Afghanistan: Not a pleasant prospect

The West will wince at next year’s election in Afghanistan; but it has itself to blame

LEADERS of the NATO-led alliance known as ISAF that is fighting in Afghanistan might be expected to be glad to see the back of President Hamid Karzai. The man whose government they have supported since 2001 is ineligible to stand in the election next April. Fickle and moody, Mr Karzai this week showed again just how ungrateful he can be. “The entire NATO exercise”, he told the BBC, “was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure.” Nearly 3,400 ISAF soldiers have been killed defending Mr Karzai’s government from its enemies. Western commanders were understandably indignant. Two factors, however, tempered their outrage. First, they know that when the West installed Mr Karzai, it saddled him with all the forms of democracy. Their man has therefore had to show that he is serving Afghans, not foreign generals. Second, after a frantic scramble for presidential candidates to register by October 6th, they know that in a year’s time they may be looking wistfully back on the Karzai era. Whoever succeeds him may be even harder to deal with, have a more dubious background and have achieved power by even murkier means than those that saw Mr Karzai “re-elected” in 2009. Mr Karzai will stand down in the year when ISAF is to withdraw its combat troops, leaving the Afghan army to carry on the fight against Taliban insurgents. The West is naturally anxious to leave behind a government that is capable of surviving and that has a semblance of democratic legitimacy. A president respected at home and abroad would certainly help. Some 27 candidates have registered, each with two vice-presidential running-mates in tow. Not all these men are warlords, and many will drop out. But enough are tribal strongmen with tainted records to cast a dark shadow over the entire field. Tickets often bridge ethnic divides, with at least one member of the largest group, the Pushtuns. One prominent candidate, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, is credited with having invited al-Qaeda’s leadership to set up shop in Afghanistan. Another, Gul Agha Sherzai, is a warlord from Kandahar, once the stronghold of the (largely Pushtun) Taliban. He is nicknamed the “Bulldozer”—a tribute to his personal style as much as to his track record in seeing projects completed as governor of the province of Nangarhar. One vice-presidential candidate, Abdul Rashid Dostum, is a leader of the Uzbek minority and hence an important vote-winner, a role he performed for Mr Karzai in 2009. He was a military commander in the days of the Soviet-backed government that fell to the Taliban in 1994 and a warlord with a fearsome reputation. He is said by Western diplomats who have spent time with him recently to have mellowed. This is just as well, since he is on the ticket of one of the more cerebral candidates, Ashraf Ghani, who once called him a “known killer”. Mr Ghani is a former finance minister and World Bank official, and co-author of books, appropriately enough, on “fixing failed states” and “strategies for state-building”. Another of the more cosmopolitan candidates, Abdullah Abdullah, has similarly teamed up with two rougher diamonds. Mohammad Khan is a leader of the Hezb-i-Islami party, whose military wing is part of the insurgency fighting the government. Mohammad Mohaqiq, from the Hazara minority, has survived four recent attempts on his life. Like Mr Dostum, he was accused in a report last year by a human-rights watchdog of war crimes before 2001. Dr Abdullah, an ethnic Tajik (though with Pushtun blood), was foreign minister for the Northern Alliance, which, with American air and special-forces support, toppled the Taliban in 2001. He then emerged as an opposition leader and was runner-up in the fraudulent election in 2009. This election is unlikely to be much fairer. An article by Martine van Bijlert of the Afghan Analysts Network, a respected research group, lists the problems: a defective voter registry; millions of available voter cards not linked to voters; widespread insecurity; and “the collusion of electoral and security staff, whether prompted by loyalty, money or pressure, at all levels”. The sense that the state has the power to sway the election result gives great weight to any endorsement Mr Karzai might make. Yet he is likely to keep his promise not to offer one—at least openly—even though the field includes his older brother and a former foreign minister believed to be a favourite. Endorsement would taint the victory of “his” candidate; or, should the candidate lose, cause grave embarrassment to Mr Karzai. But he is not going away. A grand residence is under construction next to the presidential palace in Kabul. Mr Karzai says he wants to stay in the country and enjoy his “legacy”. Yet his presence may prove unhelpful, and his relations with his successor fraught.

Design flaws

Looking at the mess the election is likely to be, outsiders may be inclined to conclude that Afghans are not ready for democracy. Yet their political system was subverted from the outset by dubious choices made in 2001. For one, Mr Karzai himself has proved both weak and high-handed, and has tolerated scandalous corruption while always blaming foreigners. The new constitution gave Afghanistan its first-ever highly centralised government. Given the country’s ethnic and regional divides, that was a recipe for instability. In retrospect it was also a mistake to let into government warlords who had fought the Taliban but who were notorious for past abuses. And leaving even moderate elements of the Taliban outside the political process altogether led them to regroup as an insurgency. The steady escalation of the war might have happened anyway. But the exclusion of the Taliban made it inevitable. So the political structure agreed in 2001 never really gave peace, or democracy, a chance.