Afghan elections - Tag Search

Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission has postponed the parliamentary election scheduled for May 22 -- because of a $50 million hole in the IEC's budget.

The commission is hoping to raise the money from international donors; indeed, foreign countries have already donated tens of millions of dollars into an account run by the United Nations. But that money won't be released until the IEC carries out electoral reforms, and the commission doesn't have enough time to implement those reforms by May.

It's hard to get the facts from Haji Jan Dad, as if they're swallowed up in the mythology surrounding him. Jan Dad tells war stories. They are filled with bodies. But there are few dates, and his figures vary wildly. Perhaps the stories run together in his mind. His voice comes out in a Brando-esque wheeze, supposedly from a Russian RPG rocket that hit him square in the chest but didn't explode.

Oz, who has dealt with him frequently on the part of the U.S. Army, said Haji Jan Dad tells stories of beheading captured Russians. I asked Jan Dad how many Russians he'd killed. His numbers were confusing. "I caught 55 of them, 90 I killed. In Heywa, I could have caught 350 alive. I don't know how many I killed that day," he said, looking troubled by the memory. "I took around 1200 weapons, PKMs, AKs, DSHKs," he said, as if he was trying to suppress images of a massacre, or was confused by several events overlapping.

Abruptly his tone changed. "What was I gonna do?" he said, "It was a war." Haji Jan Dad also claims to have personally killed some 40 Taliban.

His recent history is not much clearer, in part because the U.S. military wouldn't make current intelligence on him available. Haji Jan Dad was arrested less than a year ago by coalition forces. From what I gathered from several conversations, the infantry unit Dog Company replaced passed off enough intelligence on Haji Jan Dad's illicit activities to warrant an arrest; what the intelligence community calls "building a packet." Most likely a rival Afghan informed on him. He was arrested by U.S. forces, but like many warlords with clout, he was pardoned by an old ally -- President Karzai.

The cease fire lasted for almost a day. The next evening's sprints up the hill in full body armor -- which pass for entertainment at an outpost in the Badel Valley -- were interrupted by the whoosh of RPGs and shots ringing down. I ran for cover; the soldiers, for their firing positions. Soon the dusk was lit with red tracers and the roar of crew served weapons. At the same time, a rival militia was attacking Haji Jan Dad's compound in the lower valley, supposedly to discredit him for being unable to provide the security he had promised. Jan Dad vowed it was personal and promised to send his own men out to hunt the attackers down that night.

It's little wonder that the U.S. military is sometimes unsure which warlord to trust. Dealing with power brokers, and the forces that back them, is an extremely tricky business; agendas can change over night.

The soldiers of Dog Company live inside the walls of an old Soviet base named Fortress. To the east is the Kunar River and the Black Mountains, whose rugged passes are regularly traversed by the Black Mountain Fighters, otherwise known as the Taliban. The Pakistani border is approximately six miles away. It is eerily beautiful for such a dangerous place. Several weeks before the shura, four U.S. Marines were killed in an ambush on a joint Afghan Army patrol one district east of Fortress.

The concrete bunkers at Fortress are not for show. Mortars from overlooking mountains slammed the base on consecutive days this summer. Shrapnel fragments sprayed Lt. Waage's door. The same month, a Russian PKM machine gun round pierced the plywood wall of the recreation room, ricocheted off a monitor and embedded in the back of a soldier's head. He lived, thanks to some medics who ran to the scene.

One of the questions underlying Barack Obama's Afghan strategy review is the extent to which the U.S. can win the support of Afghanistan's fiercely independent tribes, particularly in rural Pashtun areas along the Pakistani border. The area remains one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan: Earlier this month, Taliban fighters overran an American outpost in Nuristan province, killing 8 American soldiers. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has acknowledged that the U.S. cannot field enough soldiers to secure the sparsely-populated region; he has begun withdrawing troops to population centers.

James Foley embedded with an army unit in eastern Afghanistan earlier this year. Here, in three parts, is his report on the army's troubled efforts to "rent" a local warlord to provide security during the August election.

Haji Jan Dad is riddled with the scars of some 20 years of combat as a mountain fighter. Shrapnel is embedded in the back of his head, his arm has been ripped open by bullets. He has a PKM machine gun round lodged between his thumb and index finger that he's never bothered to remove.

