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Friday, June 27, 2014
Afghanistan political crisis updates ( June 27 , 2014 ) Afghanistan's political crisis due to alleged poll fraud and boycott of the Election Commission - is " outgoing " President Karzai making an offstage play to retain power and influence ? And if so , might the long awaited and sought after Bilateral Security Agreement never come to pass ?
Afghans protest over alleged poll fraud
Abdullah Abdullah leads supporters on march to president's palace to accuse incumbent of complicity.
Last updated: 27 Jun 2014 11:02
Abdullah supporters also protested outside the UN office in Herat on Thursday [AP]
Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has led several thousand demonstrators through Kabul, upping the stakes in his protest against alleged election fraud that has triggered a political crisis.
"Death to Ashraf Ghani! Death to the election commission!" Abdullah's supporters chanted on Friday near the presidential palace as he was carried through the rowdy crowds on the roof of a truck, according to the AFP news agency.
Abdullah rejects last week's election result, saying he was the victim of massive ballot-box stuffing in the June 14 poll, while his rival Ashraf Ghani has claimed victory by more than one million votes.
He has also accused the incumbent president, Hamid Karzai, provincial governors and police of complicity.
The Reuters news agency estimated at least 10,000 people were involved in the protest. Some destroyed posters of Karzai.
It was the biggest protest since the fraud dispute erupted and the first that Abdullah attended. 'Clean votes'
"If our demands are not met, we will continue our protest as long as fraud votes are not separated from clean votes," said Ahmad Zia, 22, waving an Abdullah poster and the Afghan national flag.
Afghan election chief quits over election fraud claims
Shaperai, 55, one of the few female protesters, told AFP: "The government and the election commission have stolen our votes. They are traitors and cheats."
The run-off pitting the former Northern Alliance leader against ex-finance minister Ashraf Ghani on June 14 has fallen into a deadlock over Abdullah's decision to drop out last week.
The impasse has revived long-standing ethnic tensions in Afghanistan because Abdullah's base of support is with the Tajiks, the second largest ethnic group while Ghani is Pashtun, the largest group.
The inconclusive election has left Afghanistan in limbo at a dangerous time, with the Taliban insurgency still raging, and most NATO-led forces preparing to leave the country by the end of the year.
An agreement with Washington to allow a smaller US military presence to stay remains unsigned, as Karzai had wanted to leave it to his successor.
The UN's top representative in Afghanistan urged Abdullah to return to the electoral process.
But Abdullah has appealed to the UN to intervene to salvage the election, a solution that Karzai has also backed.
Afghan President Karzai May Be Making A Play To Retain Power In Afghanistan
KABUL (Reuters) - As thousands of Afghans poured into the streets of Kabul on Friday to protest over the impasse in their country's presidential election, there was little doubt who they held responsible for the mess - outgoing President Hamid Karzai.
"Death to Karzai!" some shouted through loudspeakers as protesters marched on the presidential palace, accusing him of creating the crisis over his successor.
No one has provided any hard evidence that the protesters are right, but even within Karzai's family and inner circle, many believe the president quietly engineered the electoral debacle to keep his hands on the levers of power.
Among them is his brother, Mahmoud Karzai, who says the man who has ruled the war-weary country for more than 12 years deliberately pushed powerful players apart to ensure no one candidate would emerge with a clear majority.
That may mean he stays on by default until a solution is found. Meanwhile, his vice-presidents are now trying to resolve the row between the two candidates in the fraud-marred second round of voting, potentially giving the president an indirect hand in the outcome.
Abdullah Abdullah, one of the two, dropped out of the electoral process in a pique of fury last week, accusingHamid Karzai of rigging the election to retain control over the next government.
"He tried, from the very beginning, not to allow a clear winner in order to explore the possibilities of staying in power," Mahmoud Karzai told Reuters.
Asked for comments on allegations made by Mahmoud Karzai and others, a spokeswoman for the president repeated a general statement issued by his office: "President Hamid Karzai has been neutral in this process and he repeatedly directed all government workers not to use government apparatus in favor or against a candidate."
Hamid Karzai denies that he has any ambitions to remain in office and told U.S. Special Envoy James Dobbinsthis week that a new president would be inaugurated Aug. 2 as scheduled.
Jan Kubis, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, however warned the Security Council in an address this week of the risk of "a protracted confrontation with a danger of a slide into violence".
