A glass half full

Afghanistan

Sep 15th 2005 KABUL
From The Economist print edition

As Afghanistan prepares to elect its first democratic parliament for almost 40 years, the country is doing better than many feared

ON THE campaign trail this week, Mullah Qalamudeen, the former Taliban deputy-minister for vice and virtue, was warmly welcomed in Logar province, in Afghanistan's violent east. Seated on cheap Iranian carpets in open-air mosques, he presented his manifesto to huddles of bearded elders. It was strong on values (Islam and jihad); thin on policy. But Mr Qalamudeen pledged that if the Islamist clauses in Afghanistan's constitution are diluted as a consequence of the parliamentary and provincial elections due on September 18th, he will take up his Kalashnikov rifle in their defence.

Mr Qalamudeen is one of the more impressive of the 5,800 candidates contesting the polls: he is not promising Logar instant roads and schools, or blaming foreigners for all Afghanistan's troubles, and he can read. Nor, unlike one or two other prospective members of parliament, did he oversee the slaughter of several hundred thousand residents of Kabul in the civil war of the 1990s. Nor does he have a private army, unlike 207 would-be candidates, according to an estimate by the local and foreign agencies that are running the election.

Only 21 of those villains have been disqualified: the government of President Hamid Karzai excused all the rest. The electoral complaints commission fielded several thousand other objections to candidates which did not make them ineligible—including charges that they had committed appalling war crimes, and, from one sorry plaintiff, that a candidate had stolen his wife. One local warlord left in the race is Haji Almas, a well-built parliamentary hopeful for Parwan province, with plucked eyebrows and a gravelly voice, whose supporters allegedly mount illegal road-blocks and traffic in opium. “My name is well known across the country,” boasts Mr Almas, as he promises to build national unity.

The same is hoped for the elections themselves, which were originally supposed to have been held at the same time as the presidential election a year ago that returned Mr Karzai to power. By imposing an important check on presidential power, and also drawing Afghanistan's poor regions into a centre that has done little for them in recent years, they are an important stage in a trail-blazing post-war reconstruction effort; in theory, at least.

The reality is murkier. Against the advice of most of the foreign donors keeping him afloat, Mr Karzai chose the unusual single non-transferable vote system, whereby the 12m registered voters select one name (or, for illiterates, the corresponding symbol) in huge multi-member constituencies. In Kabul, 400 candidates are vying for 33 seats and the ballot runs to seven tabloid-sized pages. Voters need to look through the whole lot before making their choice, and the top 33 get the seats. With studies suggesting that illiterate women did not know how to turn pages, mistakes were expected, and voting was thought likely to proceed at a crawl. In contrast to last year's election, Afghans may vote only in their registered polling station, a fact that seems to be little-known, and could prevent many from voting at all. So could violence in the south and east, where an insurgency by Taliban and other fanatics continues: on September 13th, seven men carrying voter registration cards were murdered on a road in Uruzgan.

All this could create an opportunity for mischief by Yunus Qanuni, champion of the Tajik minority and Mr Karzai's main opponent. After coming a distant second to Mr Karzai in last year's poll, Mr Qanuni at first refused to accept defeat—and in an interview this week still claimed to have won 53% of the vote. Now vying for a place in parliament, he let it be known that unless he and his friends win half the 249 available seats he will again cry foul.

Even if serious glitches can be averted, the election should at best put in parliament a fractious rabble, with shifting factions bound by ethnicity and stealthy allegiance to the best organised political parties, most of them formerly communist. Such a body would struggle to rule on the 200-odd decrees Mr Karzai has handed down since his election, within 30 days of meeting, as the constitution seems to say that it must. The provincial assemblies will be much weaker, with no control over presidentially appointed governors—to the dismay of their would-be members, who were told this only mid-way through campaigning. Elections for local assemblies, also overdue, will not be held; due in part to the insurgency, district boundaries have not been fully demarcated.

Under the guiding hand of America, Mr Karzai's strongest ally, the electoral system was clearly designed to maintain a strong presidency. It is a strategy that could fail: Mr Karzai may find swift ad hoc support for his diktats, or he could be forced to spend distracting months negotiating to get his way. Whichever comes to pass, it seems right to ask whether Mr Karzai, a mid-level Holy Warrior against the Soviet occupation, and then an opponent of the Taliban, who has ruled Afghanistan since 2001, deserves now to find himself in such a powerful presidency.

An opportunity wasted

Last year's election gave Mr Karzai the legitimacy he had previously lacked, and the temporary freedom to rule unencumbered by parliament. Excited pro-reformers, led by the finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, urged him to seize the chance: issue a 180-day reform programme, rid himself of ineffective provincial governors and other officials and accelerate the centre's outward reach. Mr Karzai responded by sacking Mr Ghani, announcing no new reforms and carrying on as before: ruling through slow consultation with tribal elders and the ex-mujahideen commanders who waged civil war before the Taliban sent them packing. Under pressure to remove Gul Agha Sherzai, under whose watch southern Kandahar province increased opium production by 140% this year, Mr Karzai instead recently shifted him to eastern Nangahar province, which had cut opium production by 95%.

