The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN)

The Taleban have confirmed to various media that Pakistan has released the most senior member of their movement in detention, Mullah Abdul Ghani, better known as Mullah Baradar (brother). He was arrested in 2010 and held ever since, apparently incommunicado and without charge or trial. Baradar was a founding member of the Taleban and a noted battlefield commander. At the time of his arrest, he was the effective number two in the movement and the de facto operational chief of the insurgency. News of Baradar’s release has been reported before, but this time is looking certain. There is talk that he has been freed in order to help in ‘the peace process’ and, even after eight years in incarceration, AAN Co-Director Kate Clark says, he may have much to offer.

What has changed since Baradar’s arrest?

Depending on how much news Mullah Baradar has had of the outside world in the last eight years, the many changes between 2010 and 2018 may or may not come as a surprise. The Pakistani state, presumably, its intelligence service, the ISI, detained him in February 2010. This was during the US ‘surge’, when President Barack Obama was increasing US troops to over 100,000 in an effort to turn the tide of the war. The surge did result in the US and its allies taking back territory from the Taleban, but those gains have long since been lost. Most of the international troops stationed in Afghanistan have since left, and, apart from an (unknown) portion of the – according to Pentagon figures – around 14,000 United States soldiers (and a few thousands from other nations) deployed in Afghanistan who still have a combat mission, most are involved in the NATO mission to train, assist and advise. (1) As ISAF became Resolute Support and Enduring Freedom Freedom’s Sentinel, the conflict was also transformed. It is now overwhelmingly fought out between Afghans – Taleban on one side and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) on the other and civilians suffering from all sides. These days, few Talebab even see foreign soldiers, let alone manage to attack them. In the White House, a (relatively) new president continues to back Kabul, despite tweeting before he came to power that the US should pull out of a country where the people ‘hate us’ (for AAN analysis, see here).

Baradar will find a country where the Taleban have steadily gained ground since 2014 and where they threaten even some provincial centres (see our reporting from June here). They also tax people and ‘run services’ such as education and health – while the government continues to pay the salaries of teachers and medical staff working in areas under their control (possibly half the country – estimates vary as do methods of working out territorial control (see estimates by the BBC, the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR, and AAN’s). The possibility of an end to the conflict was also made more real earlier this year in June when an unprecedented ceasefire over Eid ul-Fitr meant government, Taleban and US forces stopped fighting for three days. Spontaneous and potentially revolutionary fraternisation by all sides took place as Taleban came into the cities and security personnel and government officials visited villages (AAN reporting here and here).

Instead of Hamed Karzai – a co-tribal Popalzai – in power in the Arg, there is technocrat Ashraf Ghani – also Pashtun, but an Ahmadzai. Despite that, the elites in Kabul look remarkably similar. Masum Stanekzai has gone from head of the High Peace Council Secretariat to the National Directorate of Security (NDS) boss, Karim Khalili from former Vice President to head of the High Peace Council, Wais Barmak just nominated to be Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in February 2010 (he gained the post two years later) is now at Interior, Dr Abdullah has become Chief Executive (a new post) and General Abdul Rashid Dostum Vice President.

On his own side, the movement’s founder Mullah Muhammad Omar is gone, as is Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, his predecessor. Four key Taleban leaders who were in Guantanamo are out and living in Qatar (see AAN analysis here). The Taleban’s Political Commission was also moved to Qatar, in June 2013 – and operates as a place where diplomats and humanitarians can talk to the Taleban. The real power, however, remains with the military men of the movement.

A more unexpected development was the emergence of a rival, laying claim to be fighting the ‘real jihad’, the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). It established itself in copy-cat fashion to ISIS in Iraq and Syria; it controls little territory and has little support from Afghans, but it has proved deadly as an urban terrorist outfit, deliberately killing civilians and trying to provoke sectarian conflict by targeting Afghanistan’s Shia Muslims in mass attacks (AAN dossier here). Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami that fought its own insurgency until 2016 is also back in Kabul (AAN background here and here).

Pakistan still backs the Taleban, but it remains an uneasy relationship. Without the safe havens across the Durand Line, the insurgency would struggle to continue, but the ‘marriage’ is not without its cost, as Baradar himself knows.

One thing that will be familiar is that talk of a ‘peace process’ is again in the air. In 2010, when Baradar was detained, as we reported, the idea of talking to the Taleban was being “much-discussed… pushed to the forefront by President Karzai” with his “‘Policy for National Reconciliation and Reintegration of Armed Opposition Groups’ presented at the London conference” in January 2010 and discussed at a ‘Peace Jirga’ in April (part 1 of an AAN series about it here). The timing of Baradar’s arrest raised  questions. Not the least, as Baradar had been residing in Pakistan for most of the previous nine years. At the time, we wrote that “what has become the most common explanation was that the Pakistani ISI was unhappy with contacts he had had with the Karzai government, reportedly with Karzai’s late half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, who before his death was the most powerful man in the Afghan south (see here).”

This time, his release is reported to have been made at the request of the new US special envoy, Zalmai Khalilzad (see AFP and Reuters). Khalilzad made his first trip to the region in September.

The question now is whether the release of Baradar could have any positive repercussions.

Who is Baradar?

If this and the next section look familiar, that is because they are largely taken from a dispatch written in September 2013 after the Pakistan Foreign Ministry made an announcement that Baradar was to be freed.

Baradar was one of the most experienced Taleban commanders, at the heart of the movement since its earliest days in Kandahar through the insurgency and up until his detention in 2010. [… H]e is from Dehrawod in Uruzgan (born 1968), but grew up in Kandahar in a madrassa and fought in that province, mainly in the Panjwayi area, against the Soviet army in the 1980s. He and Omar were in the same fighting group and, according to Dutch journalist Bette Dam, were friends from these days.

Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn reported that Baradar was a founding member of the Taleban movement from 1994. (2)As the Taleban expanded through the country during the mid-1990s, Baradar took on a succession of posts, almost all military: he was head of the south-western military zone, (possibly briefly) governor of Herat (1998), head of the Central Army Corps in Kabul and Deputy Chief of Staff in 1999. He also used to occasionally deputise for Mullah Obaidullah as minister for defence. He was certainly actively involved in the war at the various fronts during those years. The Afghanistan Justice Project (AJP) reports him as having been in Kunduz, the Taleban’s early northern stronghold, in 1997 when Taleban forces attacked, captured and then lost Mazar-e Sharif and as leading a major force into Balkhab, Sar-e Pul – one of the remaining Northern Alliance enclaves – in 1999. The same report provides testimony that, as deputy chief of staff, on the ground during the Taleban offensive on the Shomali in 1999, “he personally order[ed] and over-[saw] one of the massacres, the summary execution of the eleven air base personnel at Dasht-e Chirchirik on August 3.” (3)

After the US intervention of 2001, Baradar was involved in the most significant attempt at Taleban surrender. As Michael Semple and Anand Gopal have reported, Baradar – along with Taleban defence minister, Mullah Obaidullah, aide to Mullah Omar and now head of the Qatar political office, Tayyeb Agha, Minister of Interior, Abdul Razaq, and other senior Taleban – appointed Obaidullah to deliver a letter, purportedly with Mullah Omar’s permission, to Hamed Karzai. Karzai had just been selected as Afghanistan’s new interim leader at the Bonn Conference and was travelling from Uruzgan to Kandahar. The letter, according to Gopal, acknowledged that the Islamic Emirate had no chance of surviving and stated their willingness to accept Karzai’s leadership. The Taleban’s main request was “to be given immunity from arrest in exchange for agreeing to abstain from political life.” Like other attempts at reconciliation, this one fell on stony ground, although whether it was because of Karzai or Rumsfeld has never been clear (see reporting here). Baradar went on to become one of the key commanders of the insurgency.

In the early years after the Taleban lost power, when Mullah Omar was in hiding and largely incommunicado, Mullah Obaidullah was number two in the hierarchy and Baradar number three. After Obaidullah was arrested in Pakistan in early 2007, Baradar took over his role, as the effective operational boss of the movement and head of the Leadership Shura (the Quetta Shura). (Obaidullah died in Pakistani custody in 2010, something that was confirmed by the Taleban in 2012.)

Baradar is a highly experienced military commander and keen political strategist and  played a major role in organising the insurgency in its formative years. Newsweek, in 2009, described him as able, cunning and responsible for the spike in Coalition casualties that year. Yet, as Gopal reported, his thinking went beyond the military. He was, said Gopal, behind the original drawing up of a Taleban code of conduct, the Layha, (see AAN reporting here):

He understood that [this conflict] is about hearts and minds. He’s been a major push behind a lot of the insurgency’s efforts to clean up its act. He helped institute the complaints commissions, for instance and was also instrumental in streamlining and making more efficient the military structure. 

Will Baradar be important to a peace process?

News of Baradar’s release came first from Pakistani sources, initially it seems in The News (22 October) and later in other outlets, including AP and later Taleban sources confirming the release, for example on the BBC on 24 October, and later other outlets including Tolo. The sources informing about his release have been unnamed. However, speaking to International Crisis Group’s (and former-AAN colleague) Borhan Osman, the release does look to be definite. Osman told AAN he has spoken to senior Taleban and family members of Baradar who told him Baradar was freed in Islamabad late on Wednesday morning and had joined his family in Karachi on Wednesday night “apparently unaccompanied and unmonitored by Pakistani government agents.”

The last time Baradar’s was supposed to be about to be released, in September 2013, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ made a very terse and, it turned out, premature announcement. At that time, AAN looked at what implications his release might have for a peace process. Our analysis then – three years after his detention – still stands eight years after:

“It is as yet unclear why Pakistan has decided to release Baradar now,” we wrote, “and whether he will be useful or even available for possible negotiations.” We continued:

After… years in the possibly not so gentle hands of the ISI, it is unclear who he will listen to or who he will represent and, indeed, what his position might still be within the movement. On the face of it, Pakistan has given the Afghan government what it has long asked for, but their release of Baradar could just as well be an attempt to regain control and reinsert Pakistan into the heart of any negotiations. Islamabad might see Baradar as a trump card who could be used to subvert any ‘peace process’, rather than kick start it. The unknowns about Baradar are so many – even as to whether his release is about reconciliation at all – that predictions of what might happen next are not yet possible.

Where Baradar ends up is important. It is difficult to see him enjoying any sort of independent position, needed if he was to take part in negotiations, if he was in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Actually keeping tabs on where he is may be impossible for the outside world – but not, presumably, for the ISI – as it has been for the last tranche of reportedly released Taleban; they are now said to be “reunited with their families”, although to all intents and purposes, they have disappeared.

Baradar certainly has the potential to still be highly influential. Much will depend on his health and vigour and whether he was tortured in custody or otherwise mistreated. In late 2013, at a reported meeting with a High Peace Council delegation, he was reported to have been ‘sedated’, and unable to speak. If Baradar was able and willing to play a role, there is still the question of a role in what. As yet, nothing solid in the way of US-Taleban or Kabul-Taleban talks has emerged.

More biographical details in this AAN piece and this Newsweek article.

Note: None of the photos purportedly showing Mullah Baradar are genuine, for example here, here or here.

Edited by Sari Kouvo, Thomas Ruttig and Jelena Bjelica

 

(1) The NATO mission has a deployment of 16,000. However, it is not clear when it comes to the US soldiers, how many are part of the non-combat NATO Resolute Support mission (with officially 8,745 US soldiers) and how many are in the ‘can-be-combat’ US military Freedom’s Sentinel mission. The ‘hats’ of service personnel can change, even within a day, for example, pilots flying different mission.

(2) In their book, “An Enemy We Created: TheMyth of the Taliban-Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970–2010”, Hurst, London, 2011.

(3) The Afghanistan Justice Project reported:

On August 3, 1999, a group of Taliban, acting under direct instructions from a senior commander [elsewhere named as Baradar], summarily executed a group of eleven captured personnel of the Bagram Airbase, at Bareek Ab in the Dasht Chirchirik plain. Victims had their hands tied and were under armed guard at the time of their execution. On the same day, also in the Bagram sector, Taliban troops also summarily executed two local barbers close to the airbase, and nine other prisoners, in the Dasht Chirchirik.

 

Tomorrow, on 27 October 2018, Kandahar will vote in the country’s parliamentary election – a week later than the rest of the country. The delay comes after the assassination of, among others, the province’s police chief and strongman Abdul Razeq on 18 October 2018. The IEC has tried to remedy the problems that plagued the rest of the country last week, through additional training. This may not be enough to maintain the integrity of their new anti-fraud measures: voter lists and biometric verification – particularly since Kandahar has a history of mass fraud. AAN’s Martine van Bijlert, with input from Ali Adili and Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, takes a closer look at what we might be able to expect on Afghanistan’s third day of voting.

