Dark months ahead as Afghan vote fracas drags on

By Marc Bastian (AFP) – 6 hours ago

KABUL — Afghans face dark months ahead as vote rigging claims overshadow eagerly-anticipated elections, with the prospect of a lengthy and bitter bout of political unrest coming as the Taliban are at their fiercest.

Although preliminary results show President Hamid Karzai on the path to victory in the August polls, the sweep of fraud allegations and pitifully low turnout means credibility could slip away from his Western-backed government.

No one expects the official announcement of Afghanistan's new president to go ahead as scheduled on Thursday, already a blow to a process seen as a key test of Western-backed efforts to bring stability here after an eight-year war.

The Independent Election Commission has earmarked hundreds of thousands of ballots for audit and fraud investigators are only just beginning their task.

Haroun Mir, of the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies, predicted that war-scarred and fragile Afghanistan was "probably heading for another couple of months of this political crisis."

"People are losing faith in the Afghan government and NATO because of this political crisis," said Mir.

Afghanistan's electoral law says a candidate must receive 50 percent plus at least one vote to be declared the winner. If no candidate achieves this result, a run-off between the two top-scoring candidates takes place.

Karzai currently has 54.3 percent of the preliminary count.

In the worst case scenario, Mir told AFP, the electoral fraud complaints could take up to two months to iron out before final results are declared.

If a run-off was needed, it would have to be postponed until next spring or summer as winter snows would hamper election logistics.

London-based think-tank the International Council on Security and Development has already warned that this would create a political vacuum when Afghanistan needs a functioning government to begin tackling its vast problems.

What worries Afghanistan's Western allies is that all the mud-slinging, delays and upheaval could play into the hands of Islamist militants, who have regrouped since the 2001 US-led ouster of the Taliban.

"The beneficiary of that would be the Taliban and Al-Qaeda," Richard Holbrooke, top US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the BBC last week when asked about delays in the election process.

The Taliban insurgency to topple Karzai's government and force out the approximately 100,000 US and NATO-led troops here has worsened each year, with 2009 seeing record numbers of foreign military casualties.

The foreign deaths have sent public support for the war in coalition member states plummeting, with Western leaders facing calls to withdraw.

Nations involved in the international operation have called in vain for negotiations with the Taliban, but insurgents denounce "a fixed election."

Neither Karzai nor his main rival Abdullah Abdullah will be accepted as go-betweens, because "we want both of them eliminated", Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP, assessing the current situation as "very good" for his movement.

Another key fear in the coming months is that supporters of Abdullah -- who trails with about 28 percent of vote so far -- could be so enraged with the fraud allegations that they take to the streets.

Afghanistan is deeply divided along tribal lines, and wounds have not yet healed from an ethnically-charged civil war of the 1990s.

If Abdullah or other candidates feel cheated out of the vote, the consequences could be disastrous, said one Western diplomat.

The eventual victor of the polls will also face endemic corruption and a pitiful pace of development blighting the fifth poorest country in the world.

Karzai was installed as president soon after the 2001 toppling of the Taliban and was then elected in 2004, but his government has been widely criticised for failing to rein in corruption or tackle worsening security.

Analysts say forming a competent government will be tricky if Karzai is declared the winner given all the backroom deals with unsavoury warlords who will want plum government positions -- but just getting to that point was the immediate concern.

"It is completely illusory to think Afghanistan will have a stable government within 12 to 18 months," said researcher Mariam Abou Zahab, of the French Centre for International Studies and Research. Link...