Some international observers pulled out amid security concerns, creating legitimacy fears for presidential vote.
D. Parvaz Last updated: 03 Apr 2014 19:11
Campaigning in Afghanistan has been marred by violence, with the Taliban vowing to disrupt the April 5 vote [AFP]
Kabul, Afghanistan - Security has been a scarce commodity in Afghanistan for some time, but the Taliban's recent spate of attacks intended to disrupt the April 5 elections - and the promise of more to come – have amplified the sense of insecurity.
In an attempt to calm nerves and promise a safe day at the polls, the Interior Ministry, coupled with Afghan Special Forces, planned a press conference on Thursday to answer security questions.
Members of the Interior Ministry didn't attend the press conference, so different branches of the Special Forces were left to attempt to quell concerns from the population.
In response to a question on election security, Mohammed Zaher Azimi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence told Al Jazeera that the threat to Afghanistan comes from "known circles outside the country".
As long as that threat exists, "the innocent people of Afghanistan…will continue to have such worries, as will we," said Azimi, who dismissed the attacks, such as the one on the Serena Hotel on March 20, as an "embarrassing" act by the Taliban, "not one of bravery and strength".
"If only they'd fight us face to face," he said.
Observing the observers
The Taliban, however, prefers to fight in the shadows and few involved with the vote feel safe.
Two election commission offices have been attacked, as has a hotel where international election observers were staying, prompting the majority of them to leave.
Afghan observers, however, are not going anywhere.
--- "If bullets fall from the sky like rain, I will still go to the polling station." - Abdul Munir Azizi, Afghan election observer ---
"If bullets fall from the sky like rain, I will still go to the polling station," said Abdul Munir Azizi, 32, who will be working as an election observer with the Afghan Women's Rights Network. "Afghans have seen the worst of it…we have even experienced civil war. Now people would sacrifice their lives, but they will definitely go to vote."
Still, the departure of the observers is a worrying development.
Hassan Wafaey, a political analyst and researcher, said the role of international observers is crucial as it can make or break the legitimacy of the next government in the eyes of Afghan people.
The Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan, a civil society organisation promoting democracy, found that 25 percent of those surveyed think these elections will be fair. And that poll was done before the current eruption of anti-election violence.
"The role of international observers will be very important in the upcoming elections because of the experience with corruption in previous elections," said Wafaey, who also works with several civil society groups.
"The number of the national observers is higher than in previous elections, but they are not seen as important," he said.
"International observers are seen by Afghans as being better educated and having more experience and expertise," said Wafaey, adding that local observers might not feel as free criticise the process or point out corruption. "It's obviously going to affect the legitimacy of the election."
A 'genuine Afghan process'
Shams Rasekh, chief of the observation mission at Transparent Election for Afghanistan, an independent civil society group, said that "credibility is definitely linked to security…we've asked the government to provide more security."
His group has trained roughly 7,000 election observers around the country, but Rasekh told Al Jazeera that he is concerned that most of the roughly 290,000 domestic observers might not be properly trained or might not be impartial, as candidates themselves have veritable armies of observers they'll be sending to the polls on Saturday.
The numbers have not yet been finalised, but just under 10,000 international election observers might still be in Afghanistan by Saturday, including the European Union's monitoring mission. This is less than previous elections, Rasekh said, noting that the Asia Foundation and National Democratic Institute have pulled-out of the country.
That leaves a vacuum that will need to be filled with local observers. While some gained experience in previous elections, other could inadvertently violate election laws because they are not familiar with methodology and procedures.
Presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai alone has submitted around 40,000 names to the Independent Election Commission to be approved as poll observers.
One of three frontrunners in the race, he has nothing but praise for how the security situation has been handled in the lead up to the vote.
"Our security forces need to be praised, both for their sacrifice and for their accomplishments," Ghani Ahmadzai told Al Jazeera.
"Compared to the threats, they've done very well," he said, adding that election day "is a genuine security issue."
For a candidate running in the race, he said the lack of foreign observers is not going to put a dent in the legitimacy of the results.
"This process has been a genuine Afghan process," said Ghani Ahmadzai.
"In 2004 and 2009, the international community was at the forefront of managing, funding, et cetera," he said. "So far, this has been a totally Afghan process…monitoring will be done by a conscious public."
There are, however, concerns over how the electoral commission's reports concerning the security situation will affect do poll workers, observers and voters. Fears of violence could impact voter turnout on Saturday.