What can we expect on Afghanistan’s third election day?

Kandahar’s Provincial Electoral Officer Neamatullah Wardag told AAN that the IEC intends to open 173 polling centres on 27 October 2018, with a total of 1,113 polling stations. This is, on average, a little over six polling stations per centre but the variation in size will be wide. Some centres registered only few voters and will have one or two stations only, while other will have to have at least 15 or more. (1)

Some polling centres, particularly in Kandahar city, would be very crowded if all voters did indeed turn up (which is unlikely, even in the city). Nahiya nine in Kandahar, for instance has almost 29,000 voters registered in three polling centres, while three other urban districts have around registered 45,000 voters for six polling centres. Of course there will be many polling stations, but the crowds could still be large. Alternatively, if the centres are captured by strongmen or partisan security forces, as has happened in the past, the opportunity for fraud in these places would be significant.

So far, there have been no signs of a breakdown in the security situation or in discipline in the security forces, since Abdul Razeq’s death (AAN background here). Security in Kandahar city has been tight and there has been a steady stream of high profile visitors who have come to pay their respects, including President Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah, former president Karzai and several Jamiat leaders.

It is difficult to predict the overall turnout, other than that it will be very low in the remote districts, where Taliban threats warning people not to take part in the election are expected to keep people away from the vote. In Kandahar city, Abdul Razeq’s supporters believe turnout might be buoyed by the wish to honour his memory. They emphasised that he had been killed only minutes after a meeting that focused on election security and had called on the people of Kandahar to come out and vote.

The death of Police Chief Abdul Razeq has the potential to rearrange Kandahar’s political scene. Different groups, both from Kandahar (such as the Karzai and Gul Agha families) and outside (President Ghani and others) may see new opportunities to try to get their own affiliates elected. His absence will also be felt during this vote, even though so far there seems to have been no security vacuum. But he was a looming figure in the elections, controlling security and, sometimes, the vote.

Unpacking Kandahar’s election numbers

There are a total of 112 candidates (13 are women, more by AAN here) competing for Kandahar’s eleven seats, of which three are reserved for women. Five have registered a political party affiliation; the remaining 107 have registered as independents. 99 of the candidates are men, 13 are women (full candidate list here). According to the 2018 population estimate by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Kandahar has a total population of around 1,3 million.

According to the IEC’s voter lists Kandahar registered a total of 522,984 voters in this year’s new voter registration: 442,512 men and 67,276 women for the vote in the provincial constituency, and 13,196 Kuchis (gender not specified) for the nationwide election of kuchi representatives.(2)

The rate of registration varied greatly across the province. The district with the most registered voters was Spin Boldak, the birthplace and main power base of General Abdul Razeq. In Spin Boldak 86,082 voters registered to vote in 26 polling centres (11,801 of them were women; 2,015 were Kuchis), representing 15 per cent of the province’s total number of votes.

Four urban districts in Kandahar city (nahiya one, two, four and ten) each registered between 45,000 and 55,000 voters, representing a little less than 10 per cent of the total vote each. Three other urban districts registered a fair number of voters, (almost 29,000 in nahiya nine, and around 13,000 in nahiyas seven and eight). The five rural districts closest to the city – Zherai, Panjway, Dand, Arghandab and Daman – each registered around 20,000 to 30,000 voters in 16 or 17 polling centres each.

After that, it starts petering out: Mianeshin (909 voters), Ghorak (564 voters), Khakrez (409 voters), Shorabak (203 voters) and Reg (161 voters) all registered voters in single polling centres – with no women, except a handful in Khakrez. There was no voter registration in two rural districts – Nesh and Maruf – which also means there will be no vote. There are also four urban districts where no voter registration took place (nahiyas 11, 12, 14 and 15), which include the prosperous, largely-gated community of Aino Mina, Kandahar’s most densely-populated neighbourhood of Loya Wala are located and an insecure area bordering on Dand district. (3) Residents of Kandahar city, however, said that voters from these two areas would have easily been able to register in other neighbourhoods close by. [Update 27 October: According to the IEC there is voting in all nahiyasof Kandahar. They said the centres in question may have been listed under other areas.]

Normally, an election would most probably be won or lost in the areas where most votes are cast (in this case likely to be Spin Boldak and areas of Kandahar city). However, in an election like this, with many candidates and relatively small margins, seemingly insignificant areas can swing a vote, particularly if the votes are concentrated on a certain candidate. This is further compounded by the fact that the final results have so far been largely determined afterelection day, when the IEC had to decide which votes could be counted and which must be invalidated. For this reason, candidates and supporters are often incentivised to try to manipulate the vote wherever they can, in the hope that some of it will slip through.

What was the vote like in Kandahar in previous elections?

In the 2009 presidential election, Kandahar became famous for its “industrial scale” ballot stuffing (for an AAN report that raised the issue of mass fraud days after the election, see here). The fraud was particularly concentrated in the border provinces, where the late Abdul Razeq was then Border Police Chief at the time. Out of the around 250,000 votes that were cast that year, around 180,000 were disqualified in the ECC-led sampled audit, leaving only a little over 70,000 votes to be counted (see details here).

In the 2010 parliamentary elections, every single polling station in the province had reported open on election day, despite serious security challenges. 30 per cent of all polling stations were disqualified in full. After the IEC and ECC disqualifications, there were around 75,000 votes left (see here for more details).

The 2014 presidential election saw 270,000 votes counted in the preliminary count. In the various audits (the results of which were never made public) the province appears to have lost around 50,000 votes (see here). In the 2014 provincial council vote, which took place at the same time and was audited by the IECC rather than the IEC, Kandahar lost around 11 per cent of its votes, including all the votes of its top candidate. (4)

Will the new anti-fraud measures work?

In the past, when voters could cast their vote wherever they wanted, Kandahar provided ample opportunity for unmonitored and/or unopposed ballot stuffing that could be explained away with claims of suddenly improved security or surprise high turnouts. This was particularly the case in the province’s remote districts and in the districts that were under the firm control of local strongmen.

