Afghanistan: Hard grab of power or hard hit of drop

By Walid Tamim

Afghanistan experienced a run off for the first time, two strong rivals Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, highly educated Afghan, former Finance Minister, World Bank executive employee along with Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Islamic movement member of Jamyat, former foreign minister were the front runners on June 14 runoff election in Afghanistan. Abdullah got 45% of votes at the first round of election, while Dr. Ashraf Ghani secured 31.6%, Dr. Ghani came second and that was merely because of 7 other candidates had divided the votes for him.

Dr. Ghani taking the chance flourished his campaigning strategy focusing more on villages, religious leaders decrees (fitwas), youths, particularly urged Pashtons who are reluctant to take part in election to vote for his team. He used experience of management to create a call center fully equipped and hired reliable observers mobilized them with digital cameras to catch fraud and observe responsibly.

First time he spread his senior team members, supporters and his running mate across the country to every village urging people to vote for him and his team.

While Dr. Abdullah was inebriated feeling as a winner of first round and hardly campaigned widely unlike he only relied on some coalition formation of some tribal leaders. He was challenge several times to have LIVE TV debates on economic plans, but he disrespectfully escaped and walked away from all TV debates.

It is an accepted trend, losing candidates claim fraud in order to justify their loss. Any illegal act of propaganda, destabilization and chaos by Dr. Abdullah Abdullah team members will deprecate more supports for him.

His two strong allegations such as why people in south voted in larger number in the second round and suspension of a senior member of IEC could have been investigated thoroughly through assigned committees not by his meager advisors.

Upon the announcement of result, he has to accept it based on the constitution law and the assigned committees even if he is losing.

So far, it is been very naïve while he was leading, everything was happy-happy and the system is accurate, but if he fails to earn more votes, he accused the process for systematic fraud.

Dr. Abdullah is a 3rd time failed candidate, he has a lot of lessons learned and can support someone genuine in the future. Meanwhile, he has to congratulate Dr. Ghani for his clean win and support him in rebuilding a peaceful Afghanistan. Recent reactions of Dr. Abdullah prior to the results of the election and any official signs of fraud, he announced boycott with Independent Election Committee and asked for immediate stop of vote counts, this was more like “shooting yourself in the foot” and was called “unfortunate decision” by UN and other special representatives in Afghanistan.

Afterward, he urged his supporters to make relay with million participants that turn out to be only a few hundred people, including children, homeless addicts and jobless youth who were on daily wage by Dr. Abdullah team. The audio released by Dr. Abdullah’s camp despite of this discrepancy and violation of constitution law about privacy of telephonic conversations of Afghanistan citizens (article 37, Afghan constitution), it is already called disapproved because of the quality of voice and fabrication of the audio.

“Ghiasi, of Kabul residence says, it is more like someone is sinking and trying to grab anything to survive.” Why Dr. Abdullah thinks it is his end of his life? This question is raised among Afghans in social media and social events lately. It is no doubt after 9/11 and US invasion of Afghanistan the northern alliance benefited because of their armed support to US army and to President Karzai who was descended and installed by US as the head of interim government of Afghanistan.

Northern Alliance members were levying by taking senior ministerial posts and an imbalance power sharing at the top to bottom level of Afghan government including illiterate ministers. In last 13 years this remained more and less the same and Northern alliance had a strong influence in decisions made by president Karzai.

The scenario changes now as Afghanistan has fully supported and equipped army (ANA) and Police (ANP). It seems there is no need for any militia backing of northern alliance anymore and this paved the way toward a new Afghanistan where people will vote for merits and quality.

The fear comes if they are not a serious share holder of power; they might go under trial for the civil war human right violation charges in 1990s, corruption charges afterward, opium business and many more illegal tendencies of the northern alliance members while serving at top level ministerial posts.

Dr. Abdullah is fighting on front-end to save guard the interests of a large number of warlords who have fueled his entire campaigns in the last three failed candidacy attempts. Sudden death of Marshal Qasim Fahim, late vice president of Karzai created a huge gap in unifying the northern alliance team members who are now under several fractions, some support long term stability of Afghanistan and some support short terms interests of a few members.

One thing is cleared for Dr. Abdullah that Dr. Ghani has won the 2nd round election with remarkable difference in number of votes that hailed him as the new elected president, while Dr. Abdullah is becoming a strong opposition for the coming government he will challenge many decision of Dr. Ghani’s government.

No, doubt if he tries to pave way for an lawlessness in major cities of Afghanistan, it will be a shoot back neither serving him nor Dr. Ghani but Taliban will take the advantage of the situation pushing toward Kabul and they will take everything as granted.