Afghan candidates told to temper statements

Los Angeles Times
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Election officials and Western diplomats yesterday warned candidates against making premature claims of victory after aides to President Hamid Karzai said it appeared that he had won Thursday's election.

Mr. Karzai's chief rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, meanwhile, declared that if the president had received more than 50 percent of the vote -- which he would need to avoid a runoff -- it would be a signal that Mr. Karzai's supporters had committed massive fraud.

Many Western observers are concerned that the competing claims of the Karzai and Abdullah campaigns could set the stage for clashes between their backers and usher in a period of tension and instability while an official count is compiled. A final tally is not scheduled to be disclosed until early September. A partial preliminary count was initially due today, but now is not expected until Tuesday.

Afghans defied weeks of Taliban threats and a rash of pre-election violence, coming out by the millions to vote Thursday. But election officials acknowledged that turnout was lower than hoped, perhaps under 50 percent. That is well below the 70 percent turnout in Afghanistan's first direct presidential election, in 2004.

The United States and its NATO allies are heavily invested in a credible outcome to this vote. The election was a centerpiece of the Obama administration's war strategy, based on the notion that the Afghan government must be viewed by its own people as legitimate in order to make any headway against a burgeoning insurgency.

The process is slow. Ballots have begun arriving in the capital from some 6,500 polling stations -- reversing a sometimes-arduous journey before the election, when helicopters and donkeys had to be used to deliver election materials to some remote areas.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, Noor Mohammed Noor, stressed that individual candidates had no basis for declaring themselves the winner pending the official results. "Nobody should make such a claim," he said.

A clouded aftermath to the vote raises the specter of ethnic strife, long a feature of the Afghan political landscape. Mr. Karzai's Pashtun ethnic group is the country's largest and his main base of support. But the Pashtun belt lies largely in the south and east, where violence and threats depressed the voter turnout. Mr. Abdullah is politically identified with the Tajiks, the dominant group in the north of Afghanistan. Conditions in that part of the country are more peaceful, and turnout was higher as a result, giving Mr. Abdullah an edge.

The Obama administration did not lend its support to any one candidate, and special regional envoy Richard Holbrooke, who visited polling places on election day, said the U.S. administration would take "an agnostic position" on any claims of victory until the final results are in.

"We always knew it would be a disputed election," said Mr. Holbrooke, who was briefed yesterday by election observers. "I would not be surprised if you see candidates claiming victory and fraud in the next few days. For the United States and the international community, we're going to respect the process."

Two other Western diplomats said their governments had made concerns known after Mr. Karzai's campaign spokesman, Seddiq Seddiqi, was quoted as saying it appeared the Afghan leader had garnered more than 50 percent of the vote. A similar admonition against declaring victory was delivered to the Abdullah campaign, they said.

Foreign observer groups have lauded Afghans for braving danger in order to vote and have expressed relief that the vote passed without any large-scale attacks by insurgents. But they also have described the vote as flawed by the low turnout, especially among women, and by irregularities such as the sale of false registration cards.

The campaign season and the election coincided with some of the most intense fighting of the 8-year-old conflict between Western troops and the Taliban. Military officials disclosed the deaths of three Western troops: two British soldiers killed in the south and an American who died of wounds suffered a day earlier in eastern Afghanistan.