If Afghanistan's first-ever transfer of power is delayed, another key effect could be to doom the already long-delayed Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) between Kabul and Washington, which would leave a small contingent of U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.
The BSA has been blocked since last year by Karzai, who would be unlikely to sign it if he stayed on or allow it to be signed if he retains influence.
That would leave local forces to keep the peace on their own in a county that is riven by ethnic rivalries and dogged by a Taliban insurgency, and it could lead to a meltdown in foreign aid so crucial to the battered economy and security forces.
Although Afghanistan currently has little of the sectarian tensions now tearing Iraq apart, many are anxiously drawing parallels with a country that U.S. troops left in 2011 without a deal to maintain a military presence.
The two contenders for the presidency, Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, both say would sign the BSA promptly if elected.
POLITICAL QUAGMIRE
Brother Mahmoud, who is angry about the president's refusal to back a bid by another brother, Qayum, for the presidency, said Hamid Karzai deliberately pushed powerful candidates apart ahead of the first round of voting to ensure a splintered outcome.
"Karzai encouraged many individuals to run in order to engineer a political quagmire," Mahmoud said.
He argued that this strategy was designed to force a polarizing run-off pitting a Tajik candidate against a Pasthun - Abdullah against Ghani - fueling ethnic rivalries and triggering a crisis that would require his intervention.
Pashtuns dominate the dozens of ethnic groups and tribes that live in Afghanistan, but Tajiks form a substantial minority.
The three brothers were close at the start of the election process, dining together regularly, but Mahmoud says he has had little to do with the president after Qayum dropped out.
Qayum could not be reached for comment.
Others close to the president in the corridors of power agree that in a fraud-ridden electoral system, a close outcome was always going to end in disaster and allow Karzai to step in. No one who complained in conversations with Reuters however had any concrete evidence of manipulation.
"I told Karzai that things are getting worse and it might get out of control if the people lose faith and trust in the election. Karzai replied, don’t worry, everything is manageable," said one confidant, a senior government official, describing a conversation he had with the president last week.
"Now both of his vice-presidents ... are in talks with both candidates to make things smooth and agree on some deal makings, while Karzai himself plays innocent," the official added.
Some diplomats also believe Karzai may use the negotiations to take on some advisory role in a new government.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) conceded that there had been official meddling in the process, but rejected suggestions that Karzai had been part of it.
"There has been interference in the election by government officials and we have raised this," said IEC spokesman Mohammad Noor. "President Hamid Karzai has always tried to make sure there was a transparent election. It is baseless to claim that President Karzai is behind all this."
"A CHOREOGRAPHED PERFORMANCE"
Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said the first round was genuinely competitive and eliminated the candidate considered by most to be Karzai's favourite.
"The fact that the election was competitive did really knock on the head the conspiracy theory that he was running the election," Clark said.
Braving threats by the Taliban militants, millions turned out on June 14 to choose between Abdullah and Ghani.
Despite those successes for democracy, some diplomats believe Karzai will in the end broker a compromise solution between the protagonists, who would have more to lose from a protracted standoff.
Billions of dollars have poured into the country since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, allowing businesses to prosper and a new class of elites to emerge. None stand to gain from a repeat of the bloody civil war that devastated the country in the 1990s and paved the way for the Taliban to seize power in 1996.
"This is all a carefully choreographed performance," said one foreign official.
Karzai's confidant added: "The president does not want to see an outright winner in the election but one who is dependent on Karzai to seek him for direction in all affairs."
In April—two weeks after the election to replace him and usher in the first democratic transfer of power in Afghanistan’s history—Hamid Karzai sat down with Mujib Mashal for Mashal's “After Karzai” story in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. In his office at the presidential palace in Kabul, the Afghan leader reflected on how his vision of democracy conflicts with the West’s, what it’s like to be the pacifist president of a country at war, and whether power has changed him over the past 12 years.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length. When was the moment you felt most vulnerable physically? That your life was seriously in danger?
Mmm … seriously in danger physically. I cannot think of such a moment. I ask that because when I speak to people who have worked closely with you, they say you have been a tremendous tactician—political tactician—but not a visionary. And I ask a two-pronged question: If a leader is not confident of physical survival, or political survival, can he afford to be a visionary and think long-term?