With the new registration system, voters have to cast their vote in the centre where they registered. The last-minute addition of biometric verification aims to weed out multiple registrations, multiple votes and the use of fake documents. If implemented properly, it has now become much more difficult to engage in multiple voting, mass proxy voting, ballot stuffing and manipulation of the count and data entry. But only if procedures are actually followed. The scope for (mass) fraud, and the difficulties the IEC will have to deal with this, will therefore depend on how messy the election becomes.

So far, the IEC in its public statements has downplayed the messiness, saying that only in a minority of the polling centres procedures were not followed and that the main problem had been teachers and other staff turning up late. The IEC also said it hope the vote in Kandahar would be an improvement, compared to last week’s two election days (see here and here and here for observation reports). Provincial IEC head, Wardag, told AAN that atechnical team, dispatched from IEC headquarters, trained the district electoral officers (DEOs) and polling centre managers, who in turn trained the polling station staff. The focus was mainly on the use of the new biometric machines.

The IEC initially made it clear it would invalidate all votes that were not cast using both the voter lists and biometric verification, but it has already been wavering. From what happened on 20 and 21 October 2018, it appears that there will be considerable leeway to get votes counted that were not without properly cast. (5)

This could provide an incentive for all forms of fraud, including the very blatant, in the hope that the results will slip through the cracks. Things to watch will thus include implausible high turnouts in both secure and insecure areas, significant numbers of voters turning up without having registered, and the mass malfunction or loss of biometric devices and voter lists.

Edited by Sari Kouvo and Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) According to the IEC’s lists voter registration earlier this year took place in 172 polling centres. Wardag could not explain why the number of polling centres had now risen from 172 to 173. He thought it might simply be a repetition on the list somewhere.

(2) The English-language summary, which can be found here has slightly different figures for Kandahar’s registration totals: 567,608 registered all together, with 557,344 registered for the vote in the provincial constituency – 483,749 men and 73,595 women (a little over 13 per cent) and – and 10,262 as part of the nationwide kuchi constituency.

The total number of registered kuchi voters nationwide is 168,015. Kandahar, according to this list, comes in fifth and is dwarfed, by far, by Kabul’s largely settled kuchi constituency (71,506 registered kuchi voters, or 43 per cent of the total). The other provinces with significant Kuchi registration have numbers comparable to Kandahar: Kapisa (13,651 or 8 per cent of the total), Nangarhar (11,535 or 7 per cent of the total), Logar (10,298 or 6 per cent of the total).

(3) Voters registered per rural and urban district, as provided by the IEC:

Kandahar’s rural districts

1. Arghestan: 12 polling centres registered 9,231 voters (9,904 male, 106 female and 31 Kuchis)
2. Arghandab: 16 polling centres registered 24,570 voters (23,097 male, 1,013 female and 460 Kuchi)
3. Panjwayi: 16 polling centres registered 25,728 voters (24,624 male, 769 female and 335 Kuchis)
4. Takhta Pul: seven polling centres registered 11,374 voters (9,336 male and 1,767 female and 271 Kuchis)
5. Khakrez: two polling centres registered 409 (377 male and 32 female) (Khakrez Kalai Clinic registered only 4 male voters)
6. Daman: 17 polling centres registered 18,992 voters (15,613 male, 2,024 female and 1,355 Kuchis)
7. Dand: ten polling centres registered 25,233 voters (21,875 male and 2,131 female and 1,227 Kuchis)
8. Reg: one (Shir Shah school) polling centre registered 161 (148 male and 13 Kuchis)
9. Zherai: 16 polling centres registered 30,491 voters (29,193 male, 380 female and 918 Kuchis)
10. Spin Boldak: 26 polling centres registered 86,082 voters (72,266 male,11,801 female and 2,015 Kuchis)
11. Shah Wali Kot: three polling centres registered 3,902 voters (3,475 male, 63 female and 364 Kuchis)
12. Shurabak: one polling centre (Da Wali Muhammad Khan Kor) registered 203 voters (199 male, zero female and four Kuchis)
13. Ghorak district: one polling centre (Pir Khadem Mosque) registered 564 voters (563 male, zero female and one Kuchi)
14. Mianeshin: One polling centre (Ghalinag Mosque) registered 909 voters (908 male, zero female and one Kuchi)
15. Maiwand: three polling centres registered 8,099 voters (7,865 male, 159 female and 75 Kuchi)

A total of 132 polling centres in rural districts registered voters. Mianeshin, Shorabak and Reg were among 32 districts that could not be accessed due to security problems at the time of the polling centre assessment in the second half of 2017. These three districts, as well as Ghorak, ended up with just one polling centre. Maruf and Nesh have no polling centres at all, even though are not mentioned in the list of 11 districts countrywide which, according to the Afghan Ministry of Interior, are fully under Taleban control.

Kandahar’s urban districts (with a brief description of the nahiyas):

1. Nahiya one (army corps and part of Herat bazar; secure): nine polling centres registered 52,469 voters (38,655 male, 13,456 and 358 Kuchis)
2. Nahiya two (Jamai-e Umer mosque and part of of Herat Bazar; secure): six polling centres registered 48,093 voters (38,596 male, 8,241 female and 1,256 Kuchis)
3. Nahiya three (Abdul Rab Akhondzada Masjid and the southern bypass; secure): One (Shin Ghazai Baba) polling centre registered 7,431 voters (5,295 male, 1,909 female and 227 Kuchis)
4. Nahiya four (Karwan, Daikhowja and Baro Darwaza; secure): six polling centres registered 46,826 voters (40,920 male, 5,383 female and 523 Kuchis)
5. Nahiya five (Haji Aziz, Kandahar Radio television and Vehicle bargain markets; secure): one (Da Haji Nika School) polling centre registered 6,522 voters (4,834 male, 751 female and 937 Kuchis)
6. Nahiya six (Sayed Mrach Agah’s tomb, Jandarmar): Two polling centres registered 8,016 voters (6,911 male, 1,058 female and 47 Kuchis)
7. Nahiya seven (Mirbazar, Sof road, Chilzino park; to an extent secure): two polling centres registered 13,645 voters (10,403 male, 3,063 female and 179 Kuchis)
8. Nahiya eight (Bagh-e pol park, the Fruit Market up to Dand Chowk; suffers from some insecurity incidents): Two polling centres registered 13,027 voters (11,443 male, 1,123 female and 461 Kuchis)
9. Nahiya nine (Kandahar university, Tarinkot Ada, Siman bridge and Kotal Morcha, borders Arghandab and Shahwali Kot, is a little insecure): Three polling centres registered 28,776 voters (24,985 male, 3,591 female and 200 Kuchis)
10. Nahiya ten (Karta-ye Malimin and the old police headquarter; secure): Six polling centres registered 46,271 voters (36,503 male, 7,885 female and 1,883 Kuchis)
11. Nahiya thirteen (the old army corps, Mirza Mohammad Khan Kalach and from Baba Sahib’s tomb until Kotal-e Morcha; insecure): Two polling centre registered 5,960 polling centres (5,334 male, 571 female and 55 Kuchis)