"We won't ask that the media not report on security issues," said Heshmatallah Radfar, a member of the IEC media commission, at a briefing on Thursday. "But we ask that they keep the mental health of election workers and voters in mind and that they not exaggerate the security threats."
Azimi, the Defence Ministry spokesman, remains optimistic about the process and how voting will impact the long-term security outlook. "The people of Afghanistan should know that the submission of every vote constitutes a tooth-breaking blow to our domestic and international enemies," he said.
President Hamid Karzai cast his vote at a local polling station in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — Braving cold, rain and threats of Taliban attacks, Afghans gathered in long lines at polling places Saturday to cast their ballots to choose the successor to President Hamid Karzai.
If successful, the election will mark the first time Afghans have changed their leader at the polls in modern history, bringing to an end Mr. Karzai’s dozen years in power.
No one expected a quick result, however; with three leading candidates likely to divide up the vote, none was expected to get the necessary 50 percent to win on Saturday, and a runoff election was almost certain; it would likely be held no sooner than May 28, continuing Mr. Karzai’s time in office for another two months at least. Even partial official results were not expected for a week.
With eight candidates in the race, the five minor candidates’ shares of the vote made it even more difficult for any one candidate to reach the 50 percent threshold.
The top three vote-getters are expected to be Ashraf Ghani, 64, a technocrat and former official in Mr. Karzai’s government; Abdullah Abdullah, 53, a former foreign minister who was the second biggest vote-getter against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 election; and Zalmay Rassoul, 70, another former foreign minister, who is the only major candidate with a woman on his ticket as vice-presidential candidate, Habiba Sarobi. Polls showed Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani in the lead, but polling in Afghanistan is notoriously unreliable.
Afghans waited in long lines to vote outside a polling station in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
---- INSERT: i wish the NYT and the WSJ had each posted both the Times photo above and the WSJ's photo here
as then there would be no question as to why one posted the one, and the other the other .. ----
Early in the day, in a high school near the presidential palace, an emotional Mr. Karzai cast his own vote for his successor. “I as a citizen of Afghanistan did this with happiness and pride,” he said afterward.
The streets of the capital were almost entirely devoid of traffic, except for members of the police force and the military, who manned checkpoints every few hundred feet and searched nearly everyone passing by.
Most people walked to vote. Long lines had already formed when polls opened at 7 a.m. in a heavy rain in Kabul.
“People have realized that electing the president is far more important than standing in the rain,” said one voter, Abdullah Abdullah, 24, who had the same name as the candidate he said he was planning to vote for at a Kabul high school polling place.
“Whenever there has been a new king or president, it has been accompanied by death and violence,” said Abdul Wakil Amiri, an attorney who turned out early to vote at a Kabul mosque. “For the first time, we are experiencing democracy.”
To provide security for the voting, the Afghan government mobilized its entire military and police forces, some 350,000 in all, backed up by 53,000 NATO coalition troops – although the Americans and their allies planned to not get directly involved except in case of an extreme emergency.
Authorities did not expect that, however, as the level of violence in the months leading to the voting was much lower than before the last presidential election. This time, the Afghan security forces are nearly twice as large, and the election is being held before the traditional start of the fighting season, both factors that have reduced violence by anywhere from 9 to 25 percent compared to the pre-election period in 2009, according to United Nations officials. Continue reading the main story
In the days before the voting, only one policeman was killed in attacks on convoys of election officials delivering materials, in Logar Province, according to the Afghan military. On election day, a bomb set off at a polling place in Mohammad Agha district of Logar injured four voters, while in Baraki Barak district voters complained that Taliban were in the streets preventing people from voting, Afghan officials said.
Even before the voting began, the authorities had already closed 750 polling centers, just over 10 percent of the total, because of security concerns, and there were fears more would be closed on election day. Just how many would likely be a key issue in the aftermath of the voting, especially if closures were seen as disenfranchising one ethnic group over another.
Along with the threat of violence, the legacy of fraud from past elections cast a long shadow over Saturday’s voting. Authorities have gone to unusual extremes to try to guarantee an election at least credible enough to satisfy international donors, who have pledged to continue supporting Afghanistan with billions of dollars in aid, but want to be assured of an election free of the sort of widespread fraud that discredited the 2009 voting.
