Perils Menace Afghan Election

Security in large areas of Afghanistan has so deteriorated that U.S. and U.N. officials fear that plans to hold presidential elections in June may be in jeopardy.

In an apparent strategy to obstruct the political process that is key to democratizing Afghanistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents have been killing and threatening not only Westerners but also Afghans who “collaborate” with them.

Some of the tactics echo the intimidation being practiced by insurgents in Iraq. Taliban forces have, for example, left leaflets threatening to cut off the nose of anyone who participates in Afghanistan’s constitutional assembly, or loya jirga, this month.

Under the Bonn agreement brokered after the Taliban was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion, the United Nations is in charge of reshaping Afghanistan politically, including supervising the constitutional process and registering voters.

But violence has worsened dramatically in the last six months. A U.N. refugee worker was killed last month, bringing the number of aid workers slain since March to at least 13. At least five of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces are virtually off-limits to foreigners, aid workers said.

U.N., U.S. and other Western officials fear that unless voters in rural areas can participate in the presidential election, the resulting government will not be seen as legitimate.

Many of the most dangerous areas are inhabited by the nation’s largest ethnic group, the Pushtuns, many of whom feel underrepresented in President Hamid Karzai’s interim government. The inability of aid workers to operate safely in those areas thwarts efforts to provide relief and reconstruction to their communities, deepening the cycle of Pushtun alienation.

“If they can’t go out and do voter registration ... and then the elections aren’t free and fair, then the Taliban wins,” one U.S. official said. “They are trying to make the central government look illegitimate, and what better way to do that than de-legitimize the loya jirga and the elections.”

On Monday, only 100 of 330 delegates showed up at a preliminary session leading up to the loya jirga, which convenes Dec. 10. Western diplomatic sources said the poor turnout could be the result of logistical problems but feared it also might suggest Taliban intimidation. That would bode ill for the crucial effort to register voters for the presidential election.

Other American and U.N. officials expressed confidence that the full loya jirga, which was postponed earlier this fall because of security threats, would begin next week as scheduled. They said voter registration and presidential elections could take place as planned if additional security measures were put in place quickly.

“There is a real threat to having credible elections,” a senior U.S. official said, but added: “It is not insurmountable.... With some changes, and with due respect for the threat ... we think we can still pull this off.”

But analysts said the security situation was so bad that the elections might be postponed.

“Presidential elections are seen as likely to slip several months because of the security situation and because of the difficulty in getting people registered,” said Mark Schneider, an International Crisis Group official who testified in November before the House International Relations Committee about the urgency of improving security in Afghanistan.

Voter registration is “a major problem,” Schneider said, as is the ability to provide enough security “so people can actually go to rallies, as opposed to being afraid they’ll get killed if they go to rallies.”

Some analysts argue that the timetable for elections in the war-shattered country is unrealistic.

“The United States and its collaborators have tended to underestimate the amount of time it takes to get free and fair elections in a country that has never had such a thing,” said former U.S. ambassador and election observer William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Assn. of the USA in New York. “The timetable was too tight.”

More than 10,000 U.S. troops are battling Taliban remnants in Afghanistan, and a 5,700-member multinational peacekeeping force under NATO command operates in the capital. The U.N. Security Council has authorized expanding the force outside Kabul to the troubled provinces, but so far there have been few offers of fresh troops or equipment. The U.S. is training a new Afghan army, at a cost of $475 million, but the desertion rate has been high.

Far larger security forces were on hand to guarantee the safety of voters in postwar elections in both Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luers noted. He said he thought it “unlikely” that enough progress could be made to hold elections by June.

Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, said the security problem had been allowed to fester for more than a year, making the current task more difficult.

“The election in Afghanistan is supposed to be a benchmark of success for the Bush administration, but not only for the Bush administration,” Rubin said. “If they go ahead and hold the election even when they can’t have voter registration in major Pushtun areas, then that would definitely undermine the legitimacy of the new government.”

U.S. forces’ efforts to hunt down the Taliban have offended some Pushtuns and harmed civilians, creating more support for the insurgents.

“The window of opportunity to get it right before all the Pushtuns turn against us is closing rapidly,” the U.S. official said.

Karzai is pushing to hold elections in June despite an internal government report that warned quick elections could backfire by leaving many voters feeling excluded. He is reportedly determined not to repeat his nation’s history of interim presidents who clung to power.

“We are definitely, certainly targeting June as the date for elections,” Karzai said last month. “If with all our hard work ... we don’t reach the target, then there may be a legitimate reason to hold elections in July or August.” But, he said, “The aim is June.”

The U.N. announced Monday that it was beginning voter registration in eight urban areas, despite the security vacuum that forced the world body to suspend work in rural areas after its employee was slain last month.

Registration is to begin in cities where workers signing people up for the voter rolls will not be in danger, U.N. spokesman David Singh said in a phone interview from Kabul last week. As security allows, the efforts will expand to other areas, he said.

“The rural population are not going to be left out of the process,” Singh said, adding that there was plenty of evidence of Afghans turning out for political events despite the Taliban’s efforts at intimidation.

“Afghans are tired of war, they’re tired of living on the edge of the precipice,” he said. “They are tired of being bullied. And they want another life.”

Singh said he was confident that legitimate elections could be held if all the contemplated security measures were put in place. The U.N. will make every effort to fulfill the Bonn agreement, he said, but he warned that “if specific direct attacks hinder the activities of aid workers, then we have every right to reassess our operations.”

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell are expected to discuss how to expand the NATO peacekeeping force in separate meetings in Brussels this week.

Within the next month, the U.S. and its allies also plan to expand to eight the number of provincial reconstruction teams, joint military-civilian teams that provide security and tackle relief efforts in the provinces. Currently, there are six: three operated by the U.S. and one each run by Germany, Britain and New Zealand. Five more teams of 50 to 60 people each are planned for the dangerous areas in the south.