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Thursday, April 03, 2014 11:34:31 PM
After Karzai: Do Afghanistan’s Presidential Elections Matter?
By contributors | Mar. 29, 2014 |
(By Julie Poucher Harbin for IslamiCommentary)
March 19 Ashraf Ghani campaign rally in the Awden desert in northern Kunduz
province, Afghanistan. Photo: Twitter feed of Habib Khan Totakhil (@HabibKhanT)
Afghanistan Goes to the Polls
First, the election timeline. While Karzai is due to step down – he’s limited by the constitution from seeking another term — his departure, realistically, might not come for some time.
Provided elections go forward April 5, there’s likely to be a second round, said [the WSJ's Nathan] Hodge, which according to the IEC, would likely be sometime later in May. Taking into account further vote counting, adjudication of disputes and the like, a new president might not be in place before mid-to-late summer. (In other words, if the new president kept to his campaign promise and signed the BSA, it might not leave enough time to adjust to facts on the ground.)
Hodge warned there could be protests over the results and allegations of fraud as there was following the 2009 presidential election.
The ideal outcome for Afghans and the international community alike, he said, is an election that’s credible, seen as fair, and doesn’t become “embroiled in violence.”
There is also widespread concern, especially in insecure areas, about how the polls will be monitored, Hodge said: “Is there going to be ballot stuffing in places where security is bad? How do you win an election in parts of the country where people are worried about Taleban intimidation, where they’re worried about violence on the day of the polls ?”
“Certainly I’m not in the business of trying to predict how the election will come out but the ideal outcome at least in the eyes of the international community and most of the ordinary Afghans that we speak to, and officials we speak to, is an election that doesn’t become embroiled in violence; that there is not major or massive violent disruption of the election by the Taleban, by other groups, and that it is not a result that leads some of the factions — the traditional factions that fought each other in the (Afghan) Civil War in the 90s — to rearm… because that’s what led to considerable destruction of part of the city of Kabul, and the deaths of a lot of people in the 1990s,” said Hodge. “No one would like to see a reprise of that, but if the elections are not seen as fair, and if they are seen as giving short shrift to one or another group, then it could be potentially dangerous.”
As of this week there were nine presidential contenders remaining in the field. Former Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, and Qayyum Karzai, brother of current President Hamid Karzai, both dropped out in recent weeks.
Abdullah Abdullah (Photo:
US embassy Kabul/Flickr)
One candidate who’s been seen as a likely frontrunner is Abdullah Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister who came in second place in the 2009 election with more than 30% of the vote but during the second round “withdrew from a head-to-head runoff with incumbent Karzai, claiming he lacked confidence that the ballot would be free and fair.”
Said Hodge, “He’s said to this paper (WSJ), that his main enemy in this campaign is going to be fraud.”
Another contender, one who placed a distant fourth in the 2009 election, but who’s also on the frontrunner list, is Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.
Duke professor [Bruce] Lawrence — who first met him back when Ghani was an academic in the ‘70s and before Ghani joined the World Bank — recently had the chance to see him again. Ghani’s benefit is also his deficit: he is so closely connected to overseas forces that have countered the Taleban that Ghani, in Lawrence’s words, “has to defend himself against the perception that he lacks the ability to connect with voters.” Bluntly stated, is Ghani too connected with the international community to get Afghan votes?
Ashraf Ghani (photo: US
embassy Kabul/Flickr)
Ghani returned to Afghanistan in 2001 following the defeat of the Taleban to serve as Special Advisor to UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. It was he who “helped draw up the Bonn Agreement that shaped structures for the new Afghan state.” He went on to serve as finance minister with the transitional government before running for president in 2009 and placing a distant fourth.
Lawrence asked Hodge about the read on Ghani’s chances this time around.
“He is well known in the international community and is well known in development circles and is a prominent thinker about development issues,” said Hodge. “He’s come into I think, it’s fair to say, more prominence in the past couple of years. He was the chief transition advisor to President Karzai, which meant that he spent a lot of time travelling around the country, meeting with provincial and district leaders to talk about how this process of handing over responsibility for security would happen across the country as U.S. troops drew down.”
Ashraf Ghani’s wife making a women’s day speech in Loya Jirga
tent, Kabul, March 8, 2014. Photo: Twitter feed of @SultanFaizy??
Ghani is a member of an influential family within the Ahmadzai, a powerful Pashtun tribe.