One presidential adviser, and parliamentary candidate, causing particular concern is a former Saudi Arabian-backed jihadist leader named Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, a lobby group, he is “directly implicated in the abductions and the indiscriminate and intentional targeting of civilians”. During the war against the Soviet army, together with Osama bin Laden, he founded training camps that sent Muslim fanatics to fight in Chechnya, Bosnia and the southern Philippines—where an Islamic terrorist movement, Abu Sayyaf, is named after him. In 1996, when Mr bin Laden was ejected from his base in Sudan, Mr Sayyaf invited him back to Afghanistan. Last week, at a meeting in the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr Karzai invited Mr Sayyaf to advise him whether to reappoint the heroic boss of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Mr Sayyaf advised against it.

In his defence, Mr Karzai could argue that he has had insufficient foreign help to take on the warlords. A NATO-led peacekeeping force, currently 11,000-strong, and known as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), keeps an eye on northern and western Afghanistan, from where most of the warlords hail. Yet, totalling a handful of small garrisons, and with most of its European troops forbidden by their national government to do aught more muscular than dig wells, it does little to assist with security. ISAF played no role in the recent demobilising of 60,000 militiamen—many of whom are believed to have pocketed the UN's cash incentive and formed new bandit gangs. According to Major Luigi Mantoli, deputy chief of an Italian garrison in the western city of Herat: “Our military component is just for self-protection—it's a very, very light presence, a very, very, very light presence.” True enough, Herat is currently peaceful. Yet a straw poll of Heratis milling outside the city's fine blue mosque suggested that security is their biggest concern.

According to Mr Karzai's logic, elections are no reason to risk civil strife. In defence of his caution, he can claim general progress. Last year, driven by wheat production, after decent rains ended years of drought, the economy grew by 13%. Government revenues are pathetically small—$350m last year, but growing too. Competent technocrats remain in charge of several key ministries, even if corruption beneath them is pervasive. The American-trained Afghan National Army is 30,000-strong, its desertion rates are dipping, and it provides useful support to the American-led coalition army that is fighting insurgents. And, moreover, several strongmen, notably Ismail Khan of Herat, and Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek from the north, have been co-opted into the government and so weakened.

Just so, reply Mr Karzai's critics—and their example should embolden the president. When sufficiently threatened, warlords have capitulated. Given that America and ISAF promised to take care of any troublesome disqualified candidates, the decision to disqualify so few armed men from standing for election seems an opportunity lost, especially given the rising uncertainty about how long Mr Karzai will be able to count on such assistance.

The elections probably do not amount to a genuine watershed in Afghanistan's creeping transition from abject dependency to, it is hoped, fragile self-sufficiency. Most Afghans have embraced them, but more in hope of benefits to come than jubilation at benefits received. In Pol-e-Khumri, a town in central Baghlan province, the menfolk of a destitute Pushtun family recently returned from exile in Pakistan said they would vote for any candidate who would bring them peace.

But peace is not all that the Afghans were promised in 2001. Of four road-building projects, barely one has been completed; work on the western stretch, from Kandahar to Herat, was frozen this month after Taliban assassins tossed a British engineer over a cliff to his death. The power sector is a shambles. Private investors remain discouraged by dozens of extraneous taxes, and now a corporate tax of 20% will be introduced after the election. Even with the requisite political will, because of a shortage of technical expertise, reforming the system will take years.

In the past four years, for aid and development, Afghanistan has received around $10 billion—about the annual cost of America's military venture there. Half has come from America but, unlike the contributions from Europe and Japan, the American aid comes without any long-term guarantees. There are fears in Kabul that, next year, America will not be so forthcoming.

That would not be in America's own interest, because its first job in Afghanistan, the suppression of al-Qaeda terrorists and the local fanatics who succoured them, is still not done. This year, 69 American soldiers have been killed by these enemies, the highest number since 2001; though the figure is swollen by two serious incidents, including the shooting down in June of a helicopter carrying American special force fighters, killing 16. An improvement in the guerrillas' bomb-making skills has suggested the arrival of help from Iraq's insurgents, but media talk of a “second front” emerging in Afghanistan is unfounded. American forces in Afghanistan admit to having killed 600 people since March, though given their propensity to kill from the air, the true number is probably considerably higher.

Grim as this sounds, America has improved its military tactics. Its regular soldiers are operating more like special forces, in smaller units, and in tandem with the eight battle-ready battalions of the Afghan army. At Mr Karzai's request, this year, restrictions have been placed on airstrikes and house searches, which has probably meant fewer civilians killed or riled. America can also expect some fresh help in its fight, with around 4,000 British and Canadian troops expected to be deployed to southern Afghanistan by early next year. Whether ISAF will take over the coalition's combat role, allowing American to withdraw several thousand troops from Afghanistan next year as it would like, remains in doubt. At a meeting of European defence ministers in Berlin on September 13th, Germany, France and Spain opposed giving NATO such extended duties.

Still, whether as NATO or as an American-led coalition, America and its allies will not be able to defeat the insurgents so long as their leaders are based not in Afghanistan but, as intelligence very strongly suggests, in next-door Pakistan. On September 12th, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, suggested building a fence along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan to prevent all illegal incursions. It would surely be cheaper to start by arresting those Taliban leaders living contentedly, and relatively openly, in Pakistan's northern town of Quetta.

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