• Bonn Process Complete: Now the Hard Work Begins
  
• Afghanistan Parliamentary elections: Low Violence, Low Turnout
  
• Women are 44% of all voters; in Jalalabad, higher turnout than men
  
• Electoral system, at Karzai's insistence, impedes parties
  
• Clinton: Afghanistan a bigger threat than Iraq
  
• Karzai: War on terrorism in Afghanistan has changed
  
• Featured Commentary: Seth G. Jones (RAND): U.S. must pressure Pakistan
  

"There will be over 5,000 losers. I am concerned they will not accept the result."
—Peter Erben, UN chief electoral officer. (Sept 18, The Observer)

"The completion of the Bonn process should not be seen by the international community [as a sign] that Afghanistan is now on its own feet. No. We are not."
—President Hamid Karzai (Sept 21, RFE/RL)

Analysis

Bonn Process Complete: Now the Hard Work Begins
By Carl Robichaud

Afghanistan's historic vote will create an elected parliament for the first time since 1973. Yet when the dust settles, Sunday's vote may be remembered less for what it put in place than what it ended. The vote marks the end of the international mandate (embodied in the 2001 Bonn Accord)-and finds Afghanistan at perhaps its most perilous juncture since the liberation of Kabul.

Although it has achieved numerous gains, Afghanistan is still a long way from success. Negotiations for a new international framework ("Bonn II") come at a when the most achievable goals have been realized and the most daunting problems-the opium economy and internal insecurity-threaten to unravel all previous progress. These two problems are interrelated, and become particularly troubling with the country awash in arms and poised on a geopolitical fault line. No one has yet proposed plans on these issues that inspire confidence. Yet unless the international community and the Afghan government create a framework that addresses these problems, the institutions built over the past four years could fold like a house of cards.

Read the rest of the article here…

Election News

"The voters distrust many election candidates, there has clearly been a lack of delivery by President Hamid Karzai's government and the threat of violence from armed groups like the Taliban all played their part in keeping the people away from polling stations yesterday," an election official in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif said on condition of anonymity.

"No, I didn't vote, because the commanders and warlords have not been kept out [of the election], one man in Kabul said, referring to the fact that many regional strongmen, some accused of human rights abuses in the decades of conflict, were able to stand for parliament.

Qasim Akhgar, an Afghan political analyst, said the low turnout was related to the government's failure to make good on development promises to the people. "Another key factor was the lack of awareness of millions of Afghans regarding the whole electoral process," he said.

BBC: Women voters outnumber men in Jalalabad
September 18 (BBC)—"Reports from Kandahar in the south say women voted in large numbers. BBC reporters in Jalalabad say more women than men voted there."

A day at the polls, Afghanistan-style
September 18 (The Independent)—Seven candidates were killed in the weeks leading up to the elections, and one high-profile candidate, Bashar Dost, called a press conference on the eve of voting to prove that he was not among the victims. But there are grave fears of more killing after the votes are counted because of a seemingly ill-judged electoral law that has become jokingly known in Afghanistan as the "assassination clause". Under this, if any winning candidate is physically unable to take up his seat in parliament, the seat will go to the runner-up.

Another indication that the rule of gun is far from over comes from a quick glance down the candidate list. Many warlords from Afghanistan's past are not just standing - they are considered favorites to win. Most notoriously, Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, accused by Human Rights Watch of war crimes during the siege of Kabul in the 1990s, was one of the main contenders in Kabul province. Other powerful warlords, such as Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan, were not standing personally but were understood to have unofficial lists of candidates running under their colors in their respective areas. Some observers have suggested the Taliban may be quietly doing the same, putting their candidates up for election in their heartlands to attack the new system from inside and out at the same time.

© Sultan Massoodi/IRIN

Electoral system, at Karzai's insistence, impedes parties
September 19 (The Sydney Morning Herald) by Paul McGeough—The future is daunting for the President as Afghans vote. The Afghan poll is a high-stakes contest over who knows best how to run this broken-down country—President Hamid Karzai or the army of foreign diplomats push-pulling his government down the democracy road.

They pleaded with him. Out of sheer frustration, the United Nations, the Europeans and others warned Karzai: "You'll be sorry". But insisting he was on top of things, the Pashtun President stuck with his choice of an electoral system that many fear could backfire explosively.

