VOTING NOT FOR THE TIMID

There are more than 2,500 candidates, representing almost all the country's parties and movements, for the 249 seats in the lower house of the Afghan parliament. However, extreme radicals, primarily representing the Taliban, have told the population to boycott the elections and threatened to kill those who disobey. This is why the voter turnout in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections was 40 per cent (about 3.6 million people). It seems that only about a third of all eligible voters went to the polls. This leads us to believe that there is a complete lack of progress in the fight against the Taliban, who continue to hold the country in fear.

Elections under fire

The elections were held against a backdrop of terrorist attacks despite the fact that in addition to members of the Afghan security forces, polling stations were guarded by 150,000 coalition troops. In Kabul, bombings began before the voting did. Immediately upon the opening of polling stations, terrorist attacks were committed in Ghazni, Badakhshan, Herat and Khost. They were followed by explosions in the provinces of Wardak, Nangarhar and Baghlan.

At least 6 children were killed in a projectile blast in the northern province of Kunduz. According to the governor of the province, Habibullah Mohtashim, the children were playing in an area where there was an unexploded projectile. Launched by militants, it only went off the next day. The Afghan authorities condemned the killing of children as "incompatible with Islam and an inhuman act".

In addition, the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission announced the discovery of the bodies of three of its members who were abducted last week. They were found in the province of Balkh in northern Afghanistan.

Following the voting, Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said that the authorities' opponents had been foiled in 38 counties of 17 provinces and in five cases the army had been forced to use special commando units. According to Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, law enforcement officers defused 32 mines. In the county of Nijrab in Kapisa Province, a suicide bomber was killed before he could detonate an explosive device near a polling station. Eleven civilians were killed and 45 were wounded. The number of Taliban casualties was more than 70.

According to Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, the elections took place due to coordinated action by the law enforcement agencies of Afghanistan on the one hand, and NATO units, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), the UN and the Independent Electoral Commission on the other.

However, the coalition forces also succeeded in shedding blood. According to the international media, NATO aircraft bombed a house in Nangarhar Province. The air raid killed three children and seven adults. NATO's leadership and Kabul officials have so far refrained from comment.

Yet Afghan officials deem the election a success. The head of the CEC, Fazel Ahmad Ma'nawi, said that the elections had had some drawbacks, however, he said, given the situation in the country, these were to be expected.

But the official opposition, not to mention the fundamentalists, holds a different opinion. One of its leaders, former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, said that doubts had been cast about the transparency of the parliamentary elections. Among the irregularities that took place on election day, he noted numerous instances of fraud, ballot stuffing in favour of a particular candidate, a lack of ballot papers and the stationing of polling stations in the homes of influential officials.

The Foundation for Free and Fair Elections in Afghanistan, a leading organization in the observation of the parliamentary elections in the country, also expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the voting. It noted "serious concerns about the quality" of the voting, citing security concerns and numerous accusations of ballot-rigging. The head of the foundation, Nader Naderi, said that violations such as repeat voting, vote buying and ballot stuffing had been noted throughout the country.

The opinion of the opposition is also shared by influential international circles. UN envoy in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, said that it was too early to call the elections a success, as the UN commission had received numerous complaints. Washington also expressed caution in assessing the elections. According to Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador to Afghanistan, the voting was accompanied by individual violations, but the electoral system in this country is now in better shape than during the presidential elections of 2009.

The latter nuance is very important to an understanding of the motives of any assessment of the Afghan elections by the international community. Leading states directly involved in hostilities in Afghanistan are interested in the swift stabilization of the situation and therefore believe that elections, no matter how defective they may be, are still better than no democratic process. Therefore, representatives of the international security force in Afghanistan, as well as the UN leadership, highly appreciated the very determination of the Afghan people to come to the polls despite threats from the Taliban. According to the commander of the coalition forces, US General David Petraeus, the voting showed that the future of Afghanistan depends on its citizens, not on extremists.

Stabilization version

However, the obvious flaws in the electoral process persuaded the West that their main aim - a quick end to the war in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of NATO and multinational forces from the country - cannot be achieved any time soon. Moreover, the end of the "military mission" in Iraq and the withdrawal of US army combat troops from that country, recently announced by President Obama, suggest that Washington will now focus on strengthening the coalition forces in Afghanistan. This is already proved by information received from the province of Kandahar where ISAF has launched a new, large-scale offensive against the Taliban. In any case, even the intensification of the West's military campaign in Afghanistan inevitably raises the task of achieving some degree of political stability. And here it is likely that Americans will use their Iraq experience, where the combat mission ended recently in the post-Saddam country.

The Arab newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat recently wrote about Iraq, saying that "all power will probably be concentrated in the hands of forces sympathetic to the US. After the withdrawal of US troops, they will become the ruling force and gain influence through control of the machinery of security and defence. The same factor will enable them to stay in power for a long time." This will take account of "regional traditions" which "exert a major influence and create a situation in which there are two options". The first is the formation of a local government, which will secure itself the opportunity to stay in power permanently following the departure of the Americans. The second option involves a balanced distribution of power between rival local politicians.

It is possible that the latter will also be tested in Afghanistan. In this case, the West and the Kabul government will seek a distribution of power by interregional and interethnic consensus. Even if this project takes place amid constant attacks from the fundamentalists, the latter will still have no control of the country's strategic points and resources and their resistance will ultimately weaken.

Western, primarily American, strategists realize that the situation in Afghanistan requires a far more convincing defeat of opposing forces than in Iraq - a situation without which the withdrawal of coalition troops and the transfer of control to local government bodies will be unthinkable. Therefore, we should expect a substantial increase in attacks against the Taliban with the assistance of troops withdrawn from Iraq, and increasing aid to the Afghan security forces. The intensification of the military campaign in Afghanistan will probably be accompanied by efforts to extend the social and political framework of the Hamid Karzai administration, to which there is still no real alternative in the pro-Western Afghan camp, despite Western criticism of the Afghan president. In the process of strengthening the electoral base of the current Afghan government, attempts to establish a dialogue with the "moderate" wing of the Taliban will play an important part.

Meanwhile, the final disposition of forces in the new Afghan parliament will be known in October. However, we can already guess the approximate shape of the Afghanistan's supreme legislative body. It will follow the specifics of the local party structure. Parties are built mainly along ethnic lines. Thus the Pashto elect Pashto and the Tajiks elect Tajiks. It should also be borne in mind that the leadership of these parties is in the hands of prominent warlords. These are, in particular, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, leader of the Islamic Dawah Organization of Afghanistan, and Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan. The domestic Afghan scene leads us to assume that the new parliament, like the previous one, will have a predominantly conservative composition.

In any case, we will soon know the answer to a question which, without exaggeration, concerns the whole international community: where is Afghanistan going? The answer largely determines the level of international tension.