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The recently concluded elections in Afghanistan are the third national elections since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 and will be the first in which a transfer of power will take place through the democratic process. A high voter turnout of 58 percent despite a Taliban diktat to boycott the polls is significant.
Despite attempts to stop the election process through a string of murders, suicide attacks and assassination attempts, the high voter turnout suggests that the political and security establishment in Afghanistan has been able to keep the situation under control. This achievement is laudable, as it has been accomplished with vastly reduced international forces as compared to the previous election and marks a propitious start to the many transitions Afghanistan has to negotiate this year on the political, security and economic domains. However, the Afghan Taliban will continue to remain an important factor in Afghanistan’s security calculus. The failure thus far to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table merely highlights the difficulties in charting a negotiated political settlement.
The incumbent president did not contest the elections, as he stood constitutionally barred from contesting a third term. Of the 11 candidates originally in the fray, three withdrew from the contest, which included the president’s brother, Qayuum Karzai and the former defence minister Abdul Rahim Wardak. Thereafter, eight candidates contested the April election, whose results are expected in mid-May. If no candidate has secured over 50 percent mandate, which appears likely in the present scenario, a run off for the Presidency by the two leading contenders will take place, which could stretch the election process to July 2014. Provincial council elections will follow shortly thereafter. Counting of votes so far indicates that Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani are the two front runners likely to be in the run off for the Presidency. The remaining six, Zalmai Rassoul, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Qutbuddin Halal, Gul Agha Sherzai, Hedayat Amin Arsala and Mohammad Daoud Sultanzai are way behind in the race.
Abdullah Abdullah is a Tajik (he has one Pathan parent and one Tajik) and is considered the political heir to Ahmad Shah Masoud. At present, he is the leader of the Opposition and chairman of the ‘Coalition for Hope and Change’. In 2009, he ran against incumbent President Hamid Karzai, and obtained 30 per cent of the electoral vote, but withdrew his name from the runoff citing allegations of fraud and non-transparency. He has traditionally adopted a hard-line approach against the Afghan Taliban. A former foreign minister of Afghanistan, he is viewed favourably by the US, Britain, Iran and India and in Western capitals. His choice of running mates in Mohammad Khan (a Pushtun) and Mohammed Mohaqeq (a Hazara and former warlord) has been calibrated to appeal to both ethnic denominations.
Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, is presently serving as the chancellor of Kabul University. A former finance minister, he is an ethnic Pushtun from the influential Ahmadzai tribe. He is critical of Pakistani interference in Afghanistan’s affairs and advocates administrative reform, service delivery and wider regional cooperation. His choice of vice presidential candidate in former archenemy and Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum is ostensibly an attempt to appeal to the Uzbeks, who constitute nine per cent of Afghanistan’s population.
The Post-election Challenges
With a now belated Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) hanging over the Afghan Presidency, and 55,000 NATO troops scheduled to depart within a constricted timeframe, the new leader and his administration will be tested on multiple fronts. In the absence of a regional agreement to prevent future proxy wars, Afghan stability will depend on more than political reconciliation. A violent stalemate could ensue should the new government be unable to establish control over the entire country and the Taliban too cannot extend their sway beyond the areas they control at present. Consolidating control over an ethnically fragmented country and repairing a haemorrhaging post war economy unable to finance the state will remain a perennial challenge. Thirty six per cent of Afghans still live below the poverty line, while an estimated 70 per cent of Afghans have been categorised as food insecure. Tax revenue is negligible, and investment is at an all-time low. However, donors have pledged aid till 2024 and we can be sure there will be high amounts of aid until 2017
On the positive side, the two leading candidates are veterans with political experience. There is also a noticeable tilt towards issue-based politics, with Afghan voters increasingly studying manifestoes and looking at interventions in the field of education, health, infrastructure and development and the like. The people also strongly desire a unified, economically viable Afghanistan. The new president thus has his task cut out. While security concerns remain paramount, the people expect good governance.Ethnic politics also plays a role. Afghan leadership has traditionally been drawn from the dominant Pashtun ethnic group that constitutes 42 per cent of the population. The only non-Pashtun candidate is Abdullah Abdullah and he is the front-runner. How the winning candidate reconciles ethnic differences will affect the stability of the state.
