Democracy in context
By M Ashraf Haidari
November 18, 2009
Daily news reports - which inevitably shape international public opinion
about Afghanistan's recent elections - continue to focus on voting
irregularities without examining the environment, in which these irregularities
actually took place. Objectively analyzed, however, it is easy to conclude that
Afghan elections neither took place in Switzerland nor in the State of Florida.
Rather, Aug. 20 in Afghanistan witnessed another day of intense violence
including the killing, maiming, kidnapping and intimidating of innocent
civilians in an already deteriorating security situation, particularly in those
areas where voting irregularities were reported.
As we know, security has been declining in Afghanistan since 2004, when the
first presidential elections were conducted in the country. But because the last
U.S. administration took its eyes off Afghanistan as early as 2002 and
increasingly focused on the Iraq war, indeed, "a war of choice" over a "war of
necessity" in Afghanistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda effectively began regrouping
in Pakistan, from where they have rapidly expanded their terrorist operations
across the border into Afghanistan, in the following years.
Hence, as each year has passed since 2002, the Taliban insurgency has
increasingly gained momentum to fill the security and governance gaps in areas
of Afghanistan, where the government is either too weak or entirely absent.
This is yet to change because although the international community helped
Afghanistan create permanent state institutions by adopting the Bonn Agreement
in the wake of the fall of the Taliban in 2001, it has so far failed to
implement a well-coordinated and sufficiently resourced strategy to build and
enable the post-Taliban Afghan state to govern and defend itself.
Therefore, in the months, weeks and days leading to the elections in August,
a fully resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda terrorist alliance had been trying hard
to score a strategic victory by preventing the elections from taking place at
all. And that is why for the first time in eight years, the commander of
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal,
highlighted in a comprehensive assessment - leaked in late August - what is most
urgently needed to rescue Afghanistan and to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the
Taliban and al Qaeda in the region.
But despite the Taliban's efforts to derail the election process in
Afghanistan, the presidential and provincial candidates campaigned hard in the
pre-election period, while millions of Afghans braved many threats to their
lives and turned out to cast their ballot on Aug. 20.
Some 30 presidential candidates along with some 82 vice-presidential
candidates contested the election. We shouldn't, of course, forget about some
3,195 provincial council candidates, who ran for 420 seats across Afghanistan.
Like 2004 and 2005 elections, women actively participated in the election
process this year; there were two female presidential candidates and seven
vice-presidential candidates running with their male counterparts.
Also, the number of women, challenging provincial council seats, increased by
20 percent compared to the 2004 and 2005 elections.
More important, Afghan presidential and provincial candidates reached beyond
their ethnic bases. Candidates with different ethno-sectarian backgrounds
focused on issue-based rather than ethnic- or personality-based platforms. And
for the first time in our history, the leading candidates took part in a series
of Western-style presidential debates to discuss their visions of "change" or
"continuity." Afghans across the country either watched or listened to these
important debates, and welcomed this constructive development in the Afghan
election politics.
These positive but underreported aspects of the Afghan election
notwithstanding, the growing terrorist activities of the Taliban and al Qaeda
since 2002, which only intensified on the election day, had intimidated and
threatened Afghans enough to ensure a low voter turnout Aug. 20.
As a result, intense violence and insecurity in some areas in the south and
east of Afghanistan prevented national and international election observers from
monitoring the voting there.
This led to the reported irregularities, which the Afghan Independent
Election Commission and the Electoral Complaints Commission subsequently
resolved.
Now, turning to what to expect in the critical postelection period,
international experience is quite instructive. Indeed, it is clear that holding
elections is just a democratic exercise that must happen. What, however, matters
the most, in the case of Afghanistan, is the extent to which the international
community will firmly commit to a strategic partnership with the country's
postelection leadership to help build, reform, and equip the Afghan security and
governance institutions - both on the national and sub-national levels - so that
peace and democracy will take root and evolve overtime to become sustainable in
Afghanistan.
As far as Afghans are concerned, every recent poll indicates they are
unconditionally committed to democratic security and a future with the
international community, not with the Taliban again. The United States,
Afghanistan and their nation-partners must capitalize on this strategic asset by
simply delivering on the basic expectations of the Afghan people.
And those Afghan expectations certainly are not about the overnight
transformation of our prewar least-developed and postwar most-destroyed country.
But expectations are about the minimum of ensuring a stable Afghanistan that
will not serve as a transnational terrorist base again, as it once did in 1990,
which unfortunately led to the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.
M. Ashraf Haidari is the political counselor of the Embassy of Afghanistan.
- Article originally published in the
Washington Times, republished with
permission from the author.
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