Well, I had a vision for this country—of unity. That Afghanistan becomes the country for all Afghans—that, we have achieved. Afghans of all colors, all political thinking, of all parts of this country feel absolutely free in this country. I had a vision for a democratic Afghanistan, for human rights, and for the freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Those were visions, and the last elections a few days ago proved that was achievable and we achieved it. A vision of Afghanistan that had its presence around the world—that has been achieved. Of an Afghanistan that would not be under the thumb of a foreign power, that has been achieved. We showed our independence, which was one of my strongest desires—ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan this was my desire…. Today, we have independent foreign policy—with Iran we have great relations, with America we have, with China we have, with Russia we have. A vision in the sense of a model to strive for—
Democracy is the model. This is the vision. Unity is the model—an Afghan nation is the model. The nation of Afghanistan, where all citizens of the country are equal partners of this country, and equal owners of this country. Was there a country you had in mind in the region, or you wanted a completely new model?
Our own model, our own vision, our own form—that’s what I tried for. In terms of your style of leadership, sir, a lot of people who have worked closely with you [and whom] I have spoken to over the past two or three months—they say you have been ruling more as a malik[a tribal chief], or a khan, than a statesman. I am wondering if you can explain a bit why [you have made] those choices, the resources you have relied on?
This is more a Western application of terminology to my style of leadership. When I was consulting with all the Afghan leaders eight years ago, nine years ago, seven years ago, they accused me of having a consultative government rather than a presidential, authoritarian government. Because they did not want me to be a president that brings people together—they wanted me weak, and in conflict with the rest of the leadership of this country. So they tried to attack my style in order to—they knew what I was doing, that I had the broadest contact with the people of Afghanistan. They knew that I was meeting with hundreds of people every day, and that’s exactly what they didn’t want. They wanted an isolated president, a president they could use. The more consultative I was, the more in contact with the country I was, the less they could use me. So they wanted the reverse of it. My style of leadership was not in the sense of a Western president, relying only on state institutions and government institutions—that is true. I relied the very least on government institutions. I was more in alliance [with], and relying upon, the Afghan people and the information they gave me. The Afghan government rarely provided me the information that I needed. All my decisions, all my statements, all were based on the information that I received from the country, rather than information from the institutions. So they didn’t want that—because the Americans could filter the information. But Mr. President, doesn’t that go against one of the mandates that you had after 2001—[a mandate for] institution-building?
I did build institutions. But if you are not relying on your government sources?
But I was right not to rely on government sources. Doesn’t that undermine your own government?
No, the government has to be built up. The government doesn’t have to be fakely admired and kept weak. The government had to be built up, the government had to be forced to provide true information to the president. The government was told not to hide things. The government was told to reflect the truth. I sent a delegation once to Khas Uruzgan, about nine years ago. From the ministry of defense, interior, and other institutions—I don’t exactly remember now. The information that they brought to me was entirely different than the information that the people gave me from that area. And what the people had told me was true, what my own government had told me was not true. I am not the president of the government—I was the president of Afghanistan, of the Afghan people. The job of the president is to serve the people, and the job of the government is to serve the people, not to hide from the people and to hide atrocities on the people from the president. Provincial leaders in Kandahar listen as Hamid Karzai speaks during a shura meeting. (ISAFmedia/Flickr)And that mistrust in the government—
It was not a mistrust. It was realization of a fact—of a true situation, of the fact on the ground. The fact on the ground was that the Afghan government was weak, that it had no capacity, that it had no means of movement, that it could not provide the president of the country with the information that related to the facts on the ground, that related to what the people felt and knew. So for me, it was one of my greatest successes—one of my greatest victories, if you can call it that, was my contact with the people. I bring to the information of the government things that have happened in the country, I tell them in the security meetings that well, you know, this has happened. That your own non-governmental sources tell you?
Exactly. Which are always, very often, true. And does that make your job much more exhausting, sir, that you have to run a government but also—
Tremendously, tremendously. The next president will not be in the situation I was in. The next president will have better institutions to rely on, but I will advise him, again, that he must also be connected to the people and get information from the people. See, the Western opinion is trying to promote a model of governance here where the government is working for itself rather than for the people. We are not anything else but the servants of the people. That realization was always there—that a Western model was not going to work?
