The International Affairs Association

The Afghan elections have been fraught with problems from the very beginning. It was expected that any election in Afghanistan would involve a degree of fraud and those suspicions have now been confirmed by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). Hamid Karzai who had initially secured a comfortable victory (54.6% of the votes) now has to face a run-off with his closest rival, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.

The ECC deducted hundreds of thousands of votes from the main candidates which has left Karzai with 48% of the votes and Abdullah with 31.5%. It is believed that Karzai is apparently not too pleased with the ECC’s findings (who wants to contest an election all over again) and feels that a victory has been ‘stolen’ from him. He has now agreed to contest against Abdullah in the run-off which is scheduled to be held on November 7.

The main focus remains not so much on the result of the run-off but on whether Afghanistan can meet the challenges of holding a run-off. There does not seem to be any guarantee that the run-off will be devoid of fraud. Moreover, the run-off will be held during the onset of the Afghan winter. In a country with poor communication infrastructure and the sheer inaccessibility of certain areas during winter, logistics will prove to be a major obstacle. There are also fears of election violence. The Taliban can go to any lengths to disrupt the elections and it is this fear that kept the Afghan public from voting in the first round. I don’t see any improvement in voter turnout this time round either.

If we look not too far back, Zimbabwe was in a similar situation during its election in 2008.Though the situation in Afghanistan pales in comparison to what happened during the Zimbabwean elections, I wouldn’t be too optimistic. Election violence is the worst possible thing that can happen to a country that already has a lot on its plate. Violence would definitely dent the public’s confidence in the democratic process.

The US has also decided to keep its plan on committing 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan on hold. This is just indicative of the high stakes that are being placed on the run-off.

As mentioned earlier, more seems to rest on whether the run-off can be held than who will emerge as the President of Afghanistan. It remains to be seen whether Afghanistan can meet the challenges of holding a fraud-free (a very utopian concept for the time being) and peaceful run-off