A total of 40 polling centres in urban districts registered voters. The districts that are not on the list are:

11. Nahiya eleven: Aino Maina, a wealthy residential area where rich people, NGO staff and government official live, very secure
12. Nahiya twelve: Hakim Ada, Simano brige rasta, near Loya Wala, famous for criminality and Taleban influence, most populated area in Kandahar city
13. Nahiya fourteen: Khojak Baba, Majid Akhondzada and Ahmad Wali Khan Karzai Chowk, a secure area
14. Nahiya fifteen: borders Dand district, insecure

(4) In a letter to the IEC, the IECC said it decided to disqualify the candidate after an audit of over 600 polling stations in Kandahar, when they found that “all his votes had problems.” Such problems included ballots not being removed from their stubs, large numbers of ballots with similar tick marks, made with the same markers, which led them to the conclude that there had been systematic fraud.

(5) As reported here, the IEC will need to deal with three types of election results: a) votes from polling stations that used both the voter lists and the biometric verification, b) votes from polling stations that used only the voter lists, without capturing the biometric verification data, and c) votes from polling stations that used neither of the two systems and made new on-the-spot, handwritten voter lists. (see here for background).

 

The parliamentary election that was finally held after a three and half year delay, was meant to end the extra-constitutionality of the legislature and boost the legitimacy of the state. New anti-fraud measures were put in place to ensure transparent elections, but they were poorly prepared and implemented. Now, after two days of voting, the IEC has to deal with at least three incongruous types of results, without having clearly determined which votes will be counted and which will be invalidated. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili voted on the second day of the elections, in one of the centres that earlier did not open, and reports first-hand on the trials of the new systems and the chaos at his polling centre. He concludes that the IEC will have to now grapple with hard decisions on which ballots to count.

The night before the elections I stayed in the office, so I could start following the polling in the early morning without having to travel through security checkpoints. I live in the Hazara-dominated west of Kabul, which has been hit hard (see AAN’s background here and here) in recent years by bombings claimed by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). I had registered in a polling centre at a mosque, Nabi Akram, near my rented apartment in the neighbourhood of Shahrak-e Omid Sabz, also known as Shahrak-e Haji Nabi, and I wanted to vote later in the day.

On the morning of the vote, I watched Independent Election Commission (IEC) chairperson Gula Jan Abdul Badi Sayyad and President Ashraf Ghani speak to the nation after voting in Amani High School. President Ghani congratulated the IEC members, saying that the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General had submitted a report to the UN Security Council that said that “technically, [this election] has been the most successfully prepared so far.” He also expressed appreciation for the Afghan security forces, especially the air force, for delivering election materials to all parts of Afghanistan – except Mandol district of Nuristan, he said, where the material had not yet arrived at the eve of the election, saying that “this morning, there will be attention for it, too.” (1)

In his speech, Ghani also mentioned that the people in Ghazni province were the only ones who would not have elections and that he had assigned Vice President Sarwar Danesh, Deputy Chief Executive Muhammad Khan and Independent Directorate of Local Governance head Matin Beg to “prepare the date for elections” in Ghazni. It was almost as if a new electoral commission had been set up especially for Ghazni. Why should the vice president set a date for the elections? I hoped that what he meant to say was that these officials would try to come up with a solution for Ghazni election issue (AAN reports here and here). He also said that elections would be soon held in Kandahar (AAN’s analysis here).

After watching the speeches, I called my wife to ask her if the polling centre where we had registered had opened on time. She told me my in-laws had just returned without voting because it had not opened yet. At around 10 a.m. I called my brother, who lives with my parents in the Shahrak-e Erfani neighbourhood, to remind him that the family should not go to vote in a group, but individually with enough time in between visits, so if there were an attack they would not all suffer at the same time. I considered Dasht-e Barchi, the Hazara-dominated area where they live, a double target: first, of the general violence aimed at disrupting the elections (and the Taleban’s threats of creating “severe obstacles” for the poll); and second, of possible ISKP attacks. The area was already hit on 22 April 2018 when the first phase of voter registration was ongoing (see AAN’s previous reporting here). My brother assured me that they were spacing their visits and that the first family member had just returned – also without voting because the polling centre had not yet opened.

For AAN’s election day reporting, I had been tasked to follow social media and the IEC and ECC websites. Starting at 8 a.m., an hour after the planned opening of the polling centres, the Internet was abuzz with complaints and criticisms by social media users saying that their polling centres had not opened on time or at all.

At 10 a.m., the IEC commissioners appeared in their first press conference of the day. IEC chairman Sayyad apologised to the people for the late opening of polling centres, saying that it was because “Some teachers were working [with us] in this process who, unfortunately, due to security problems, could not report to some polling stations on time.” He also said that they had instructed all employees in Kabul and the provinces to compensate for the wasted time.

Social media continued to be replete with complaints, which also included some funny and interesting comments. For instance, Muhammad Amin Ahmadi, who is the president of Ibn Sina private university, wrote at 11:55 a.m.: “Poor management.. apparently, only President Ghani and his entourage were able to vote without any trouble.” That rang true, as Tolo news tweeted that even Vice President Danesh, whose polling centre was different from that of the president, had waited for “45 minutes” for the opening of his polling centre in the Baqer-ul Olom mosque.

Dawran Ali Hakimi wrote on his Facebook page: “We, the citizens of the country of Ghazni, are strongly concerned about widespread fraud in the parliamentary elections in our friendly and neighbouring country of Afghanistan.” This was a satirical reference to the fact that Ghazni, my own province of birth, was not holding elections and people from that province felt as if they were not part of this country.