“He (Ghani) joined forces with (his choice for first vice-president) Abdul Rashid Dostum who’s a prominent former warlord who can be counted on to draw a good number of votes in the north, which is an interesting move,” said Hodge. “One of the things that happened after Ghani joined forces with Dostum was that Dostum issued an apology for some of the … misdeeds that happened in the past, during the (Afghan) civil war, which was a pretty remarkable thing.”
[...]
“There’s a lot of trepidation around the upcoming elections in Afghanistan, not only a concern about the number of candidates who are not conducive to women’s rights protection,” said Duke law professor [Jayne] Huckerby, “but a broader concern that, in a post-reconciliation phase in Afghanistan, women’s rights will be bartered away, will be part of what gets dropped off the table, in an attempt to promote a cohesive government structure.”
Warned Huckerby, “There’s a lot of concern about what a drawdown looks like, what the support will be, and who will be the remaining advocates for women’s rights in Afghanistan in that event. ”
Speaking to the escalation of violence against women and girls and their increasing insecurity, she not only mentioned attacks by the Taliban insurgency on female officials, including assassination attempts, but also said women were coming under increasing threat from their own government.
“When I talk to my colleagues in Afghanistan, it’s like we’re fighting on both fronts,” she said.
She and Hodge both drew attention to what the international community would call backsliding on women’s rights in recent weeks and months.
Women’s rights efforts have lately gone both toward “maintaining existing gains,” Huckerby said, “whilst also trying to advance laws.”
For example, parliament recently sought to abolish a quota law, Huckerby said, that had secured women’s representation at 25% in provincial councils. Women’s advocates directed their attention to keeping that law, and did end up saving it but with the quota reduced to 20%. (Provincial Council elections will be held concurrently with the presidential elections on April 5)
Huckerby described another two laws that were recently introduced in parliament (seemingly “out of nowhere”); one that gives fathers a greater role in terms of arranging child marriages, and a second one — a proposed amendment to the domestic violence law that would ban family members from giving evidence in cases of domestic violence abuse, “essentially making it impossible to pursue any prosecution for family based crimes.”
Karzai has sent the proposed amendment back to parliament with a request to look at it again, so the law’s ultimate fate remains unclear.
“The fact that it was even introduced and the gravity of what it sought to do is a really bad indicator of where women’s rights protection are in Afghanistan,” said Huckerby.
.. links and much more .. http://www.juancole.com/2014/03/afghanistans-presidential-elections.html
.. it's huge, and yep guessing about as good a look at the present Afghanistan political scene as we could find anywhere ..
By contributors | Mar. 29, 2014 |
(By Julie Poucher Harbin for IslamiCommentary)
March 19 Ashraf Ghani campaign rally in the Awden desert in northern Kunduz
province, Afghanistan. Photo: Twitter feed of Habib Khan Totakhil (@HabibKhanT)
Afghanistan Goes to the Polls
First, the election timeline. While Karzai is due to step down – he’s limited by the constitution from seeking another term — his departure, realistically, might not come for some time.
Provided elections go forward April 5, there’s likely to be a second round, said [the WSJ's Nathan] Hodge, which according to the IEC, would likely be sometime later in May. Taking into account further vote counting, adjudication of disputes and the like, a new president might not be in place before mid-to-late summer. (In other words, if the new president kept to his campaign promise and signed the BSA, it might not leave enough time to adjust to facts on the ground.)
Hodge warned there could be protests over the results and allegations of fraud as there was following the 2009 presidential election.
The ideal outcome for Afghans and the international community alike, he said, is an election that’s credible, seen as fair, and doesn’t become “embroiled in violence.”
There is also widespread concern, especially in insecure areas, about how the polls will be monitored, Hodge said: “Is there going to be ballot stuffing in places where security is bad? How do you win an election in parts of the country where people are worried about Taleban intimidation, where they’re worried about violence on the day of the polls ?”
“Certainly I’m not in the business of trying to predict how the election will come out but the ideal outcome at least in the eyes of the international community and most of the ordinary Afghans that we speak to, and officials we speak to, is an election that doesn’t become embroiled in violence; that there is not major or massive violent disruption of the election by the Taleban, by other groups, and that it is not a result that leads some of the factions — the traditional factions that fought each other in the (Afghan) Civil War in the 90s — to rearm… because that’s what led to considerable destruction of part of the city of Kabul, and the deaths of a lot of people in the 1990s,” said Hodge. “No one would like to see a reprise of that, but if the elections are not seen as fair, and if they are seen as giving short shrift to one or another group, then it could be potentially dangerous.”
As of this week there were nine presidential contenders remaining in the field. Former Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, and Qayyum Karzai, brother of current President Hamid Karzai, both dropped out in recent weeks.
