Presidential Elections are finally going to be held in Afghanistan on Saturday, 28 September, after two postponements and months of speculations on whether there will indeed be voting or some sort of interim-transition government will be formed to facilitate a peace deal with T.
In fact, before President Donald Trump declared the peace deal “dead,” no one in Kabul was really certain about the elections. According to unconfirmed reports, the US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad was pushing for some sort of interim government even on his last visit to Kabul in the last week of August before the cancellation of the talk although President Ashraf Ghani camp was in favour of elections.
In fact, the top challenger to Ghani, Chief Executive in the National Unity Government (NUG), Dr Abdullah Abdullah had said in late August that was willing to quit the race for the sake of peace in the country. That explained the laxities in the campaign for the presidential race. Except President Ashraf Ghani’s “State Builder” camp, none of the candidates appeared to be investing their resources in the campaign wholeheartedly till the breakdown in the peace deal.
This is going to be the fourth election since the fall of the T in which President Ghani is seeing re-election to the Office.
The presidential race started with 18 candidates but has since come down to 14. Hanif Atmar, the former National Security Advisor to the President Ghani until 2018, was forced to withdraw after his team collapsed. Mohammad Mohaqiq, who was running mate of Abdullah in 2014 and became the Second Deputy Chief Executive in NUG, had earlier joined hands with Atmar, but is now back in the Abdullah camp.
First Vice President and most famous Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum who was the first Vice President of Ghani, but had estranged relations all through, is also supporting Abdullah this time.
Atmar has, meanwhile, not extended support to any candidate in particular and issued a statement on September 24, saying he will maintain impartiality. Former Ambassador to India, Shaida Mohammad Abdali too withdrew in favour of Ghani just a week before the election.
Abdullah appears to be the only potent rival to Ghani. Many believe that he had won the second round in the 2014 elections, if not for the fraud that led to months of stalemate. The NUG was finally formed with the intervention of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the United States, making Ghani as the President, and Abdullah as CEO.
As the election fervour peaked in September, Abdullah camp too has been successful in garnering crowd in his rallies beyond his traditional bases. He has been working towards mobilising as many opposition and regional leaders to stich a “Stability and Partnership Team.”
But President Ghani, who had originally no running mate from among the Tajiks, the second largest ethnic community, in 2014 has a boost this time with the former head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) Amrullah Saleh as his first running mate.
Saleh is very vocal against Pakistan and T in media – he survived a fatal attack by T at his Green Trend office in July – and is quite popular among youth across ethnicities. With him in Ghani’s camp, and volunteers of his Afghanistan Green Trends Movement working with the “State Builder” team, Ghani is expected to get at least votes of several Tajik youths.
Abdullah has promised to keep the post of Chief Executive while Ghani is believed to be in favour of more centralized power structure, and has shunned any possibility of accepting another NUG type formation.
Former Jihadi leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is also contesting and created controversy just days before the polling by saying that if there is fraud and foreign meddling in elections, he will be forced to take other routes, adding that they have experiences too. The statement drew condemnation from all around, including several ambassadors.
In many ways, at least an election that appears to be free – even if it is not completely free from corruptions and abuses of state resources – and an outcome acceptable to all is very important now that the election is going to be held for the legitimacy of the future government that is formed.
There is a possibility that no one gets 51% again and the election goes to the second round. In 2009 too, the election had gone to the second round, but Hamid Karzai became the President for the second term after his main rival Abdullah had withdrawn from the race accusing him of misuse of state power and resources.
In 2014, the second round became uglier with the accusation of fraud leading to stalemate for months. There are fears that a repeat of 2014 will further delegitimize the Kabul government, and give T a boost in the future peace-talks. A repeat of 2014 style NUG too cannot be completely ruled out at this point.
There has been several fatal suicide bombings in Kabul in recent weeks as well as an attack on the election rally of Ghani in norther Parwan province, killing several hundred people and injuring many more. According to BBC, in the month of August alone, on an average, 74 people were killed every day. Considering the deteriorating security situation across Afghanistan, many people have hence advocated in favour of suspension of the election at this time.
Former President Karzai organised a meeting on September 23 in Kabul demanding that the election be cancelled at this point and an inclusive and transparent peace process should be immediately started, once again.
The meeting was attended, among others, by former Vice President Mohammad Yunus Qanooni, former Minister of Energy and Water, Mohammad Ismail Khan, former Balkh governor Atta Mohammad Noor, former T member Agha Jan Mutasim, and former National Security Advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta.
An interim-transition government to facilitate peace talks if US-T deal had fallen through did make sense, but not holding election at this point will only make the Kabul administration weaker.
Moreover, T has called for the boycott of the elections, and suspending it at this point would give them another boost. But there are real concerns that the turnout this time will be very less fearing attack from T, and even ISIS.
Now that it is almost certain that the voting will happen on September 28, the international community should pressure the government to not misuse the state resources, and make sure that a strong government is formed as soon to restart the peace negotiations with T.
(Dr Mohammad Reyaz is Assistant Professor at Aliah University, India, and presently a Visiting Scholar at the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) working on an ICSSR sponsored project. Views expressed are personal.)