On a sunny day at the end of August, dozens of Afghan elders in traditional dress and long beards were facing a few American soldiers on the terrace outside Haji Jan Dad's compound. They were assembled under the auspices of a truce.

Abdullah Abdullah, Hamid Karzai's chief challenger, has agreed to a runoff election, but says the government needs to provide better security than it did during the general election.

Speaking at his house in the capital, Kabul, he said: "Some people lost their finger in the last round elections [so] this is a serious issue, and in order to prepare the ground for transparency and fairness of the elections we have certain recommendations, suggestions as well as conditions that ... we will come up with soon."

Abdullah also called for tougher steps to prevent voter fraud, though he said no voters should be disenfranchised. Hundreds of polling stations are in remote areas in southern Afghanistan -- difficult for the government to monitor.

Karzai agreed yesterday to accept a runoff.

Incumbent President Hamid Karzai, who won around 55 percent of the vote in the now-discredited Aug. 20 elections, has conceded that massive fraud occurred and will agree to a recount to be set for Nov. 7, within the two weeks mandated by the country's constitution. But at least one news agency is reporting that he and chief rival Abdullah Abdullah have agreed to share power in a coalition government.

The Afghan runoff election is set for November 7.

Obvious question: How will the runoff election be any more legitimate than the original? Take Peter Galbraith's claim of "ghost" polling places, stations that the Afghan government could neither monitor nor secure. They'll be equally unaccountable during a runoff election.

The government could decide to close those stations, of course -- Galbraith was just on the BBC urging it to do exactly that -- but Karzai would raise holy hell about losing hundreds of polling places in the Pashtun heartland.

We'll have to wait and see what the IEC does. But designing a legitimate runoff in 17 days is a tall order.

Hamid Karzai is due to deliver a nationwide address later today on the results of the Afghan recount.

The Times of London reports that Karzai has ordered his security chiefs to make preparations for a runoff vote -- a clear sign that he will accept the results of the Electoral Complaints Commission's recount.

The constitution mandates a runoff within two weeks, though the Times report says it won't happen for another month.

The New York Times, citing anonymous officials and its own analysis, is reporting that incumbent President Hamid Karzai will lose a whopping 874,000 votes in the recount of Afghanistan's fraudulent August election, shrinking his share of the total to somewhere between 48 and 49 percent and necessitating a runoff.

Gregg has already written about Karzai's disappearing margin of victory and the byzantine recount decision, overseen by the joint United Nations/Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission and released yesterday, that is making it disappear.

Byzantine or not, what makes the ECC's recount fun for the whole family is the fact that the organization is releasing basically all of its data in raw form. That means you too can spend endless hours deducing where the fraud took place, from the comfort of your own home. Here's how to do it (bonus points if you can tell us how the Times got to the number 874,000):

The Afghan election recount rules are slightly byzantine, so here's my attempt at an explanation.

The ECC obviously didn't recount every ballot box. Instead, the commission divided the boxes into six categories, outlined here (pdf), and reviewed a sample from each category.

For example: Category B1 is defined as "polling stations with more than 100 votes in which one candidate received 95 percent or more of the total votes cast." There were 1,270 such polling stations in Afghanistan; the ECC reviewed 124 of them, or about 10 percent. (This 10 percent ratio held for the other five categories.)

The Electoral Complaints Commission has released the final results of its recount; press release is here (pdf) and the full text of each decision is available online.

The results now go to the Independent Electoral Commission, the Afghan body responsible for adjusting each candidate's vote total. The BBC says the recount will strip enough votes from Karzai to necessitate a runoff.

I've been trying to figure out Hamid Karzai's strategy with regards to the Afghan election and the possibility of a runoff. You can sum it up in one word: delay.

The latest news is that the Independent Electoral Commission, an Afghan panel stacked with Karzai loyalists, has delayed the release of the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission's recount. The ECC is expected to announce that Karzai's vote tally has dropped to 47 percent, necessitating a runoff.

IEC officials tell The Guardian they're considering legal challenges to the recount.

