TACSTRAT
Afghanistan’s Presidential Elections… Or Afghan Democracy Itself?!
On June 14, Afghans went to the polls for the runoff phase of the 2014 Presidential elections. After the first round on April 05, only two contestants made it to the second round: former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah (who garnered 45% of the vote), and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani (who came in second place with 32%). On June 22, Abdullah Abdullah’s campaign released recordings of what it claimed were telephonic conversations between a top election official, other election officials and aides of a rival candidate speaking about stuffing ballot boxes and rigging the vote. The frontrunner of the first round of polling, Mr. Abdullah has constantly claimed that his opponent, Mr. Ghani, has been colluding with outgoing President Hamid Karzai, and that the recordings reveal Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, the chief of the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) Secretariat, telling an election official in Faryab province to fire impartial staff members and replace them with Uzbeks and Pashtuns (the ethnic groups of Mr. Ghani and his running mate). A day after the recorded conversations were revealed to the press, Mr. Amarkhilresigned from his post, but on June 24, the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission of Afghanistan (IECC) said that all allegations against “chief electoral officer” Ziaulhaq Amarkhil have been dismissed after his resignation. However, these allegations of vote fraud have plunged the Afghan electoral process – and Afghan democracy itself – into a deep crisis.
This hullabaloo reminds one of the ongoing protests being led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) against the “rigged” May 2013 general elections which brought the PML-N to power in the center and in the Punjab province – and incidentally, gave the PTI a majority of seats in the KP provincial assembly as well. However, Pakistan was able to move forward and form a government after the 2013 elections, which has completed a year in office: in Afghanistan, the election drama seems to linger on and on, while outgoing President Karzai seems to cling on to his office as there appears to be no end to the exchange of allegations between the rival candidates, and on the IEC itself.
All this does not bode well for Afghanistan’s security and Afghanistan’s future: by the end of 2014, the NATO-ISAF troop contingent will completely pull out of the country, while some NATO allies have already completed their withdrawal. The country remains in the throes of a Taliban insurgency that shows no signs of abating, while the ANSF remain incapable of dealing with the Afghan Taliban threat on their own: and the recent events in Iraq (with the ISIS establishing control over large swathes of territory in the predominantly Sunni north and west) may be more than a hint or sign of things to come. The Afghan Taliban not only boycotted the Afghan elections, but threatened to attack polling stations and candidates during the campaign period and on election day itself. However, because of a massive security operation undertaken on the day of the election, no major terror attack or incident occurred (or was reported). For better or for worse, U.S. President Barack Obama has decided against a complete U.S. troop withdrawal, and has announced that a residual force of approximately 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan until 2017 – that is when the U.S. will complete withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. While this is going to bolster Afghan morale and the perpetuation of their state, it continues to show that Afghanistan remains incapable of defending its own territory by itself – and if Iraq is any example to use for comparing and contrasting, a complete U.S. withdrawal inevitably meant that untrained and ill-equipped Iraqi soldiers and policemen would either abandon their posts and positions, or would surrender to the terrorists (and eventually be butchered and slaughtered).
The Iraqi state – its government and society – had an overtly sectarian character: while the majority of the population was Shi’ite, the Saddam-led Ba’ath party dictatorship favoured the Sunni’s. And after the U.S. invasion, the Sunni’s became disillusioned and disenchanted as they lost their role in the governance of Iraq, and were not even given their due share after Iraqi democracy entrenched its roots in the country. In Afghanistan, while the sectarian dimension is much smaller, the tenacity and power of the “freedom struggle” against the “foreign invaders” and “occupying force” – as the narrative goes, and as the narrative was even during the Soviet military action in Afghanistan during the 1980s – has exposed the ground reality of 21st century conflict. With all its technological superiority, its numbers and might, and its tactics and strategy, the U.S. and its allies were unable to stabilize Afghanistan in over a decade – just like the Soviets were unable to do so before them, and just like the British were routed time and again in Afghanistan during the age of colonialism.