Abdullah Abdullah (Photo:
US embassy Kabul/Flickr)
One candidate who’s been seen as a likely frontrunner is Abdullah Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister who came in second place in the 2009 election with more than 30% of the vote but during the second round “withdrew from a head-to-head runoff with incumbent Karzai, claiming he lacked confidence that the ballot would be free and fair.”
Said Hodge, “He’s said to this paper (WSJ), that his main enemy in this campaign is going to be fraud.”
Another contender, one who placed a distant fourth in the 2009 election, but who’s also on the frontrunner list, is Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.
Duke professor [Bruce] Lawrence — who first met him back when Ghani was an academic in the ‘70s and before Ghani joined the World Bank — recently had the chance to see him again. Ghani’s benefit is also his deficit: he is so closely connected to overseas forces that have countered the Taleban that Ghani, in Lawrence’s words, “has to defend himself against the perception that he lacks the ability to connect with voters.” Bluntly stated, is Ghani too connected with the international community to get Afghan votes?
Ashraf Ghani (photo: US
embassy Kabul/Flickr)
Ghani returned to Afghanistan in 2001 following the defeat of the Taleban to serve as Special Advisor to UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. It was he who “helped draw up the Bonn Agreement that shaped structures for the new Afghan state.” He went on to serve as finance minister with the transitional government before running for president in 2009 and placing a distant fourth.
Lawrence asked Hodge about the read on Ghani’s chances this time around.
“He is well known in the international community and is well known in development circles and is a prominent thinker about development issues,” said Hodge. “He’s come into I think, it’s fair to say, more prominence in the past couple of years. He was the chief transition advisor to President Karzai, which meant that he spent a lot of time travelling around the country, meeting with provincial and district leaders to talk about how this process of handing over responsibility for security would happen across the country as U.S. troops drew down.”
Ashraf Ghani’s wife making a women’s day speech in Loya Jirga
tent, Kabul, March 8, 2014. Photo: Twitter feed of @SultanFaizy??
Ghani is a member of an influential family within the Ahmadzai, a powerful Pashtun tribe.
“He (Ghani) joined forces with (his choice for first vice-president) Abdul Rashid Dostum who’s a prominent former warlord who can be counted on to draw a good number of votes in the north, which is an interesting move,” said Hodge. “One of the things that happened after Ghani joined forces with Dostum was that Dostum issued an apology for some of the … misdeeds that happened in the past, during the (Afghan) civil war, which was a pretty remarkable thing.”
[...]
“There’s a lot of trepidation around the upcoming elections in Afghanistan, not only a concern about the number of candidates who are not conducive to women’s rights protection,” said Duke law professor [Jayne] Huckerby, “but a broader concern that, in a post-reconciliation phase in Afghanistan, women’s rights will be bartered away, will be part of what gets dropped off the table, in an attempt to promote a cohesive government structure.”
Warned Huckerby, “There’s a lot of concern about what a drawdown looks like, what the support will be, and who will be the remaining advocates for women’s rights in Afghanistan in that event. ”
Speaking to the escalation of violence against women and girls and their increasing insecurity, she not only mentioned attacks by the Taliban insurgency on female officials, including assassination attempts, but also said women were coming under increasing threat from their own government.
“When I talk to my colleagues in Afghanistan, it’s like we’re fighting on both fronts,” she said.
She and Hodge both drew attention to what the international community would call backsliding on women’s rights in recent weeks and months.
Women’s rights efforts have lately gone both toward “maintaining existing gains,” Huckerby said, “whilst also trying to advance laws.”
For example, parliament recently sought to abolish a quota law, Huckerby said, that had secured women’s representation at 25% in provincial councils. Women’s advocates directed their attention to keeping that law, and did end up saving it but with the quota reduced to 20%. (Provincial Council elections will be held concurrently with the presidential elections on April 5)
Huckerby described another two laws that were recently introduced in parliament (seemingly “out of nowhere”); one that gives fathers a greater role in terms of arranging child marriages, and a second one — a proposed amendment to the domestic violence law that would ban family members from giving evidence in cases of domestic violence abuse, “essentially making it impossible to pursue any prosecution for family based crimes.”
Karzai has sent the proposed amendment back to parliament with a request to look at it again, so the law’s ultimate fate remains unclear.
“The fact that it was even introduced and the gravity of what it sought to do is a really bad indicator of where women’s rights protection are in Afghanistan,” said Huckerby.
.. links and much more .. http://www.juancole.com/2014/03/afghanistans-presidential-elections.html
.. it's huge, and yep guessing about as good a look at the present Afghanistan political scene as we could find anywhere ..
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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