Karzai disagrees. But the new parliament could be elected by as few as 20 per cent of voters, making it utterly unrepresentative; and Karzai's black-balling of political parties risks returning an unruly rabble that might eat him alive.

A diplomat who watched the arm-wrestling told the Herald: "He wouldn't budge. He claims he can manage a big bunch of independents, and the shifting coalitions they will form, better than a small group of parties who will work the parliament".

Almost four years after the US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime, Afghanistan is at a crossroads. These elections are the last piece in a jigsaw for change crafted at a postwar conference in Bonn in 2001. But the country is still on its knees - take out drugs and foreign aid and it doesn't have an economy; take out the foreign troops and its security forces would run a mile from a reinvigorated Taliban; take out the NGOs and the bureaucracy and services would collapse in a heap.

Time is precious. A senior US military official told the Herald: "The people might just get tired and impatient if they don't see development or reform." So too might the rest of the world, if it doesn't see a more determined Afghan commitment to make the best of its aid contributions and troop presence. Already, there are signs of donor fatigue—the UN is still panhandling for the cost of the election. And despite the Taliban being in a new lethal phase, military limits are being reached—Washington is talking troop cuts and NATO is balking at US calls for it to join the counterinsurgency...

Karzai's insistence on the rarely used SNTV electoral system—single non-transferable vote—allows voters to choose just a single candidate in fields of up to hundreds for no more than a dozen parliamentary seats in most provinces. The most populous, Kabul, has 33 seats—but there is a field of 389 candidates.

A senior foreign diplomat observed: "Predicting the outcome is impossible. No candidate is likely to get more than 10 per cent. If the rest are lucky they'll get about one per cent each.

"Seriously, in the six provinces that have more than 10 seats, the winners are likely to represent no more than a combined 20 per cent of the electorate.

"We hope we are wrong. But a 20 per cent parliament is a risk because Afghans are bad losers. With such a thin spread of votes, how is a 1.09 per cent loser going to feel when he sees a 1.1 per cent winner?"…The diplomat shrugged: "But Karzai says none of this is a problem..."

Diplomats say up to 150 known warlords—not to mention an unknown number of their proxy candidates—were allowed to contest the election after a failed fig-leaf effort to vet candidates for criminal and militia activity.

Other News

Clinton: Afghanistan a bigger threat than Iraq
September 19 (Bloomberg) by Catherine Larkin—Former President Bill Clinton said the U.S. strategy in Iraq threatens to draw resources from the ''even more important'' priority of securing Afghanistan. Clinton, interviewed on ABC's ''This Week'' program, said the United States won't know whether the Iraqis can muster enough trained security forces to fight the insurgency until the process of approving a constitution by national referendum and forming a permanent government is done by the end of the year.

The question is whether the U.S. force of 140,000 troops is enough to meet the strategic goal of securing Iraq while helping the country develop its own police and army forces, he said.
''I wanted the strategy to work,'' Clinton said. ''Whether it will or not, I don't know. But the only thing I would sacrifice it to is if I thought we were going to lose in Afghanistan.''

Clinton said keeping Afghanistan out of the hands of the Taliban and undermining al-Qaida should be the biggest priorities because ''that's still by far a bigger threat to our security.''

Karzai: War on terrorism in Afghanistan has changed; questions U.S. tactics
Kabul, September 21 (RFE/RL)—Karzai made his call for changes in the U.S.-led coalition anti-terror strategy on 20 September in Kabul.

"The nature of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan has changed now. Therefore, we do not think that there is a serious terrorist challenge emanating from Afghanistan. Rather, we believe that we should now concentrate on where terrorists are trained, on their bases, on the supply to them, on the money coming to them. That's what we need. A stronger political approach now."

Questions Effectiveness of US-Led Air Strikes
Karzai questioned the effectiveness of U.S.-led coalition air strikes to combat terrorism. He also says he wants coalition forces to get the approval of the Afghan government before searching the homes of Afghans for suspected militants.

"I don't think there is a big need for military activity in Afghanistan anymore," Karzai said. "The use of air power is something that may not be very effective now because we have moved forward. And similarly, going into the Afghan homes—searching Afghan homes without the authorization of the Afghan government—is something that should stop now. No coalition forces should go into Afghan homes without the authorization of the Afghan government. The Afghan government is now capable of doing that. The Afghan society is now better organized [and] can handle things like that better than it could a year or two years ago. That's what I mean by a change of strategy."