This makes the U.S.-Afghan Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) as important for Afghan security as the rapprochement between the Afghan government/state and the Afghan insurgents (the Taliban, the Haqqani network, the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar group, and others fighting the “foreign occupation” and the “puppet regime”). However, intra-Afghan peace occupies more importance than Afghanistan’s alliance with any other country, whether it is a neighbour or a superpower: peace among the Afghan people can only be brought about if there are sincere and robust confidence-building measures in place to placate the concerns and assuage the demands and desires of all Afghans, regardless of ethnicity or sect. Mr. Abdullah has said that the BSA needs to be signed “sooner rather than later” and that “by not signing it, the current administration of Afghanistan has created an atmosphere of uncertainty that has damaged Afghanistan and its interests a great deal”. He has indicated that if he were to become Afghanistan’s next president, he would ratify the BSA as a priority issue. Mr. Ghani has also said that he will sign the BSA if he becomes president so that the international community can “support the building, equipping and training of Afghan security forces [that] are in place”, and has furthermore said that he wouldn’t make any changesto the existing draft of the BSA – such as those which were being proposed from the outgoing president, Hamid Karzai. “Without the BSA”, Mr. Ghani said in May 2014, “our security sector will face a national crisis”. Mr. Ghani was also part of the chief negotiators who drafted the BSA with U.S. negotiators.
The two major American military interventions after 2001 – Afghanistan and Iraq – were carried out so that space for terrorists to operate and find safe haven is reduced, and so that “freedom and liberty” is expanded to parts of the world which have never seen it before (at least not in the 20th and 21st century). Iraq has spiraled into sectarian-motivated civil war (once again) after the U.S. troop withdrawal, and the ISIS now operates not only in Iraq, but also in Syria, where it is considered a powerful military force even among rebel groups fighting the Assad regime. The Afghan Taliban only dissipated between 2001 and 2005, after which they re-emerged and showed no signs of going away or even losing momentum: they had established shadow governments in all Afghan provinces which were more powerful, more functional, and had more legitimacy among the Afghan people than the official institutions of the Afghan state created after 2001. And Afghan territory is being used as “safe haven” by Pakistani Taliban, who have declared a war against Afghanistan’s nuclear-armed neighbour since 2007 and have killed more than 50,000 people, including over 10,000 security personnel according to various estimates. America has neither been able to secure and stabilize these volatile regions, nor has it been able to introduce viable democratic institutions that would not only be owned by the local people, but would self-perpetuate. And in a clear sign of not having learnt from its mistakes, the U.S. and NATO intervened in Libya and toppled the Gaddafi regime, transforming a stable North African state into a country divided into fiefdoms that are controlled by militias who have little or no allegiance to the central government in Tripoli anymore: in fact, an elected Prime Minister was kidnapped (and later released) by one of these militias that fought the Gaddafi regime!
While the consequences of American interventionism and American foreign policy can be questioned and criticized till the cows come home, the stability and perpetuation of Afghan democracy – particularly the election of a new president under legitimate and acceptable circumstances – is extremely important and utterly vital to the security of not only the landlocked nation-state, but for the security of South Asia and Central Asia as a region. Pakistan will be directly affected by any rise in instability and insecurity in Afghanistan, since it has launched a full-fledged military operation in the tribal region of North Waziristan – considered a hotbed of TTP (Pakistani Taliban) militants, foreign (Uzbek, Chechen, Tajik, Chinese, and other) fighters, as well as the Haqqani network (considered to be the most potent fighting force of the Afghan Taliban). Pakistan has asked both the U.S. and the Afghan security forces to bolster security on their side of the Pak-Afghan border so that militants do not retreat to find sanctuary in Kunar and Nuristan – at the same time, Pakistan has asked Afghanistan to locate and extradite Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the TTP, who is believed to be hiding in these Afghan provinces.
The longer the Afghan election process lingers on, and the longer it takes for Afghanistan to announce and swear-in a new president, the deeper the negative ramifications will be for the country itself, for the region, and for the international community that continues to invest economically (and, as far as the U.S. is concerned, militarily) into Afghanistan. The flaws and loopholes in Afghan democracy may be overcome in time – the 2009 Afghan elections were also deemed to have been “rigged” in the favour of the incumbent president Hamid Karzai, and this was acknowledged not only by local contestants and organizations, but also by international organizations such as the U.N. and other electoral watchdogs – since it is but natural for a democracy to evolve and develop to suit the needs and governance requirements of the population that is governed by this process. However, in the immediate timeframe, a result must be yielded for the presidential elections which have just been held in two phases, as per the Afghan Constitution. If this does not happen, and if the main candidates continue to vie for the top slot to satiate their own personal ego and forego the national interest for the sake of power, then the entire notion of Afghan democracy – and not just the Afghan presidential elections – will be considered flawed and faulty from the foundation. The hopes and dreams of liberal Afghans, of the Afghan youth, and particularly of Afghan women, will be irreparably dashed; and the regressive autocracy of the Taliban will become self-justified as the only method of governance that suits Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s Presidential Elections… Or Afghan Democracy Itself?!
