Washington Still Pulls the Strings in Afghan Politics

The West, especially the United States, finds it necessary to portray the Afghan elections as a success. However, it is disrespectful, and not only to the Afghan people. Three weeks later, the "success" is already questionable. Hundreds of complaints have been registered not only about fraud, but also because the turnout was so pathetic that the entire election has been called into question.

According to early estimates, 5.6 million ballots were cast, but there are 17 million eligible voters. The election commission quickly and miraculously revised its count of eligible voters to just 15 million. Still, that means the turnout was only around 30 percent and even that is questionable because many of the voters probably cast more than one ballot.

There may never be accurate numbers, but the fact remains that Afghans avoided the polls in droves, many out of frustration with politics and many out of fear of the Taliban. Above all, the people who have suffered most from this war, like the Pashtun in the southern part of the country where the Taliban is strongest, were largely excluded from the process. In those areas, voter turnout was as low as 15 percent. The extent to which irregularities occurred in the southern regions is as yet undetermined.

The earliest results seem to suggest, surprisingly, that a runoff will be necessary between incumbent Hamid Karzai and rival Abdullah Abdullah. This seems to contradict the argument put forth so forcefully by Karzai that he had victory in his pocket. The results so far do not seem to support that notion. Now it looks as though the outcome desired by the United States may have been forced upon the election commission.

Washington is now very interested in selling the idea that the elections were free and fair while dampening any talk of election fraud, avoiding unrest and stalling for time. The West now faces a dilemma. If it legitimizes these questionable elections, it loses further credibility among Afghans; if it questions the results, it damages the current Afghan government’s authority and possibly risks further opposition at home to the whole Afghan campaign. This is not only a problem here in Germany, as support will dwindle in the United States and Great Britain as well.

America is casting about for a solution. As partial election results continue to dribble in, the real struggle for power has been going on in Kabul’s back rooms for some time already. Rumors are making their way around that Washington is toying with the idea of a “government of national unity,” which would force Karzai and Abdullah to be partners. There is no such hope, however, for a similar alliance between the old power elites like the Mujahadin leaders, technocrats and warlords. It seems as though Abdullah is prepared to risk higher stakes in this game, since he has thus far rejected any power sharing deal. Others take this as a sign that a runoff election is all but guaranteed.

Whatever the outcome, suspicion grows that, in the final analysis, Washington is still backstage pulling the strings of the Afghan government. It would be terrible if any Afghans who risked their lives to vote wind up feeling like they have been led down the garden path.

Another thing that has gone virtually unmentioned in all the election debate in the West is that, above all else, the Afghan people want jobs, peace and hope for the future. Neither Karzai nor the international community has been able to provide those luxuries in the past eight years.