Karzai on the Brink of Victory

Incumbent Hamid Karzai was on the verge of victory Sunday as final ballots were being counted in landmark presidential elections, but his main rival refused to concede defeat, maintaining his allegations of fraud.

With about 95% of ballots counted Sunday evening, Karzai had received 55% of more than 8 million votes cast. His closest opponent, former Education Minister Younis Qanooni, had 16%.

The near-complete results leave Karzai all but certain to become this war-torn nation’s first democratically elected president. Even if Karzai received none of the remaining votes, he would still have the more than 50% necessary to avoid a runoff.

The final count is not expected until Tuesday at the earliest, more than two weeks after the Oct. 9 election.

Karzai’s victory is a central part of the Bush administration’s plan for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Karzai is expected to govern with his current Cabinet for about a month until he and other members of his new government are sworn in. If that goes smoothly, Afghans will then have to brace themselves for the more complex, and potentially dangerous, next step in their transition to democracy: parliamentary elections scheduled for next spring.

Afghan and Indian intelligence sources said last week that Karzai planned to use his new mandate to welcome a breakaway faction of former Taliban leaders into the democratic process by allowing them to run for parliament.

The group is said to include former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel and others considered more moderate than the Taliban leader they have turned against, Mullah Mohammed Omar, who is leading a band of insurgents.

Analysts say that if Karzai follows through on his attempt to rehabilitate the Taliban faction, it could prove a risky move. He could probably count on broad support from fellow Pushtuns in the conservative south and east, where the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, is popular.

But seeing former Taliban members return to public life could set off angry opposition among ethnic minorities who fought the extremist movement for years before U.S. forces intervened after Sept. 11.

Remnants of the Taliban and other Islamic extremists continue to challenge Karzai’s government with violence, including a suicide attack Saturday that killed an American interpreter and an Afghan girl in Kabul.

Since last year, Karzai and his key Western backers, the U.S. and Britain, have been working behind the scenes, negotiating with Taliban and allied militias in a bid to whittle down the insurgency.

Some of the strongest opposition to reconciliation with former Taliban leaders comes from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, where guerrillas loyal to assassinated commander Ahmed Shah Masoud beat back numerous Taliban attempts to seize the valley.

Qanooni won 95% of the Panjshir vote, according to preliminary results. Karzai polled less than 1% in the territory, which has come to symbolize Masoud’s legendary resistance, first against Soviet occupation and then the Taliban.

As Qanooni continues to protest what he has called organized fraud in the election, he appears to be maneuvering either for a share of power in Karzai’s new Cabinet or a run for parliament next spring to challenge the president.

Even though preliminary results gave Karzai an insurmountable lead, Qanooni insisted the race was not over and publicly squabbled with one of his own supporters, who said it was time to throw in the towel for the sake of the nation.

Qanooni denied a Reuters news agency report claiming that a campaign spokesman identified as Sayed Hamid Noori said, “We will accept the vote because we do not want to drag the country into crisis.”

Reached at his Kabul home, Qanooni said he rejected Noori’s statement.

“First of all, I have to say that Mr. Noori is not my spokesman and he cannot speak for me. Whatever Mr. Noori said, those were his own and private ideas. I am still standing as a candidate, and I am saying whatever I said in the past.”

Qanooni has repeatedly charged that the election campaign -- including voting day and the ballot counting -- was marred by what he said was well-planned fraud. He and 14 other candidates announced a boycott of the results on election day, as reports of irregularities mounted.

But when U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad intervened, Qanooni and other leading candidates agreed to accept the judgment of a three-member United Nations panel of foreign election experts. Their investigation is limited to alleged irregularities on voting day.

The joint Afghan-U.N. body that organized the election said it would wait for the investigating panel’s report, expected midweek, before declaring a winner.

The results aren’t likely to have a significant effect on Karzai’s lead. After reviewing the initial complaints, filed by all 18 candidates, the U.N. panel set aside about 100 ballot boxes. But fewer than 15 will receive further scrutiny, said U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva.

The preliminary results show that Karzai failed to make significant inroads into the ethnic strongholds of his main challengers, which may undermine his efforts to weaken regional warlords.

Karzai did best in provinces in the south and east, and in the refugee camps of neighboring Pakistan, which are largely populated by Pushtuns, the largest Afghan ethnic group.

Qanooni won the majority of votes in the seven of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces where members of his Tajik ethnic minority hold sway.

Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum was leading in four provinces that are his traditional power base. Ethnic Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqiq is ahead in two provinces, and in a virtual tie with Karzai among refugees in Iran.

A key test of Karzai’s mandate will come when he tries to form his first Cabinet as a democratically elected leader. With the backing of the U.S. and other Western governments, Karzai became interim president after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.

To help build stability, Karzai included powerful warlords in his interim Cabinet. During the campaign, he insisted that his next Cabinet would be based on merit, not the horse-trading of coalition politics.

Mohaqiq, officials in Qanooni’s campaign and other candidates insisted that the American ambassador has been working behind the scenes for months, making deals for precisely the kind of coalition government that Karzai says he doesn’t want.

Special correspondent Zaman reported from Kabul and Watson from New Delhi.