The Western model itself is trying to be more connected to the people—they themselves are not doing what they are asking us to do. The Americans and the Western media were trying to create a situation here whereby the Afghan government will be alien to its people, reliant on the West.
While the modern ideals of—it’s no longer modern … the established ideals, I should say—of political parties and interests and functions as the West is doing has merits of its own, a strong foundation for such a system can only be found in a political system more reliant on communities rather than political parties. Mr. President, you wrote an essay in the 1980s called “Attitude of the Leadership of Afghan Tribes Towards the Regime” [in which] you explored how the tribes remained loyal to the king Zahir Shah. And you mentioned a phrase—that the tribes served as a link between the periphery and the center.
Very true. The one criticism, sir, is that that may have been very true in the 1960s, but that the tribal structures, the social structures that you inherited in 2001 were heavily disrupted by three decades of war. So one criticism is that you revitalized these structures again based on a 1960s analysis, whereas the reality was different—that people’s mentality was ready for formal institutions.
Why is there a conflict between formal institutions and the social structure? Why should there be this conflict? After all, what is the purpose of governance? How do we best describe democracy? My vision for democracy is exactly taken from our own traditions and social order—a democracy based not on representation, but a democracy based on participation. So my philosophy, political philosophy, here is different from the Western thinking—and the West itself is beginning to arrive at this point, of whether representative democracy is suitable to the environment, and to the needs of the Western world anymore. The way the people didn’t vote in France a few years ago for the European constitution was the lack of faith in the representative democracy. They wanted more participation. There is a difference between representation and participation. In our system, in the Afghan social system, there is an immense amount of egalitarianism—and egalitarianism brings participation. That is my model. And if I have, ever have, complete authority of my own, a complete way of my own, to bring an order to governance—not only to Afghanistan, but around the world—it will be one of participation. This is exactly what India tried, through the panchayat system in India. The panchayat system is inherent to Afghan society. Where people from the smallest communities—from the village level, to the province level, are best governed by participation rather than by representation or dictation. Hamid Karzai greets villagers in Tarin Kowt. (ISAFmedia/Flickr)When you took over the government, sir, was your analysis that the social structures were heavily disrupted—that you had to revitalize [them] to meet this vision of participation—or were they there?
This is a very important subject—a subject that Afghan scholars should study in detail. When we began to fight the Soviets, and when we began to receive funds from abroad as mujahideen, we faced a dual calamity. That dual calamity was an effort by the former Soviet Union, through their communist allies in Afghanistan, to superimpose a structure on the Afghan people. The other part of it was in the form of the supporters of the Afghan mujahideen—U.S., some Western countries, Pakistan especially—trying to superimpose another model on the Afghan people, in which both of them tried to undermine the traditional Afghan social structure, which was a great guarantor of stability and security. And the consequence of that for Afghanistan: massive tragedy, one unseen in the 20th and 21st [centuries]. What we describe as civil society, in our sense of it—the Afghan sense of it—in the countryside, the modes of adjudications of disputes … we don’t have words for them in English—meeraw, kalantar-e-kocha, malik, and various elements, the clergy and the spiritual elements—a combination of these forces bringing a cohesion and the resolution of disputes to the country. There was an effort to uproot this and destroy this. That is why, along the political imposition of these two alien models on Afghan society, there was also an effort to physically eliminate Afghan community leaders—the traditional khans, the maliks, the mullahs. Even in the past 10 years, this has happened on a massive scale. It happened in Afghanistan, it happened in Pakistan especially on the Pashtuns. So both the Soviets and the Western backers of our jihad tried to do this—and Pakistan did this in particular … to undermine the Pashtuns, to weaken their society, and to render them in the name of religion helpless in their own country, and usable by the Pakistanis for their own purposes. What you inherited, was it resilient enough, after having so many blows—
Look! We still survived. Very resilient, centuries old. Two things proved resilient in Afghanistan—the traditional social structures, and the unity of the Afghan people. No other country would have survived such massive blows to its unity and to its social structures, but Afghanistan did survive it. The moment we got together in 2001, it was once again a united country. The jirgas came back, the people came back, and the unity came back. One criticism of you, sir, is that you never became a commander in chief. You were never comfortable using force.
Never. Does this come from what you told The Washington Post—that you are an inherently pacifist person?
