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On Oct. 31, 2009, Abdullah Abdullah reportedly was quitting the presidential race, essentially conceding to incumbent Hamid Karzai. The run-off election scheduled for Nov. 7 was likely to be canceled. It's not a stunner: there was speculation all along that Abdullah would not keep challenging Karzai for the presidency of Afghanistan: Abdullah would pull out and call the whole thing a sham, he would work out a power-sharing deal with Karzai, Karzai would convince him to concede by granting Abdullah's demand that the whole electoral process be reformed.And nobody, as The Economist put it last week, really wants a second election, "not Mr Karzai, who fears that his voters will not come out again; probably not Mr Abdullah, who has declared himself open to other options; not the Afghan electorate, who will be asked again to brave the Taliban’s death threats; not the UN, which must manage the arduous logistics of organising another ballot with winter closing in; and not NATO troops, who will risk their lives for an election that may not be any cleaner than the last."
As it turns out, Abdullah is getting neither a power-sharing deal nor the concessions from Karzai that he was seeking (a revamp of the election law). He's getting nothing but the celebrity status of an opposition leader railroaded by seemingly democratic instruments machinated into anti-democratic cudgels.
Karzai claimed to be the winner of the election with 52% of the vote in early October. But an independent audit ordered by Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission found that Karzai had won, at best, 48%of the vote, forcing a run-off with principal challenger Abdullah Abdullah.
The commission confirmed that widespread fraud had accompanied the vote and the counting--fraud that in some instances affected 96% of the vote it audited. On Sept. 8, the UN called for recounts in the results from any of the 26,000 polling stations where a candidate received more than 95% of the vote. Some 800 fake polling centers turned in forged votes by the thousands, favoring Karzai. In the end, one-third of Karzai's votes proved fraudulent.
Background
On Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009, Afghans went to the polls to elect a new president and 420 councilors across 34 provinces. Some 30 candidates ran for the presidency. The Taliban threatened to disrupt the vote and in most of the south and predominantly Pashtun part of the country, where turnout was below 10%, made good on its promise.
A low Pashtun turnout would have two consequences of note. It would disenfranchise one of the country's largest ethic populations, which also forms the backbone of the Taliban insurgency. It would also discredit claims of a strong showing by incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun.
Taliban disruptions were only part of the problem on election day. Fraud, ballot-stuffing and intimidation at the polls was the other, even more widespread problem, according to observers and press reports. The less legitimate voting results appear to be to Afghans, the more likely that the resulting winner will had even less authority than Karzai had in the past five years (which is to say, very little), or that the country would split along partisan lines. A return to the kind of civil war Afghanistan knew in the 1990s is possible, though Afghans overwhelmingly dread that possibility. It was to end the civil war in 1996 that a majority of Afghans accepted Taliban rule, which began with the promise of law and order.
For a list of candidates and their positions, see Understanding the 2009 Election.
Casualties: According to Afghan government figures, 26 people were killed on election day (Aug. 20) in election-day related incidents across Afghanistan. Voters, soldiers and police officers were killed by way of rockets and suicide bombers. At least two voters had their ink-stained finger cut off by Taliban insurgents. (The ink stain signifies that an individual voter has cast a ballot.)
In one particular example of anti-voter savagery, London's Independent reported that Lal Mohammed, a 40-year-old farmer, was stopped by Taliban fighters on his way to a polling station, "beaten brutally, and then had his nose and ears slashed off."
Turnout: While millions turned out to vote, by most accounts overall turnout was low. Zekria Barakzai, an Afghan election official, told The Associated Press that he estimated 40 to 50 percent of the country's 15 million registered voters cast ballots. The figure is likely inflated.
Turnout was especially low in the Taliban-controlled Pashtun southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, where it was reportedly below 5%. Several hundred polling stations never opened, especially polling stations designated for women. In central and northern Afghanistan, where ethnic Tajik and Hazara Afghans dominate, women were also intimidated away from polling stations. (Afghanistan last spring passed a law allowing Hazara men to dictate most women's modes of behavior, including the right to leave their home.) Still, official figures put the number of polling centers that opened at 6,202, or 95% of those planned.
Fraud: Reports of fraud and intimidation on election day were widespread, "with anecdotal but widespread accounts of ballot-box stuffing," according to the New York Times, "a lack of impartiality among election workers and voters casting ballots for others." Abdullah was accusing Karzai of rigging the vote.
Of special concern were reports that the Afghan Government's Independent Elections Commission (IEC) was itself spearheading vote-rigging efforts.
The largest Afghanistan-based, non-partisan organization keeping tabs on the vote is the Free and Fair Foundation of Afghanistan. On Aug. 21, the foundation released the following statement (excerpted): "Reports about improper interference by local IEC staff with the voting process were received throughout the day from many parts of the country. Questions about the impartiality of some IEC local staff constitute a trend that has persisted throughout the electoral process." The foundation concluded that its observations "raise concerns about the quality" of the election process.