The IEC started its second press conference of the day at 12:26 p.m., where the IEC chairman read their decision number 89-1397 in which the IEC ruled that:

In polling stations where employees arrived late or election materials arrived late, the voting shall be extended up to 8 p.m. [the text of the decision which was posted on the IEC’s page said 6 p.m.] and the voting should continue until [all] the voters who are in queue by 6 p.m. [have voted]. If the polling centres are not opened until 1 p.m., the elections in [those polling centres] will be held tomorrow.

This was like an extension of the election for another day. Earlier I had wondered whether the 3,644 voters who had registered in my polling centre would be disenfranchised. (2) Now I was struggling to understand what the extension meant and whether it was in accordance with the electoral law. I still hoped that my polling centre would open by 1 p.m. but when I called my wife, she said it had not. So I was not able to exercise my right to vote and fulfil my civil duty on the first day of the elections.

At the end of the first day of the poll, IEC chairman Abdul Badi Sayyad provided the following details (see also AAN’s previous reporting here):

• More than three million voters cast ballots so far
• Highest voter turnout recorded in four provinces: Kabul, Herat, Daikundi and Nangarhar
• Lowest turnout recorded in Uruzgan
• Highest female turnout in Jawzjan (53%)
• Lowest female turnout in Zabul (9%)
• 401 out of the more than 4,900 polling centres that had planned to open across the country could not open due to technical problems or security threats (45 of them were in Kabul).
• Turnout figures from 253 polling centres had not arrived yet

He reiterated that the polling centres that did not open on the first day of the elections would be opened the following day. (According to his press conference before noon on the following day, in the end more than 200 of these 401 centres that had not opened on the first day of the election, had managed to open on the second day.)

Second day: another voting day

I woke up late the next morning and decided to go to the polling centre without having breakfast. But when I checked Facebook I saw that voters at the centre found that it had not opened yet (the IEC had not specified what time the poll would open on the second day; on the first day, it was supposed to open at 7 am). So I had breakfast after all. When I finally arrived at the polling centre, it was 9:30 a.m. There was a long queue of voters waiting for the balloting to start. Agents and observers were allowed to enter first and because I had an observer card issued by the IEC, I went in. There was a high level of disorder inside the polling centre. There was no queue control and people were already crowding inside the hall.

Voter list problem

The polling centre had been allocated four male polling stations (there was a separate hall with a separate entrance for the female polling stations). The polling station officials had handwritten the first letters of the names of the voters that were supposed to vote at each polling station and had fastened these papers on the walls, pillars and voting booths, to help voters find where they had to go. However, there was still confusion. For instance, the letter with which my name starts was written on two polling stations. I went to the first polling station which had the first letter of my name, but when the voter identification officer checked the whole list, my name was not there. I then went to the other polling station which also had the first letter of my name. The voter identification officer told me that only three names that started with this letter were on the list. Thank God, one of them was mine.

(Later, I saw a candidate who was standing in the wrong line, because his name started with a letter that was on the signposts of two polling stations. I told him that his name would probably be on the list in another polling station. He left the line and went to the polling station, where he did indeed find his name.)

From there, I found that the procedures were followed smoothly. The identification officer checked my tazkera,and the registration sticker fixed on the back, with a flashlight to ensure that it was not marked with a tick (which would indicate that I had already voted). He then drew a tick, which I couldn’t see, with an invisible-ink marker. The polling station chairperson showed me how the tick could only be seen with the flashlight. Then the biometric registration officer captured my fingerprints (left and right index finger) and photos (my face, my tazkera, and my voter registration sticker). (3)

Then I went to the ballot issuer who was also in charge of the small printer that was wirelessly connected to the data capturing device. He took the sticker with the polling centre, date, time and a unique number written on it, as well as an encrypted image, stuck it on the ballot and gave it to me. (On the eve of the elections, AAN raised concern that the biometric machines could compromise the secrecy of the vote, which is an international standard and guaranteed by the constitution. I could see and note down the data on the sticker that was attached to my ballot, and would now easily be able to find my ballot if the box were opened for me.) Then I went behind one of the four voting booths to find my favourite candidate. The ballot paper was large and unwieldy – 16 pages with three columns each. When I had selected my candidates I went to cast my vote in the box. The ballot box controller cleaned my right index finger with a handkerchief and asked me to immerse it into the ink until the first fold, so I would not be able to vote again.

When I finished voting, I visited the other polling stations to observe. I noticed another problem with the lists: there were handwritten lists at each polling station. The identification officers told me that this was for voters whose names were not on the official voter list. One officer told me that “We cannot disenfranchise the people. They have come, so they should be allowed to vote.” The chairperson of another polling station said that this was in accordance with an order from the manager of the polling centre.

In the afternoon, I discussed the election with a visiting Australian expert who said that this could happen in Australia too, that voters might not be on the voter list, but that they have a “safety net.” Electoral officials allow these voters to cast a “provisional vote” in a separate envelope. (4) The problem here however is that because the IEC had not properly anticipated the problems before the elections – even though it was likely that they would occur – a hasty and incomplete decision was made at midday on the first day of the elections (see also AAN’s reporting here and here).

Biometric machines: a perceived panacea turning into a headache

On the eve of the elections, AAN released a report describing how the IEC had made a last-minute decision under heavy political pressure to use biometric machines as an additional anti-fraud measure. We had laid out the concerns, including over what would happen if the machines did not work or were not operated properly. So I was particularly curious to see how the machines would function.

In my polling centre, I found that one of the polling stations was conducting the vote without capturing the biometric data of the voters. The polling station officials said their biometric device was not working. (My wife voted in the female section of the same polling centre later in the afternoon. She said she had voted without biometric data capturing, as the polling station officials told her the printer of the device had run out of paper.)

This did not surprise me. The IEC’s contingency solution for faulty or missing devices had simply been to use the device from another station. As we reported here the IEC had not anticipated what should be done if no functioning machine could be found, or what the IEC would do with the voting data if IEC staff did not properly use the machines.

As a result the IEC had to scramble to update its procedures during the first day of the elections when it realised the devices were not working everywhere. In the end they decided that, if all else failed, people would be allowed to vote without biometric verification. (5)

On the second day, however, many polling agents seemed unaware of the IEC’s decision and were objecting to the vote proceeding without biometric verification. Some were loudly saying that specific ballot boxes would be quarantined.

