Almost exactly three years ago, the United States and its allies began bombing the extremist Islamic Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In a culmination of sorts, presidential elections were held last week in Afghanistan. Although United Nations elections officials are still tabulating the vote amidst complaints of voting irregularities, it is widely expected that current president Hamid Karzai will receive a fresh mandate from the people.
Perhaps what makes the Afghan vote especially symbolic, apart from the fact it is the first general election in that country, is that women made up a large portion of the voters. Under the Taliban regime that United States and its allies put to flight, women were not allowed to work, study or show their faces in public, let alone participate in government.
But although the elections are an important milestone, future elections may be rendered meaningless unless the international community does more to establish security in Afghanistan. It is important to understand the security issues plaguing the recent elections, because the lessons learned could provide important insight on the upcoming Iraqi elections in January.
Security remains poor in Afghanistan outside Kabul. Although the Taliban had vowed to sabotage all elections - which it decried as a sham exercise orchestrated by "infidel" Western interests - for the most part, Taliban attempts to derail the elections have proved to be futile. Nonetheless, there were isolated instances of Taliban-sponsored violence.
For example, in the province of Kandahar, which has a 200-mile border with Pakistan and is considered the religious birthplace of the Taliban, tribal elders from several districts described finding at their doorsteps what they called night letters from purported Taliban forces, warning people to abstain from voting or face dire consequences.
At the same time, however, many Afghans say that they were more worried about a different source of abuse and intimidation during the elections: warlords and local militia. Despite the tremendous gains in consolidating power in Afghanistan, the current central government has only had modest success in reining in regional warlords who still wield considerable influence outside the capital Kabul. During the elections, militia commanders had a vested interest in pressurizing the electorate to vote for specific candidates in order to preserve the post-election grip on power that men with guns now wield in many areas of the country.
In a few cases documented by human rights groups, militia and tribal commanders have applied blunt pressure to potential voters. Leaders of one tribe in southern Khost province threatened to burn down the houses of anyone who did not vote for President Hamid Karzai, while militiamen in a neighboring province forced people to swear on copies of the Koran that they would support Gen. Abdurrashid Dostom, a militia leader in Mazar-e Sharif who still commands thousands of troops and has been widely accused of human rights abuses.
Reports conducted by several international organizations like Amnesty International have found that during the Afghan elections, repression by local gunmen and militia factions was a far more widespread concern than Taliban-related violence, even in southern border provinces such as Kandahar, where Taliban threats and attacks have been frequent.
In a survey conducted by the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium in June and July, 88 percent of Afghan respondents said the government needed to do more to reduce the power of militias and 60 percent wanted both Afghan and foreign forces to protect them. In Kandahar, nearly 93 percent wanted more official action to curb warlordism, and just under half thought elections should be postponed until there was more progress on militia disarmament.
An ambitious program to demobilize tens of thousands of militiamen before the election had been accelerated in the weeks leading up to the elections after a painfully slow progress. The plan called for an amnesty to all militants who turned in their arms. To date only about 18,000 men have turned in their weapons, although the U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters two weeks ago, "We are breaking the backbone of the warlords."
There is a danger that future elections may be discredited unless security is further strengthened in all the provinces. There needs to be a wider presence of security forces in all polling stations - especially those outside Kabul in peripheral provinces like Kandahar. It is also important to have stricter election laws and more transparency that would prevent potential candidates from manipulating and utilizing warlords and ethnic loyalties.
It is imperative that the world fully understands the security concerns that affected last week's elections in Afghanistan. The lessons learned will not only facilitate more orderly future elections in Afghanistan, but also will prove vital in January when Iraqis head to the polls.
The point remains, however, that these elections signify a crucial first step in consolidating democracy in the country. This was a country where the Taliban not only destroyed towering, centuries-old statues of Buddha but also celebrated the desecration. It was a country where women with Ph.D.'s were relegated to begging for a living. It was a country where Hindus and Sikhs were forced to wear yellow stars as marks of identification - which was eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The very holding of elections was a success in of in itself and signifies a watershed in Afghan history. Today Afghanistan is a country that, more than any other, now symbolizes the power of democracy to shape the dreams and destiny of a people.
Arjun Iyengar '05 is an international relations and biology concentrator.
