Afghanistan Faces New Uncertainties and Challenges
By Syed Muazzem Ali
San Diego , CA
Afghanistan once again faces new uncertainties and challenges. Much hope was pinned on holding free and fair parliamentary elections two weeks ago, but unfortunately, that did not go well. The flurry of complaints about fraud and voting irregularities has largely marred the credibility of the election process. The official results will be declared after another four weeks, but what has so far transpired is not encouraging.
This is indeed unfortunate as Afghan voters had risked their lives to vote, ignoring Taliban warnings. Thousands had gone to the polling centers only to be told that their ballot papers had not arrived or their votes had already been cast. Undoubtedly, the Afghan response to the whole election process was enthusiastic and more than 3000 candidates had contested for 249 seats on a non-party basis. Moreover, 386 women candidates had contested for 68 reserved seats.
It is true that with the current security situation in Afghanistan it is very difficult, if not impossible, to hold a fully free and fair election, but the least everyone had expected was an acceptable election. It will be particularly sad if the international community has to legitimize this election like last year’s rigged Presidential elections.
The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission has received numerous reports of ballot-box stuffing, polls that opened late or not at all, and several cases in which voting supplies appear never to have reached the villages. Even though the abuses may not have reached the scale of last year's deeply flawed Afghan Presidential election, nevertheless such widespread irregularities could very well erode Afghan voters’ confidence in the whole democratization and election process.
This development, as well as the publication of shocking reports in the international press about some American troops randomly targeting and killing innocent Afghan civilians just for fun, have seriously jeopardized President Obama’s planned withdrawal of American forces from that country by August next year. White House officials are now openly hinting at the possibility of re-evaluating the entire exit plan.
The sensational reports about the killing, even if only partly true, will further reduce the acceptability of American forces in Afghanistan and thus negate Washington’s counter-insurgency plan to stabilize the country. On the other hand, the strong resurgence of Taliban forces would make the American military operation in Afghanistan increasingly more difficult in the coming months.
According to some Army documents, five members of American Army Stryker brigade have deliberately killed three Afghan men with grenades and rifle fire and had tried to cover up by making it look as if the soldiers had come under enemy attack. The victims were reportedly chosen at random, and the reports suggest that these soldiers were motivated by the sheer thrill of getting away with the murders. What is worse, their superiors were informed about these killings earlier but they did not take any action. Consequently, the rogue unit kept on killing civilians for several months until its members returned to headquarters and its members were finally arrested.
President Obama’s declared exit plan was based on a two-pronged strategy. The first was to leave a credible, responsive Government in Afghanistan so that it could provide basic essential services to its citizens; and second, to leave sufficiently trained and armed Afghan army and security forces which could face the resurgent Taliban militants and save its people from the latter’s intimidation and threats.
Surely, it will need time for the American counter-insurgency plan to bear fruits, but time is also working against them as the situation on the ground becomes more and more complicated. The other embarrassment for Washington is the glaring evidence of continued widespread corruption by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Government. Despite repeated prodding, there is hardly any sign of abatement.
American voters are deeply frustrated with the “ unwinnable” war in Afghanistan which has cost them billions of dollars and thousands of lives. President Obama is pledge-bound to bring back the troops at the earliest possible. Naturally, he cannot keep over 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan indefinitely to fight the Taliban insurgents and thus risk more American lives.
If the Americans cannot defeat the Taliban, then the other option is to involve them in the reconciliation process. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Special Representative Richard Holbrooke hinted at the possibility of initiating a process of dialogue with them. No one knows how the Taliban will react. No one knows whether they will abjure the path of violence and join the path of reconciliation.
Afghanistan is a country deeply divided along ethnic, linguistic and Shia-Sunni lines. To meet the aspirations of all Afghan people, it is necessary to have a broad-based government in Kabul to meet the aspirations of all Afghan people. There are also other stakeholders in Afghanistan: its neighbors who have been backing their respective factions in the internal strife, and have to be involved in the reconciliation process. The counter-insurgency plan will not, obviously, work unless Islamabad fully cooperates in its implementation.
Obama knows it well that further prolongation of this war would have negative impact on his party’s acceptability in the upcoming US mid-term polls as well as his own reelection bid. However, he would not like history to record him as the President who lost the war. Thus he has to carefully work out a face-saving exit strategy to extricate himself from the Afghan juggernaut.
(Syed Muazzem Ali is a former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh)