Definitely, definitely. For two reasons. One, I am a pacifist in my heart, in my core beliefs. Two, I didn’t see a war in Afghanistan we should have fought, I saw a conspiracy. And my effort was to repel the conspiracy in which the Afghan blood was shed. So my purposes were different from those of the Americans or NATO. But in the initial years you did see a war?
No, I never saw a war. The Taliban left without a fight. But then the Americans—I was in Kabul, without access to the country in the initial days, and without the tools of governance, which are still very weak—they went around with thugs from our own country, the militias they employed and themselves, and forced the Taliban back into taking guns. And Pakistan was willing, and ready to use the opportunity. So a war was created in Afghanistan—there was no war, there is no war, and I would never agree to be at war in my own country. I would never be a commander in chief fighting a war among my own people. No. I am happy I wasn’t, and I will not be. U.S. soldiers fire a howitzer artillery piece in Kandahar province. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)But whether you see the war as a conspiracy or as a war, your soldiers—more professional than … the thugs in the past—those soldiers are giving blood. And when they give blood, the idea is that the commander in chief could at least stand with them and appreciate their sacrifices.
I do, I do—I appreciate their sacrifices. That perception is not among the people, sir.
But I do. I have done it very often—that’s Western propaganda…. I stand with our soldiers, I stand with our army, I defend them very much. They are the sons of this soil, they are giving their life. But that life is gone in a war that’s not ours, in a conspiracy in which we fall victim. The one idea, the pacifism that I have difficulty reconciling is your support for certain characters emerging in Afghanistan—say General Abdul Raziq in Kandahar—[who are] not even close to being pacifists. [Raziq] takes pride in killing Taliban.
But he is a police chief. He is a police chief, yet he emerged with the support of a pacifist president.
Well, he is a police chief. He is appointed by the Ministry of Interior, he is doing his job. It goes back against the first remark that you made—the soldiers giving their blood to defend this country against terrorism—in that he is active, and Kandahar is a lot more peaceful. What do we want: peace, or the continuation of instability and conflict? If he’s done a good job, that I appreciate. What I don’t appreciate is perpetuating conflict in the name of fighting the Taliban—that I don’t see as real. What I see is a conspiracy where both the Taliban as Afghans are dying and our soldiers as Afghans are dying and I want to end that.
And on the question of the commander in chief and the war, in the past 30 years or more—unfortunately—our military forces and security forces have been busy within the borders of the country, not beyond it. I don’t want to be the commander in chief of conflict within our borders. If it ever comes to the promotion of Afghan interest and security beyond our borders, then the job of the commander in chief is clear and visible, and that I want. Does that conflict with your idea of pacifism, though?
Pacifism is a different issue here. I would never go to war with anybody. But I will never ever be involved in an internal conflict, in particular. Right now it’s Afghans dying on both sides, and that should end. Therefore I never wanted to be a commander in chief where [an] Afghan kills another Afghan. I saw that war as a conspiracy. Afghan-wazhena (Afghan-killing), they call [it] in Pashto. It can’t be translated into English. Afghan-kushi, they call it in Farsi. Here, it isAfghan-wazhena since the Soviet invasion until now. And our own forces, our own soldiers, are busy with themselves. Which planes of ours bombed foreigners? Which tank of ours went and defended our borders? All of them were used on our own, inside our own territory—we were ruined with our own hands. This is what I am standing against. And the Americans and Westerners promote this—that we be busy with each other and they implement their designs, on us and on the region. They can implement their designs, but not at our cost, not at the cost of our ruins, at the cost of conquering us—but in our progress, in our friendship. One thing I have heard from people who have worked closely with you is that the Hamid Karzai of 2002 is very different from the Hamid Karazai of 2014, except for some strong principles you did not compromise on. In terms of soliciting advice, in terms of taking counsel—you were much more open to that in 2002. Now, in 2014, the criticism is that you think your word is the ultimate truth.
No, I still consult with the people—massively. But with the government, yes I keep my word. I keep my vision, and I keep my principle intact. When the people advise me, I do what they advise me. But then I put across the meeting of the government and if they cannot convince me, I keep my way and I implement it and I have been right. Do you think power has changed you in 12 years?
No, not at all. Your principles are the same?
My principles are the same, my way of life is the same, my thinking is the same. I don’t see power—I see … working. Thank you, sir.
I don’t like power. I don’t even think of it as power.
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