Amin Ahmadi, president of Ibn Sina University, quoted above, voted at that same polling station that was not using biometric machine. He wrote on his Facebook page that when he raised this concern, the polling station chairperson had assured him his vote would not be invalidated. (6) Many voters and candidate might still be wondering what will happen to the polling stations that did not capture the biometric data of the voters. The political parties that had been the main force pushing for biometric system issued an accusatory statement on 22 October2018, saying that “on 20 and 21 October, the biometric system [for capturing the data] of voters was not used in the majority of the polling centres, intentionally, in order to pave the way for fraud. Therefore, the political parties of Afghanistan consider the election results from polling centres where voting was not conducted with the biometric method as invalid.” (statement here and media report here)

There was also a concern that the voting pattern on the first day might influence the voters’ decision on the second day. For instance, I saw two advisers to Vice-President Danesh visit a polling centre to check how it was going. One of them said they had been awake late the night before to make sure the results from the polling centres that had opened in west of Kabul – a densely-populated area that seemed most affected by polling centres not opening – were not made public.

Disorder at the polling stations

Because I voted on the second day of the elections, I had anticipated better order at the polling stations, as I thought the IEC would have learned from the previous day. Moreover because fewer polling centres would open, it should have been easier to manage. However, this was not the case. Political party and candidate agents, and people identifying themselves as members of the board of trustees of the mosque, were standing at the gate of the mosque, trying to control entry into the polling stations. When I asked one agent whether he was trying to tell people whom to vote for, he said he was just helping “so that all of them can vote.”

One reason for the disorder probably emanated from changes in the role of the polling station officials when thee IEC introduced the biometric devices (see the annex to this dispatch for an English translation of the new procedure). Previously, each polling station had a queue controller, but because of the biometric voter verification, the queue controller of each polling station was made to operate the biometric machines. The chairperson of the polling station was instead supposed to also control the queues. This led to a lack of control over the crowds.

Throng of agents and observers

There were many agents and observers in the polling stations. Some were actively observing the vote from behind the ribbon at each polling station, noting down the code and name of the polling centre and the number of the polling station. Others were lying down or sitting on the carpet behind another ribbon that separated the four polling stations from the rest of the space inside the hall of the mosque, and simply resting or chatting.

Agents and observers as well as voters could file complaints with a female representative of the Electoral Complaints Commission who was sitting outside between the buildings that were accommodating the male and female stations. But only those who were curious could know, as there was no sign showing that there was an ECC representative stationed somewhere inside the compound of the mosque. I asked a candidate agent who did not know about the ECC representative. Another agent, however, knew that an ECC representative was based outside the halls and that they could file their complaints there.

A restriction was imposed on agents and observers for this election. The IEC had tied each agent and observer to a specific polling centre, which may well have limited the ability of the observer organisations to effectively cover all polling centres, as they could not move around. For instance, it might have been difficult for an observer organisation to deploy 555 people to all 555 polling centres in Kabul.

Conclusion: new systems and new problems

This year’s parliamentary election saw two major new anti-fraud systems: voter lists for each polling station and the use of biometric voter verification. Using only the new voter lists would have already introduced problems on their own. But to top that off, the biometric machines were introduced at the last minute and the IEC was not ready. Polling staff had not received proper training, or training at all. The devices had not been field-tested. The procedures and contingency plans were incomplete. It is unlikely the implications of the possible fraud triggers have been thought through.

Now, after the second day of voting – and with more days to come, in Kandahar (which the IEC has scheduled for coming Saturday, 27 October) and Ghazni (not decided yet) – the IEC will have to deal with at least three types of results being retrieved from the polling centres and provinces: a) from polling stations that used both the voter lists and the biometric verification, b) from polling stations that used only the voter lists, without capturing the biometric verification data, and c) from polling stations that used neither of the two systems and made new on-the-spot, handwritten voter lists.

Before the election, the IEC said that votes cast without the capture of biometric data would not be counted. So far, it is unclear how many polling stations failed to use the biometric system or had to conduct the poll without voter lists. Or how the IEC will deal with it.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert

 

(1) This surprised me.  When looking at the voter lists published on the IEC’s website, earlier, I had noticed there had been no voter registration in Mandol district. So I wondered what the president meant, saying there would be attention for that district. There were more districts that had not registered any voters at all, for instance Shahid Hassas and Khas Uruzgan un Uruzgan (see here). So I found little meaning in the president’s congratulatory statement that materials had been delivered to all parts of the country.

(2) My urban district, nahia six, had a total of 27 polling centres which had registered 72,155 voters. Kabul province comprises 14 rural districts and 22 urban districts with a total of 555 polling centres that had registered voters  (see here). On 29 November 2017, after the general polling centre assessment, the IEC had approved 553 polling centres, decreased from 557 (see here), but on the final voter list there were 555 centres. It is not clear how they added two more polling centres. In total 1,632,197 voters were registered in Kabul; 1,041,185 male and 522,214 female, as well as 68,039 Kuchis and 759 Hindus and Sikhs.

The 14 rural districts had a total 181 polling centres with 473,089 voters registered. The 22 urban districts had 374 polling centres with registered 1,159,108 voters. The urban district nahia 21, for some reason, was not on the IEC’s voter list for Kabul. It is not clear whether it did not register any voters or was just missing from the list).

(3) According to the IEC’s recent annex to the voting and counting procedures (see the annex of this dispatch the facial picture should be taken in such a way that it is clear the picture was taken in a polling station during the vote. I was standing in front of a ballot box, but am not sure it showed in the picture.

(4) A handbook on the Australian Electoral Commission’s website explains the following procedures for the provisional vote (see here):

Provisional voting – eligibility

An elector may be issued with a provisional vote if:

• their name cannot be found on the certified list of voters for the division (the Act, s.235(1)(a)), or
• their name is on the certified list of voters but their address does not appear on the list (these may be silent electors who for reasons of personal or family safety do not have their address shown) (the Act, s.235(1)(b)), or
• the officer in charge has asked the person one or more questions under subsection 229(4) about matters shown on the certified list of voters for a particular person to establish whether the person is that particular person and one of the following applies:
• their answers do not accord with the relevant information shown for that particular person on the list (the Act, s.235(1)(c)(i)),
• their answers accord with the relevant information shown for that particular person on the list but the officer is not satisfied that the person is that particular person (the Act, s.235(1)(c)(ii)),
• they refused to answer fully (the Act, s.235(1)(c)(iii)), or
• their name has been marked on the certified list of voters as having already voted at the polling place (and the voter claims not to have voted before) (the Act, s.235(1)(d)), or
• the person is provisionally enrolled as a new citizen (the Act, s.235(1)(e).

