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The April 2014 Afghan presidential elections is one of the most important political tenure's Afghanistan will go through since the ousting of the Taliban 12 years ago. But many experts are skeptical that a country plagued by extensive political corruption, increased security challenges and a growing opium trade will prosper, especially in light of Afghanistan's past two flawed election processes.
The election means more for Afghanistan than selecting a new president. It means the country could have the first peaceful democratic transfer of power in its modern history, in the year when the U.S.-led international forces (ISAF) that have been in the country since 2001 will leave.
The current president, Hamid Karzai, was first appointed by a national assembly in 2001 as the interim leader and then went on to win two elections. Based on Afghanistan’s constitution, he is barred from running for a third term.
“This year’s presidential election can provide a critical opportunity for a renewal of legitimacy, a boost in confidence and a start to correcting the ineffective and corrupt governance that characterizes Afghanistan,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, a non-partisan Washington think tank, said.
But Brown warned the election could trigger “extensive violence, a prolonged political crisis that paralyzes governance and the collapse of international support,” which could strengthen the Taliban.
In 2009 the U.N. fraud-monitoring panel nullified around a third of Karzai’s votes from the previous year’s election because of “clear convincing evidence of fraud.”
A subsequent runoff election was canceled as Karzai’s challenger, Abdullah Abdullah (a frontrunner in this year's election), withdrew his candidacy because he said it would result in widespread fraud, according to Brown.
The 2009 and 2010 elections left NATO with “little hope of ensuring even a procedural level of democracy in Afghanistan,” a report by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government stated in December. “In addition to a fraudulent election process and a politically compromised electoral commission, election day security was lacking throughout the country, despite NATO ISAF efforts.”
Karzai’s presidency is also marred by several corruption scandals, one of which included his half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected of trafficking large amounts of heroin through an intermediary, according to American officials. He denied the charges.
Back in April 2013, the New York Times revealed that tens of millions of dollars poured from the CIA to the office of Karzai. Not surprisingly it was alleged that his brother had been on the CIA’s payroll for years. He was assassinated in 2011 by a police commander believed to have been influenced by the Taliban.
A 2012 study revealed that the Afghan population considered corruption, together with insecurity and unemployment, to be one of the major challenges facing the country, ahead of poverty or the performance of government.
Another challenge Afghanistan faces after the withdrawal is the growing opium poppy trade, which reached a record high in 2013. According to the 2013 Afghanistan Opium Survey, cultivation amounted to some 209,000 hectares, surpassing the earlier record in 2007 of 193,000 hectares, and a 36 percent increase over 2012. It is considered the most important cash crop and provides for many households in rural areas. Today it represents around 4 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP), officially. But it also fuels conflict and undermines governance by providing income to insurgents.
In 2013, 89 percent of Afghanistan’s opium farming took place in regions that were classified as “high” or “extreme” security risks by the U.N.’s Department of Safety and Security. Most of these regions are inaccessible to the UN and to NGO’s.
One possible explanation as to why opium cultivation increased in 2013 may have been caused by “speculation due to the withdrawal of international troops and the forthcoming elections in 2013, which led farmers to try to hedge against the country’s uncertain political future,” a United Nations reported stated in November.
The election and transfer-of-power process are seen as indicators of Afghanistan’s future success after the U.S.-led ISAF coalition leaves this year.
But the withdrawal could leave a political, security and economic vacuum, making Afghanistan at risk of becoming a failed state. In fact its economy could fall by 10 percent after the pullout, according to the World Bank.
Afghanistan’s economy is largely dependent on international assistance as well as the presence of coalition forces in the country, which generates demand for goods and services.
In 2010 to 2011 the civilian and security-related assistance was the equivalent to 98 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, and with the transition Afghanistan will have to rely more on domestic revenue generation to meet its budgetary needs.
But the international presence has drawbacks. too. “The obvious downside of such internationalization however is that it perpetuates a statehood depleted of internal sovereignty, which conflicts with official claims to increase local ownership, sustainability, and legitimacy in line with democratic ideology,” the Harvard report stated.
The question now is, who will lead Afghanistan into an uncertain future? This year’s elections will see 11 candidates, ranging from Western-educated technocrats to former warlords with bloody histories.
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