Ashraf Ghani - Tag Search

Fair warning: This post is a rant! (I guess I could use a more high-minded expression, like "structural criticism of the endless think-tank events in Washington.")

I spent the last hour or so at perhaps the least enlightening Afghanistan event I've been to all year. I don't say that lightly: You would be horrified if you searched my Google Calendar for "Afghanistan event"; I've lost count of the number of hours I've spent in conference rooms at CAP and AEI and USIP and the rest of the alphabet-soup think tanks in Washington.

Hamid Karzai was inaugurated for a second term today under heavy security at the presidential palace in Kabul. Visiting dignitaries included Hillary Clinton and David Miliband.

Much of the media coverage of Karzai's inauguration speech has focused on his alleged timetable for withdrawing NATO forces from the country. The Times of London, for example, headlines its story Hamid Karzai: foreign troops out of Afghanistan in five years. But if you actually read the speech -- well, I'm not so sure that's what Karzai said.

As with yesterday's figures, these are very incomplete numbers that don't offer a representative sample. But with 940,000 ballots counted -- almost one-fifth of the total -- Karzai has extended his lead over Abdullah Abdullah. The margin is now roughly 45%-35%, compared to 41%-39% yesterday.

Ramazan Bashardost has about 11% of the vote, and Ashraf Ghani 3%.

Roughly 38,000 ballots have been declared invalid and tossed out, according to Pajhwok, though the electoral commission doesn't explain why.

Based on this morning's Pajhwok report, it seems that about 7 million people voted in Thursday's Afghan election.

It's impossible to measure that as a percentage of registered voters, because there is no master list of registered voters in Afghanistan. Here's how Democracy International put it in a press release issued from Kabul this morning:

Because there is no accurate number of registered voters, it is not possible to accurately determine the percentage of eligible voters who cast ballots. Accordingly, the total number of people who voted is the only meaningful measure of turnout. Election day observations, however, indicate that turnout was low in at least some parts of the country.

We can use Afghanistan's adult population as a very rough barometer. The CIA estimates the population of Afghanistan at 34 million. Half of the population is under 18, so we have a potential pool of about 17 million registered voters. That means about 41 percent of Afghanistan's adult population voted.

But that figure is obviously low, because not everyone in Afghanistan is registered to vote. Women, in particular, are not going to have anywhere near 100 percent registration, particularly in more conservative parts of the country (that would be indicative of registration fraud, actually).

5:47 p.m.: A few more updates...

Abdullah Abdullah said this afternoon that he was happy with the initial results -- but one of his campaign workers says that's not entirely true.

A campaign manger of presidential candidates Dr. Abdullah Abdullah has complained about 'rigging' in presidential elections in southern Ghazni province.

Haji Zaman said election observers were unable to visit any district of the province. "In most districts, there was fraud at the polling centres as all the process pushed forward by government officials," he claimed.

Also, two interesting stories about voting in Garmsir, a Taliban stronghold in central Helmand province. The NYT's Dexter Filkins said observers were encouraged by the strong turnout; Wired's Nathan Hodge says they were surprised by the lack of violence.

A small success story, it seems -- though, as Filkins writes, the issue of turnout is slightly nuanced; it was strong in the town but weak in the countryside, where the Taliban is stronger.

3:38 p.m.: Three updates from Pajhwok:

1. At three polling stations in Parwan province, Abdullah won a majority of votes. No surprise there, since Parwan has a large Tajik population.

2. In 7 polling stations in Kapisa and Samangan provinces, Karzai had a weak lead over Abdullah. Both have mixed Tajik/Pahstun populations (Samangan has a sizable Uzbek population, too, which might bode well for Karzai).

3. Most interesting: Election officials in Herat will not release any vote counts to the media. Herat is majority Tajik.

There are a lot of great ideas in the Kerry-Lugar bill (which passed the Senate last week) that make me respect John Kerry for the seriousness with which he's approaching the Pakistan conundrum.

In the coming weeks, I'll hopefully be able to dive into the bill (and its companion in the House of Representatives) and do some analysis.

For now, here's a nugget from Kerry's companion report on S.962, which he submitted the day before it passed, that has so far gone unmentioned: One of the goals of the "Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009" would be the creation of an American University in Pakistan.