was persuaded to withdraw his candidacy for the presidency.
Karzai’s deal-making was a powerful tactic to deploy against Abdullah, who has both Pashtun and Tajik ethnicity and, with his experience as foreign minister, was a strong contender. But the number of votes delivered to Karzai by Fahim, Mohaqeq and Dostum proved fewer than expected.
Military support
NATO had stepped up its troop presence in order to protect the electoral process. As part of this US-led surge, international and Afghan counter-insurgency forces went on the offensive in increased numbers in the southern and eastern areas dominated by the Taliban so that registration and voting could take place. At the same time, McChrystal, who took command in May following the removal of his predecessor, adopted a new approach that focused on protecting the Afghan population. He revised the rules of engagement governing the use of air power with the result that civilian casualties dropped sharply during the summer.
0 – about 14% of the country’s current total generation capacity.