The biggest story this morning, which we blogged separately, was a double suicide bombing in southeastern Iran that killed nearly 30 people, including the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan: Diplomats from several countries, including the U.S. and France, are pressuring Afghan president Hamid Karzai to accept the results of the Electoral Complaints Commission's recount.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah are willing to "work together" after the results are announced. That announcement could come as soon as today or tomorrow.

Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., Said Tayeb Jawad, says a runoff election appears likely. Jawad works for Karzai, and he probably wouldn't make that statement without his boss's approval.

This could just be more expectation-setting. The Karzai government publicly resigns itself to a recount, ordered by an Electoral Complaints Commission that Karzai contends is rigged against him. And then -- miraculously! -- the ECC declares Karzai the winner.

If that's the case, Karzai might offer Abdullah a cabinet job, something to silence him. So Abdullah has the next move: accept Karzai's offer? Or continue to complain about voter fraud?

As expected, Hamid Karzai said today that Maulavi Mustafa Barakzai's resignation "casts serious doubt" on the Electoral Complaints Commission's recount.

There's still no evidence that Karzai engineered Barakzai's resignation, but the timing is certainly suspect. The ECC announces that it's close to finishing its recount; Barakzai resigns; Karzai declares the recount a fraud. It's an 11th-hour gambit designed to undermine the recount.

Maulavi Mustafa Barakzai, one of the two Afghans on the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, resigned yesterday over alleged "foreign interference" in the recount.

Today, his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, says Barakzai's resignation was orchestrated by Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

A deputy campaign manager for the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Karzai's top challenger, called the resignation a move by the Karzai campaign to call into question the validity of the fraud investigations.

"Barakzai's resignation has direct connection to Karzai. It was Karzai's idea," Saleh Mohammad Registani said. "Karzai is trying to bring the work of the ECC into question."

No response from Karzai yet. The U.N. says it will release the results of the Afghan recount in a matter of days.

A lot of news from both sides of the Durand Line this morning, none of it particularly good.

First, Afghanistan, where Kai Eide -- the head of the U.N. mission there -- admits there was "widespread fraud" in the August election. The U.N. plans to release the results of its recount within the next few days; diplomats tell The Guardian it's unclear whether the recount will invalidate enough votes to trigger a run-off election.

But Eide defends his decision not to close thousands of remote polling places that couldn't be monitored or securely. Peter Galbraith, Eide's former deputy, says those so-called "ghost" polling places contributed thousands of fraudulent votes to Hamid Karzai's tally.

The Afghan election recount looks like more of a farce every day.

The Electoral Complaints Commission, the U.N.-backed "watchdog," is recounting about 12 percent of ballot boxes. The ECC published its recount rules today: The commission will treat all candidates as equally guilty of fraud. It will nullify ballots in proportion with the total number of suspicious ballots in each ballot box.

For example: Let's say the ECC recounts a box with 1,000 ballots and determines that 500 -- 50 percent -- are fraudulent. It will then invalidate 50 percent of Karzai's votes from that box, 50 percent of Abdullah's votes, 50 percent of Ghani's, etc.

It doesn't matter who actually perpetrated the fraud, which means candidates will be deprived of legitimate votes. And since Karzai is believed to be responsible for the worst fraud, he stands to benefit the most from this policy.

The U.N. finally decided to take a principled stand in the wake of August's massive electoral fraud in Afghanistan, by... dismissing Peter Galbraith, the American diplomat who raised allegations of fraud last month.

In an interview with Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin, Galbraith blames his dismissal on his boss -- Kai Eide, the top U.N. official in Kabul -- who reportedly has close ties to Hamid Karzai. The interview's pretty damning. One choice example:

Additionally, Galbraith alleges that Eide refused to hand over to the electoral complaints commission massive evidence that their staff had collected about actual incidents of vote fraud. Staff was frustrated that their evidence was going to waste after they put themselves at risk to collect it, he said.

The whole thing is worth a read.

NATO's foreign ministers have decided to anoint Karzai the winner of last month's election, despite the mounting evidence of widespread fraud.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers reached "consensus" that Karzai would probably "continue to be president" at a Friday meeting in New York with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, a US official told the newspaper.

On the one hand, you can view this as a smart act of realpolitik. The U.N.'s limited recount probably won't swing the result of the election. It's almost certain, whenever the final results are announced, that Karzai will be declared the winner. So NATO is dealing with reality here.