One of Karzai's top advisers, Dadfar Sepanta…said some mistakes by U.S. troops engaged in combat operations during the past year have caused discontent among ordinary Afghans -- particularly those living in the south and east of the country…During Karzai's May visit to Washington, he asked U.S. President George W. Bush to let the Afghan government have authority over house search operations in Afghanistan by coalition forces. Bush rejected the request.

In July, some 1,000 Afghan villagers staged an anti-U.S. demonstration outside the gates of Bagram Air Field north of Kabul to complain about what they said were the wrongful arrests of several Afghan civilians. Those arrests included a former local militia commander and a local Muslim cleric whom U.S. officials suspected of planning attacks against coalition forces.

Featured Commentary

The Danger Next Door
September 23 (New York Times)
by Seth G. Jones
(Political scientist at the RAND Corporation and author of "Establishing Law and Order After Conflict")

The Sept. 18 elections for Parliament and provincial councils were an important step in Afghanistan's march toward democracy. But now that progress is threatened by an increasingly violent insurgency that uses Pakistan as a staging area for attacks. Unless the United States and Pakistan take steps to eliminate this sanctuary, the security situation in Afghanistan will continue to deteriorate and undermine the country's fragile democracy.

This year has been the most violent in Afghanistan since the United States helped overthrow the Taliban government in 2001. The number of Americans killed so far in 2005 (74) is a 570 percent increase from 2001 and a 50 percent increase from 2004. In addition, the number of insurgent attacks against Afghan civilians has steadily increased each year since 2001.

Unlike the violence in Iraq, the fighting in Afghanistan is not the result of a local population deeply hostile to American forces. A 2004 opinion poll by the Asia Foundation showed that 65 percent of Afghans had a favorable view of the United States government, and 67 percent had a favorable view of the American military - findings supported by my own observations and data from trips to the region during the last three years.

Nor is the fighting in Afghanistan the result of a failing American political and military strategy. American conventional and Special Forces have conducted effective strike operations and civic action programs that have undermined Taliban, Qaeda and Hezb-i-Islami insurgents and their local support network in Afghanistan.

Instead, a complex support network in Pakistan is the key to the Afghan insurgency's survival. Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan get supplies and help in Pakistani provinces like North-West Frontier and Baluchistan. Numerous captured Taliban prisoners have said they received training in Pakistani areas like the Mansehra district. Even more troubling, evidence suggests that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate has helped Taliban insurgents. How can the insurgent sanctuary in Pakistan be eliminated?

First, Pakistani border police can strengthen controls along the Afghan-Pakistani border. American Special Forces have played a critical role in stopping infiltrators and training Afghans to patrol their borders over the last two years. But greater Pakistani participation is needed to block insurgents and their supplies.

Second, Pakistani forces can conduct an unconventional war that undermines popular support for the insurgents, captures or kills leaders and guerrillas, and destroys their support network. New Taliban recruits have replaced those killed or captured. Operating behind the scenes in deference to Pakistani sensitivities, the United States could help by providing intelligence and surveillance during the campaign.
Of course, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan faces serious obstacles to wiping out the insurgent base of support in his country. Since the 9/11 attacks, he has placated the West with unfulfilled promises of reform and crackdowns on extremists and simultaneously catered to Islamic political parties in order to retain their support.

Pushing Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan to act will require finding pressure points. Perhaps the most significant is tying American assistance to Pakistani cooperation. The United States gives Pakistan more than $700 million in military and economic assistance each year. This assistance covers areas like health, economic development, trade and law enforcement. The United States could tie continued assistance in some of these areas - as well as implicit American support in multilateral bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - to progress in defeating Afghan insurgents and their support network.

The United States can also focus on a second pressure point. President Musharraf wields power through a military government that seized control in 1999. Washington has been remarkably quiet about the shortcomings of democracy in Pakistan. In the absence of cooperation on counterinsurgency, the United States can and should increase pressure on Pakistan to pursue democratic reforms.

With the election of Hamid Karzai as president last year and last week's legislative voting, Afghanistan has made enormous political strides. It would be a shame to see this progress unravel through no fault of Afghanistan's, but through the failure of one of its neighbors to act and of the United States to do anything about it.

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Afghanistan Watch is prepared by Carl Robichaud, a program officer at The Century Foundation.

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