On June 14, Afghans went to the polls for the runoff phase of the 2014 Presidential elections. After the first round on April 05, only two contestants made it to the second round: former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah (who garnered 45% of the vote), and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani (who came in second place with 32%). On June 22, Abdullah Abdullah’s campaign released recordings of what it claimed were telephonic conversations between a top election official, other election officials and aides of a rival candidate speaking about stuffing ballot boxes and rigging the vote. The frontrunner of the first round of polling, Mr. Abdullah has constantly claimed that his opponent, Mr. Ghani, has been colluding with outgoing President Hamid Karzai, and that the recordings reveal Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, the chief of the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) Secretariat, telling an election official in Faryab province to fire impartial staff members and replace them with Uzbeks and Pashtuns (the ethnic groups of Mr. Ghani and his running mate). A day after the recorded conversations were revealed to the press, Mr. Amarkhilresigned from his post, but on June 24, the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission of Afghanistan (IECC) said that all allegations against “chief electoral officer” Ziaulhaq Amarkhil have been dismissed after his resignation. However, these allegations of vote fraud have plunged the Afghan electoral process – and Afghan democracy itself – into a deep crisis.
This hullabaloo reminds one of the ongoing protests being led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) against the “rigged” May 2013 general elections which brought the PML-N to power in the center and in the Punjab province – and incidentally, gave the PTI a majority of seats in the KP provincial assembly as well. However, Pakistan was able to move forward and form a government after the 2013 elections, which has completed a year in office: in Afghanistan, the election drama seems to linger on and on, while outgoing President Karzai seems to cling on to his office as there appears to be no end to the exchange of allegations between the rival candidates, and on the IEC itself.
All this does not bode well for Afghanistan’s security and Afghanistan’s future: by the end of 2014, the NATO-ISAF troop contingent will completely pull out of the country, while some NATO allies have already completed their withdrawal. The country remains in the throes of a Taliban insurgency that shows no signs of abating, while the ANSF remain incapable of dealing with the Afghan Taliban threat on their own: and the recent events in Iraq (with the ISIS establishing control over large swathes of territory in the predominantly Sunni north and west) may be more than a hint or sign of things to come. The Afghan Taliban not only boycotted the Afghan elections, but threatened to attack polling stations and candidates during the campaign period and on election day itself. However, because of a massive security operation undertaken on the day of the election, no major terror attack or incident occurred (or was reported). For better or for worse, U.S. President Barack Obama has decided against a complete U.S. troop withdrawal, and has announced that a residual force of approximately 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan until 2017 – that is when the U.S. will complete withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. While this is going to bolster Afghan morale and the perpetuation of their state, it continues to show that Afghanistan remains incapable of defending its own territory by itself – and if Iraq is any example to use for comparing and contrasting, a complete U.S. withdrawal inevitably meant that untrained and ill-equipped Iraqi soldiers and policemen would either abandon their posts and positions, or would surrender to the terrorists (and eventually be butchered and slaughtered).
The Iraqi state – its government and society – had an overtly sectarian character: while the majority of the population was Shi’ite, the Saddam-led Ba’ath party dictatorship favoured the Sunni’s. And after the U.S. invasion, the Sunni’s became disillusioned and disenchanted as they lost their role in the governance of Iraq, and were not even given their due share after Iraqi democracy entrenched its roots in the country. In Afghanistan, while the sectarian dimension is much smaller, the tenacity and power of the “freedom struggle” against the “foreign invaders” and “occupying force” – as the narrative goes, and as the narrative was even during the Soviet military action in Afghanistan during the 1980s – has exposed the ground reality of 21st century conflict. With all its technological superiority, its numbers and might, and its tactics and strategy, the U.S. and its allies were unable to stabilize Afghanistan in over a decade – just like the Soviets were unable to do so before them, and just like the British were routed time and again in Afghanistan during the age of colonialism.