A key concern is the status of women in the Afghan endgame. A return to civil war conditions or even a partial resurgence of the Taliban-style regime of the 1990s could result in a swift reversal of the fragile gains made in education, human rights and access to justice for women since 2001. Any political reconciliation with the Taliban will have to ensure that rights of women are safeguarded. In this, the rights of the girl child to an education will have to be ensured. While great progress has been made in this regard, the number of girls going to school is still low and stands at about 40 per cent.
An Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Electoral Complaints Commission (ICC) oversaw the elections which had about 10,000 election observers. While the election process appears credible, the real test as to the sustainability of political and democratic reform will come with the formation of a new government where domestic realities outside Kabul are likely to test liberal peace building narratives of top-down democracy and reform. The perceived inevitability of having to accept segments of the Afghan Taliban as legitimate stakeholders in the country’s fragmented polity also has to be considered. How this pans out, considering the Taliban’s antipathy to the democratic process remains to be seen. The political status of the Afghan Taliban will thus be a major factor for the new government. A fragmented polity and internal conflict may well see another exodus of refugees from Afghanistan, flooding neighbouring countries, especially Pakistan.
As of now, the lack of a BSA is a problem. With a complete pull out of international troops from Afghanistan, the ability of the fledgling Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) to sustain the security gains made over the years, while overcoming challenges of morale collapse, desertion and indiscipline, remains an unknown variable. A return to civil war conditions and ungoverned spaces in eastern and southern parts of Afghanistan has equally worrisome implications for transnational militancy in the region. The concerns of Islamabad in this respect are very real. Large tracts of FATA are under the sway of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has close linkages with Afghan militant groups. The porosity of the Durand Line and ungoverned spaces on either side preclude both the governments from exercising any form of border control to prevent movement of militants across the Line. While the security situation is said to have improved in south-western Afghanistan, concerns remain in eastern Afghanistan, primarily provinces of Paktika, Paktia, and Khost (known as the P2K region), bordering Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The Haqqani network is dominant here and the area remains deeply affected by insurgency. The lethality of the violence unleashed by the insurgents continues to sap the nascent institutions of the Afghan state. The ability of the Afghan Government to exercise control over its Eastern and southern parts will have to be matched by similar efforts in Pakistan to exercise control over Fata and Baluchistan. The prognosis remains grim. Pakistan’s concerns over a conflict spill over have manifested in its political establishment pushing for a ‘no favourites’ policy in the Afghan endgame, manifesting itself in unprecedented overtures towards the Northern Alliance. The only certainty is that stable regional futures will hinge on unfolding events in Afghanistan, as a war-ravaged nation looks to recover from decades of bruising conflict.
Today, the proliferation of arms within Afghanistan is a major cause of internal political conflict and regional instability apart from criminal activities both domestic and trans-national. With the drawdown of US Forces from Afghanistan in 2014, considerable shifts in Afghanistan’s internal and regional state of affairs can be expected. In particular, the following areas need focussed attention:
· The political, economic and security challenges before the new government.
· The role of regional and global players in Afghanistan.
· The ability of the ANSF to maintain a secure environment.
· Possible future scenarios.
There is no doubt that the events in Afghanistan will have a bearing on India. Over the last decade, India has invested over USD 2 billion in Afghanistan and Indian soft power has built tremendous goodwill among the population. Peace in the region is vital to India’s national interest, but vastly divergent and competing interests of multiple players complicate its achievement. On the positive side, all the major players have a stake in a peace in Afghanistan, which militates against a total reversal of gains like in the post-Soviet invasion era. However, should the situation deteriorate, a civil war in Afghanistan is not an unlikely scenario as the Taliban continue to remain formidable, with around 30,000 fighters based in the lawless south and eastern areas of the country. India needs to be prepared for all contingencies.
By Special Arrangement with The Centre For Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) (http://www.claws.in)