Underwritten by $100 million from the United Nations and foreign donors, the election was a huge enterprise by Afghan standards. Some 3,200 donkeys were pressed into service to deliver ballots to remote mountain villages, along with battalions of trucks and minibuses to reach 6,500 polling places in all. The American military pitched in with air transport of ballots to regional distribution centers and to difficult-to-reach provinces.
While many international election observers fled the country .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/world/asia/credibility-of-afghan-vote-in-doubt-as-observers-flee-violence.html .. in the wake of attacks on foreigners, or found themselves confined to quarters in Kabul, years of expensive preparations and the training of an army of some 70,000 Afghan election observers were expected to compensate, according to Western diplomats and Afghan election officials.
“We have so many controls now, it’s going to be much safer this time,” said Noor Ahmad Noor, the spokesman for the Independent Election Commission.
The American ambassador, James Cunningham, called the election a “really historic opportunity for the people of Afghanistan to move forward with something we’ve been trying to create together with them for several years now.”
Despite an increasingly troubled relationship between the Americans and President Karzai, who refused to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States, Mr. Cunningham said he had assurances from all the candidates that whoever won would sign the agreement upon taking office.
Many of the worst fears about this year’s election have already failed to materialize. Many suspected that President Karzai would cancel them on security grounds, or even try to amend the constitution to prolong his stay in power; neither happened.
He pledged to stay out of the election campaign and not support any of the candidates, although there was no legal requirement for him to do so, and he forced his brother Qayuum out of the race so that he would not be accused of trying to start a family dynasty.
While there were persistent reports that Mr. Karzai’s government was quietly supporting his preferred candidate, Mr. Rassoul, there was also evidence of government support in various parts of the country for all three of the leading candidates.
The Taliban for their part vowed to derail the elections and punish anyone who voted. Those who did would have to have their fingers dipped in indelible ink, and this time two types would be used to prevent fraud: invisible ultraviolet ink on one finger, and blue silver-nitrate ink on another. During the last election, it was discovered that nail polish remover could be used to remove the ink; this year, the solution is far more impermeable, meaning voters in troubled areas could be identified by insurgents for some three days.
[ love it! .. shit, no doubt MOST want a fair election .. sure hope they get one ]
That made the turnout in conflict areas all the more impressive. While in some provinces, such as Helmand, 72 of the 219 polling centers were closed because of security concerns, in others where there had been relatively little voting in 2009 many were opened.
In Kandahar province, for instance, the police chief, Abdul Raziq, said 234 of 244 polling centers would be open on election day. That did not assure people would vote at all of them, however, as some open polling places were in such dangerous areas participation seemed unlikely .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/world/asia/credibility-of-afghan-vote-in-doubt-as-observers-flee-violence.html . And many places officially opened before the election might be closed on election day itself, officials conceded. How often that happened would be a closely watched bellwether of the validity of the results.
“Voting on this day will be a slap to the faces of the terrorists,” said Rahmatullah Nabil, the acting head of the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan domestic intelligence agency. But some were still too concerned to vote.
“I won’t cast my vote because last night the Taliban came to us and warned us that we will be killed if we choose to vote,” said Parwiz, a 30-year-old villager from Bati Kot district in Nangarhar province, where at least 23 percent of the polling centers were closed, and many others were in dangerous areas.
Others were defiant.
“Threats exist always and we are used to it,” said Jahanzaib, 28, a farmer from Mohmand Dara district in Nangarhar. “I will use my vote. That is my right and the only way to transfer power from President Karzai to someone else.”
Haji Noor Mohammad, a farmer in the Zangabad area of Panjway district, in Kandahar Province, was unable to vote in 2009 because there were so many Taliban around. He plans to vote this time, he said.
“Today most people realize the importance of the election because the tribal elders were now telling us to use our vote and come out,” he said.
Noting the Taliban threat to disrupt the election, Nicholas Haysom, the United Nations’ top election official here, said, “The failure to disrupt the elections will mean that they will have egg on their face after the elections.”
At the women’s polling station in the Nadaria High School, in Kabul’s Qala-e-Fatullah neighborhood, among those lining up to vote was Parwash Naseri, 21. Although wearing the blue burqa that is traditional here, she was still willing to speak out through the privacy mesh covering her face.
She was voting for the first time for her children, and for women’s rights, she said, speaking in a whisper.
“I believe in the right of women to take part just as men do, to get themselves educated and to work.”
Reporting was contributed by Jawad Sukhanyar and Habib Zahori from Kabul, Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost, Khalid Alokozai from Jalalabad and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.
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