Karzai Holds Strong Lead in Afghan Vote

President Hamid Karzai held a strong lead in the ballot count today as allegations of fraud mounted more than a week after the country’s landmark election.

With an estimated 21% of ballots counted, Karzai had 61% of the vote tonight, reported the joint United Nations-Afghan government body that organized the Oct. 9 election.

Karzai’s main rival, Younis Qanooni, had almost 19% of the ballots counted. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a northern Uzbek warlord, was running third in a field of 16 presidential candidates, with just over 8% of votes.

After briefing a United Nations official on a long list of irregularities today, Qanooni said there were more problems with the election than he had first thought.

“Unfortunately, our friends working in the government are trying to make these big problems seem very small,” Qanooni said in an interview. “But in reality the fraud is preplanned.”

The election was largely peaceful despite threats from Taliban militants and their allies to kill voters and attack polling stations. But once polls closed and a massive security operation ended, violence mounted again.

Today, an Afghan election worker and four other Afghans were killed when a blast struck the truck in which they were riding in Paktika, a province bordering Pakistan in southeast Afghanistan, where U.S.-led forces are battling insurgents.

The explosion occurred about 8 a.m. southwest of the provincial capital, Sharan, said Sultan Baheen, spokesman for the Joint Electoral Management Body.

Based on initial reports of the explosion, U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeda Silva said it was unclear whether the election vehicle was targeted for attack.

“The area where this incident happened is known for mines and improvised explosive devices,” he said. “And we don’t know which explosive device hit the vehicle.”

A list of 38 complaints that Qanooni presented to the U.N. included claims of multiple voting and ballot stuffing, as well as charges that voter identity cards were handed out in some areas on election day, underage voters cast ballots, and monitors who complained were beaten and jailed.

Qanooni said his campaign’s monitors saw at least seven ballot boxes set aside in the Kabul counting station because of “technical problems,” such as broken seals. But when monitors returned later, the boxes had disappeared, he told the U.N. official.

On election day, a poll worker in Kabul handed a voter a ballot and told him to check the box beside Karzai’s picture, Qanooni told the official. The voter replied, “‘Look up. I am Mr. Said Abdul Hadi Dabir, one of the candidates!’” Qanooni said.

“They should not have called this a real election,” Qanooni told the U.N. official. “Foreign countries just should have announced, ‘We want President Karzai.’ I would have respected that.”

Baheen told reporters that anyone with complaints can fill out a form and have them investigated by the joint electoral body.

Election officials estimate that at least 8 million voters cast ballots, out of more than 10 million registered voters. Several thousand people are believed to have registered more than once.

To prevent multiple voting, election officials were supposed to mark voters’ thumbs with indelible ink after they cast their first ballots. But many voters were able to rub off the ink, prompting all 15 candidates running against Karzai to announce a boycott before the polls closed.

When U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad intervened, Qanooni and other major candidates agreed to accept an investigation by a three-member panel of U.N. election experts.

But foreign experts are only investigating complaints of election day irregularities and many serious problems have occurred since then as ballot boxes were moved to eight counting centers, often without monitors, and ballots were counted, Qanooni said.

Karzai only needs to poll more than 50% of the votes to win without a run-off. He also wants to show a strong mandate from voters across Afghanistan so that he can neuter powerful warlords and disarm their militias.

But Karzai is leading in only half the country’s 34 provinces, while Qanooni and Dostum are each leading in five provinces that form their Tajik and Uzbek ethnic bases. Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq, an ethnic Hazara leader, is leading in two provinces. The remaining five provinces have yet to report any results.

Old guard warlords such as Dostum and Mohaqiq may also use a strong showing in their home regions to press for a share of power in Karzai’s cabinet, something Karzai has publicly said he wants to avoid as he tries to build a government based on merit, rather than political horse-trading.