Background

Introduction

Afghan voters go to the polls on 18 September to elect representatives to the country's legislature -- the National Assembly ("Melli Shura" in Pashto, or "Shura-ye Melli" in Dari) -- and to Provincial Councils throughout the country. The fact that a country with virtually no democratic experience and a quarter century of conflict behind it has embarked on the path to democracy is arguably a monumental achievement. But not all has gone according to plans laid out in the December 2001 Bonn Agreement, which ushered in a post-Taliban government following UN-backed negotiations with a fractious assemblage of Afghan political forces. What follows is an outline of the election process and its significance.

The Bonn Agreement called for Afghanistan's democratic institutions to be put in place by June 2004 through free elections. Instead, only a presidential election had been held by October 2004 (and even then, only after numerous delays), while elections to the National Assembly's lower house, or People's Council (Wolesi Jirga), along with Provincial Councils (Shura-e Welayati) and District Councils (Shura-e Woleswali), were postponed to spring 2005. In March, the date for elections to the national People's Council and the Provincial Councils was pushed back to 18 September. Elections to the District Councils -- to provide one-third of the members of the national legislature's upper house, or Council of Elders (Meshrano Jirga) -- were postponed indefinitely, in large part due to disagreements over jurisdictional limits and numbers of districts.

What's At Stake?

On 18 September, an estimated 12 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots in 69 separate polls. Voters in each of Afghanistan's 34 provinces will vote on two separate ballots: to select representatives to the national People's Council, and to their respective Provincial Council. Representatives of the country's kuchi (nomad) minority will vote for their own representatives to the People's Council in special polls. According to the coordinating agency for the elections, the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), voters will have access to 26,000 polling stations in 5,000 locations throughout Afghanistan.

There are 5,800 candidates -- including 582 women -- competing for seats in the People's Council and Provincial Councils. Women account for 44 percent of registered voters, slightly higher than the 42 percent female voter-registration figure ahead of the October 2004 presidential poll. Article 83 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan passed in January 2004 stipulates that at least two female delegates should be elected from each province, guaranteeing a minimum of 64 women among the 249 members of the People's Council.

Voters in the country's provinces will choose 239 members of the People's Council through secret ballot, while the remaining 10 seats are set aside for kuchis.

The number of seats allotted to individual provinces is based on population, ranging from a minimum of nine seats to a maximum of 29 seats.

Despite requests by opposition parties, the JEMB announced in July that vote counting for the September elections will take place at a central counting facility in each province. Mohammad Yunos Qanuni, who has emerged as the country's main opposition leader following his second-place finish in presidential balloting, has been among the critics of that procedure. Qanuni argued recently that votes should be counted at polling stations in order to reduce the risk of the type of fraud that he alleged took place during the unsupervised transfer of ballot boxes to Kabul in the presidential poll.

Authorities are scheduled to begin tallying the vote on 19 September and conclude the process on 9 October, with provisional results expected one day later. Objections or protests are to be heard from 10-21 October, with the announcement of final results slated for 22 October.

Some Shortcomings

Even if the provincial and national legislative elections are spared any major disturbance from insurgency or disagreements over procedural matters, the National Assembly, which according to the constitution is the country's "highest legislative organ" and the "manifestation of the will" of the Afghan people, will remain incomplete.

Since the still-unscheduled District Council elections will take place separately from the People's Council and Provincial Council polls, the National Assembly must be formed without a fully represented upper house, or House of Elders (Meshrano Jirga). Article 84 of the constitution prescribes that members of the House of Elders be taken one-third each from the Provincial and District councils, with the remaining one-third of members appointed by the president "from among experts and experienced personalities" -- including two representatives from the disabled and impaired and two kuchi representatives. Half of the presidential appointees must be women, under the constitution.

No clear plan has emerged yet for dealing with the absence of one-third of the Council of Elders.

Security concerns and the drive to hold elections has translated into some corners being cut in Afghanistan's nascent democratic experience -- at times threatening to jeopardize the integrity and acceptability of the institutions for which Afghans are voting. But determining whether Afghanistan represents a glass half full or one half empty is no simple task. A country that four years ago was ruled by the draconian Taliban regime (which was largely unrecognized by the international community) and was host to notorious global terrorists is today one in which a vast majority of eligible voters -- women included -- are going to the polls to vote for their chosen candidates -- sometimes at great personal risk. On the other hand, political expediency and short-term goals have allowed individuals who in many countries would face prosecution for human rights abuses or collaboration with occupation forces are poised to legitimize their power.

2001 Marks A Watershed

The Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan embarking on a historic first in the form of a direct national election to choose a president. The first round of the presidential election on 9 October 2004 provided a 55 percent majority to Interim and Transitional administration leader Hamid Karzai -- making him the first popularly elected leader in the country's history.

The current electoral processes have emerged from a process that was launched with the fall of the Taliban at the hands of an international community that had largely spurned that hard-line Islamic regime since it captured Kabul in 1996. The Taliban regime's rejection of a U.S. ultimatum to hand over the suspected perpetrators of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington sparked a U.S.-led aerial bombing campaign that ousted the Taliban and its spiritual leader, Mulla Mohammad Omar. That multilateral effort was accompanied by a ground offensive by various factions of the United Front (aka Northern Alliance) that had long chafed at the Taliban's strict interpretation and brutal enforcement of Islamic law. The intervention effectively forced the international community to take an active role in fostering the restoration of Afghan infrastructure, government, and ultimately sovereignty.