This makes the U.S.-Afghan Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) as important for Afghan security as the rapprochement between the Afghan government/state and the Afghan insurgents (the Taliban, the Haqqani network, the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar group, and others fighting the “foreign occupation” and the “puppet regime”). However, intra-Afghan peace occupies more importance than Afghanistan’s alliance with any other country, whether it is a neighbour or a superpower: peace among the Afghan people can only be brought about if there are sincere and robust confidence-building measures in place to placate the concerns and assuage the demands and desires of all Afghans, regardless of ethnicity or sect. Mr. Abdullah has said that the BSA needs to be signed “sooner rather than later” and that “by not signing it, the current administration of Afghanistan has created an atmosphere of uncertainty that has damaged Afghanistan and its interests a great deal”. He has indicated that if he were to become Afghanistan’s next president, he would ratify the BSA as a priority issue. Mr. Ghani has also said that he will sign the BSA if he becomes president so that the international community can “support the building, equipping and training of Afghan security forces [that] are in place”, and has furthermore said that he wouldn’t make any changesto the existing draft of the BSA – such as those which were being proposed from the outgoing president, Hamid Karzai. “Without the BSA”, Mr. Ghani said in May 2014, “our security sector will face a national crisis”. Mr. Ghani was also part of the chief negotiators who drafted the BSA with U.S. negotiators.
The two major American military interventions after 2001 – Afghanistan and Iraq – were carried out so that space for terrorists to operate and find safe haven is reduced, and so that “freedom and liberty” is expanded to parts of the world which have never seen it before (at least not in the 20th and 21st century). Iraq has spiraled into sectarian-motivated civil war (once again) after the U.S. troop withdrawal, and the ISIS now operates not only in Iraq, but also in Syria, where it is considered a powerful military force even among rebel groups fighting the Assad regime. The Afghan Taliban only dissipated between 2001 and 2005, after which they re-emerged and showed no signs of going away or even losing momentum: they had established shadow governments in all Afghan provinces which were more powerful, more functional, and had more legitimacy among the Afghan people than the official institutions of the Afghan state created after 2001. And Afghan territory is being used as “safe haven” by Pakistani Taliban, who have declared a war against Afghanistan’s nuclear-armed neighbour since 2007 and have killed more than 50,000 people, including over 10,000 security personnel according to various estimates. America has neither been able to secure and stabilize these volatile regions, nor has it been able to introduce viable democratic institutions that would not only be owned by the local people, but would self-perpetuate. And in a clear sign of not having learnt from its mistakes, the U.S. and NATO intervened in Libya and toppled the Gaddafi regime, transforming a stable North African state into a country divided into fiefdoms that are controlled by militias who have little or no allegiance to the central government in Tripoli anymore: in fact, an elected Prime Minister was kidnapped (and later released) by one of these militias that fought the Gaddafi regime!
While the consequences of American interventionism and American foreign policy can be questioned and criticized till the cows come home, the stability and perpetuation of Afghan democracy – particularly the election of a new president under legitimate and acceptable circumstances – is extremely important and utterly vital to the security of not only the landlocked nation-state, but for the security of South Asia and Central Asia as a region. Pakistan will be directly affected by any rise in instability and insecurity in Afghanistan, since it has launched a full-fledged military operation in the tribal region of North Waziristan – considered a hotbed of TTP (Pakistani Taliban) militants, foreign (Uzbek, Chechen, Tajik, Chinese, and other) fighters, as well as the Haqqani network (considered to be the most potent fighting force of the Afghan Taliban). Pakistan has asked both the U.S. and the Afghan security forces to bolster security on their side of the Pak-Afghan border so that militants do not retreat to find sanctuary in Kunar and Nuristan – at the same time, Pakistan has asked Afghanistan to locate and extradite Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the TTP, who is believed to be hiding in these Afghan provinces.
The longer the Afghan election process lingers on, and the longer it takes for Afghanistan to announce and swear-in a new president, the deeper the negative ramifications will be for the country itself, for the region, and for the international community that continues to invest economically (and, as far as the U.S. is concerned, militarily) into Afghanistan. The flaws and loopholes in Afghan democracy may be overcome in time – the 2009 Afghan elections were also deemed to have been “rigged” in the favour of the incumbent president Hamid Karzai, and this was acknowledged not only by local contestants and organizations, but also by international organizations such as the U.N. and other electoral watchdogs – since it is but natural for a democracy to evolve and develop to suit the needs and governance requirements of the population that is governed by this process. However, in the immediate timeframe, a result must be yielded for the presidential elections which have just been held in two phases, as per the Afghan Constitution. If this does not happen, and if the main candidates continue to vie for the top slot to satiate their own personal ego and forego the national interest for the sake of power, then the entire notion of Afghan democracy – and not just the Afghan presidential elections – will be considered flawed and faulty from the foundation. The hopes and dreams of liberal Afghans, of the Afghan youth, and particularly of Afghan women, will be irreparably dashed; and the regressive autocracy of the Taliban will become self-justified as the only method of governance that suits Afghanistan.
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