By December of 2001, representatives of Afghanistan's many ethnic groups, military forces, its diaspora, and its exiled monarchy had gathered in Bonn, Germany, to hammer out a deal that would allow for a central authority to take charge of the country, leading to the country's first-ever democratically elected government. The hard-fought compromise that emerged, known as the Bonn agreement, ushered in an Afghan Interim Authority under the leadership of Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun and former exile who helped oust the Taliban from the southern part of the country and also enjoyed extensive ties with the West. Afghanistan's long exiled former monarch, Mohammad Zaher Shah, offered enthusiastic backing for the process, although he was not to reassert his status as monarch. Also according to the Bonn pledges, an Emergency Loya Jirga (or Grand Council) was convened in June 2002 to confirm a Transitional Administration that would govern the country until democratic elections could be held, presumably within two years. Karzai was selected to maintain the reins of government by chairing the Transitional Administration, which was to remain in power until a new president could be chosen by the Afghan electorate.

Guided by the terms of the Bonn agreement, a Constitutional Loya Jirga was convened in late 2003 to ratify a proposed new constitution for Afghanistan, replacing the document that had been passed during the reign of Zaher Shah in 1964. The new Afghan Constitution included clauses declaring the country an Islamic republic with Islam its "sacred religion" but a guarantee allowing the free exercise of other faiths; guarantees on legislative compliance with Islamic law, or Shari'a; a directly elected president with far-reaching powers and accountability to the country and to the lower house of parliament; and a bicameral legislative branch comprising an upper legislative chamber, the Council of Elders (Meshrano Jirga), and a lower chamber, the People's Council (Wolesa Jirga).

The Presidency

The presidency that emerged from the new Afghan Constitution carries with it high-profile duties and far-reaching powers. In addition to enforcing the constitution, commanding the country's armed forces and providing for other security forces, making senior governmental and judicial appointments and dismissals, and a host of other key functions, the president faced the daunting tasks of reasserting Afghan sovereignty, uniting a country long divided along ethnic and linguistic lines, and fostering national reconciliation after decades of war.

Eighteen individuals successfully applied to register for the October 2004 presidential race with the country's ad hoc electoral organizer and watchdog, the JEMB. There were 17 men and one woman among the registered candidates (one of whom dropped out shortly before the voting).

They are (in order of votes received, according to JEMB data): 1. Hamid Karzai (independent), 55.4 percent; 2. Mohammad Yunos Qanuni (National Movement of Afghanistan), 16.3 percent; 3. Mohammad Mohaqeq (independent), 11.7 percent; 4. Abdul Rashid Dostum (independent), 10.0 percent; 5. Abdul Latif Pedram (National Congress Party of Afghanistan), 1.4 percent; 6. Mas'uda Jalal (independent), 1.1 percent; 7. Sayyed Eshaq Gailani (National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan), who withdrew ahead of the first round; 8. Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai (independent), 0.8 percent; 9. Abdul Satar Sirat (independent), 0.4 percent; 10. Homayun Shah Asefi (independent), 0.3 percent; 11. Gholam Faruq Nejrabi (Afghanistan Independence Party), 0.3 percent; 12. Sayyed Abdul Hadi Dabir (independent), 0.3 percent; 13. Abdul Hafez Mansur (independent), 0.2 percent; 14. Abdul Hadi Khalilzai (independent), 0.2 percent; 15. Mohammad Mahfuz Nedayi (independent), 0.2 percent; 16. Mohammad Ebrahim Rashid (independent), 0.2 percent; 17. Wakil Mangal (independent), 0.1 percent; 18. Abdul Hasib Aryan (independent), 0.1 percent.

The Challenges

Many of Afghanistan's 22 million-plus citizens (estimates are as high as 29 million) have witnessed decades of open warfare. The fighting -- whether to oppose foreign invasion or of the internecine variety -- left millions dead, permanently injured, or displaced. The country's infrastructure remains in a shambles, including acute shortages of fresh water, power supplies, and basic necessities in many areas. Basic services such as health care and a functioning state or regional administration are still heavily impaired. The education system remains crippled despite recent efforts to improve it and to include women in the education process despite the country's high illiteracy rate. Local warlords made powerful by decades of virtual chaos remain in de facto control of major swathes of the country, challenging central authority emanating out of the capital Kabul and in many cases effectively crippling reconstruction efforts.

Internationally assisted efforts to register voters estimated that figure at 10.6 million people, 41 percent of them women, ahead of the 2004 presidential election despite early setbacks in the registration process. Allegations of widespread fraud during the registration process were cited by a number of independent observers, and limited progress appeared to have been made in the voter-education process ahead of the presidential balloting. Moreover, the warlordism that still dominates some regions of Afghanistan gave rise to fears that truly democratic and secret polling might be difficult to attain in the presidential vote.

The International Effort

International donors at a Berlin conference in the spring of 2004 pledged some $8.2 billion over three years to contribute to Afghanistan's reconstruction effort, representing roughly half of the UN's initial $15 billion estimate of the requirement over the next decade. Much of those pledged funds have yet to be supplied, however, and most cost estimates have increased enormously since those promises were made.

The United Nations maintains its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, commanded by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). UN members in September 2004 unanimously voted to extend the ISAF's mandate beyond 13 October 2005, including "reaffirming the importance of the progressive expansion of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to other urban centers and areas outside Kabul." The United States and its coalition allies also continue to maintain military forces in Afghanistan, targeting remnants and sympathizers of the former Taliban and presumed elements of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network that formerly used that country as a base. (Amin Tarzi and Andy Heil)