Provisional voting – completion and return

The Act, s.235

The following procedures apply to provisional voting:

• the issuing officer must show the voter a written statement (either as a separate card or on the back of the declaration envelope) explaining provisional voting and the procedures followed.
• the provisional voter must answer in writing the questions put to any ordinary voter (with the exception that an elector with their address suppressed from the electoral roll is not required to publicly disclose their address).
• the provisional voter must sign a declaration on an envelope provided for the purpose, in the presence of the issuing officer, who must then sign as witness to the declaration and add the date.
• on receipt of a ballot paper, the provisional voter casts their vote in the ordinary manner.
• the provisional voter returns the folded ballot paper to the polling officer, who then places it in the signed and witnessed declaration envelope, seals it and puts it in the ballot box for later dispatch to the DRO.

(5) According to decision No 89-1397,  which was read at a noon press conference on the first day of the election:

In polling stations where the biometric machines failed to work or have not been delivered, technical options [not clear what it means] should be used to solve the problem. If the problem remains [unresolved], contingency machines or the machines belonging to closed polling centres should be used. If the problem still remains [unresolved], the voting should continue based on the voter list and people should be allowed to vote. At the end, the polling station chairperson and monitors should write the issue in the journal in detail and get the approval of the agents and observers.

(6) Ahmadi also added that after he voted he came across Sayyed Khodad Musawi (perhaps, the CEO of MyICT, the local partner of Dermalog, the implementer of the biometric contract) whom he described as a software engineer he had met at an academic event earlier. According to Ahmadi, when he told Musawi that his polling station did not have functioning biometrics, Musawi went inside and found out that the device had simply not been charged properly.

 

The second day of the Afghan parliamentary election has been as chaotic as the first. Because many polling centres failed to open or opened late on Saturday, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) ruled that some could also open today. However, only some actually opened today and voters were presented with the same bureaucratic and technical difficulties as yesterday. It is difficult, overall, to feel confident about the statistics the IEC has given, and it has already come under scathing criticism from the Election Complaints Commission about its management of the election. Yet none of this, reports Jelena Bjelica and the rest of the AAN team, appears to have had any bearing on the self-congratulatory rhetoric of the election organisers and the country’s political leadership.

This is a follow-on from our reports on election day “A Rural-Urban Divide Emerging” and “Voter Determination and Technical Shambles”.A dossier of our pre-election coverage can also be read here.

It is hard and confusing to tell exactly how many and which polling centres opened today, Sunday, 21 October, the extra day given for Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections. The confusion was mainly caused by the IEC’s impromptu decision (number, 89-1397) to allow the opening, not only of those polling centres that failed to open yesterday, but also those that opened very late, after 1pm. At his late-night press conference on Saturday 20 October, IEC chief Abdul Badi Sayyad had only mentioned the centres that failed to open, meaning voters whose stations opened late were left unsure whether they would be opening today or not. Confusion was only amplified by the IEC’s decision to open stations at 9am this morning, rather than the usual 7am.

The numbers: polling stations that were closed on Saturday and should have opened on Sunday 

Sayyad said that 401 polling centres which did not open because of technical problems or security threats on Saturday would open today (21 October). Many, AAN was told, had not received the electoral material in time. The 401, he said, was out of “over 4,900” polling centres countrywide. This figure should have already excluded the 172 allocated to Kandahar province where elections have been delayed for a week after the murder of senior officials [para corrected on 28 Oct. 2018].

The IEC, had said in an earlier press conference that 370 polling centres had remained closed on election day (see this AAN analysis of the Day one). More reports of closures must have come in after the first figure was publicised.

[updated on 22 Oct. at 10am] At the end of the day on Sunday at a press conference, IEC chair Sayyad said that a total of 4,567 polling centres had opened, on both elections days, 20 and 21 October. On Saturday he had given a number of 4,530 polling centres for 20 October only, which would mean that, of the 401 which did not open on Saturday, only 37 opened on Sunday. Another IEC official gave a strikingly different number again to AFP on Sunday saying that of 401 polling centres that were supposed to open on Sunday, 253 had indeed opened and 148 had not.

However, observers were skeptical. AAN received indications that maybe only 80 polling centres actually opened on Sunday, and among these were many that had been open before 1 am on Saturday, too. A source in Nad Ali district in Helmand province, for example, told AAN that in Zarghon Kalai (Green village) and Shin Kalai (Blue village) polling had continued for the second day in a row. Moreover, Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) spokesman Ali Reza Rohani, reported, that in the centres which did open on Sunday, “Most of the problems we had yesterday were still there today.” He said election workers were still struggling to use the biometric verification devices, and voter rolls were “either incomplete or non-existent.” Some polling sites had again opened late, he said and had insufficient ballot papers.

No numbers: polling stations that opened very late on Saturday and should have opened on Sunday

IEC decision number 89-1397 made on 20 October ruled that, “for the polling centres that were not opened until after 1 pm, the elections will be held tomorrow.” This meant that some centres were open for a day and a half with seals on election materials broken and left overnight – with obvious concerns over the opportunity this gives for ballot rigging. The IEC has also yet to give the exact number of centres that opened after 1pm on Saturday. It has also not given the number of how many polling stations closed on time – at 4 pm – on Saturday, or after an extension – to 8pm – for those that opened late, but before 1 pm, on Saturday.

The confusion has only been exacerbated by a discrepancy in the numbers shared by the IEC publicly and those shared somewhat secretly. According to a spreadsheet the IEC shared with independent observers and international organisations, which AAN received, on Saturday morning the IEC reported that 3,187 polling centres (63 per cent) had opened. Publicly, however, it has repeatedly claimed that 4,530 polling centres (92 per cent) had opened. Aggravating the muddle still further, the publicly-available document on the IEC website which details the number of polling centres by province says that 5,074 centres opened on Saturday. The list still includes Kandahar and must have been uploaded way ahead of election.

The lack of publicly-accessible data on the IEC website is egregious. So far, it has published only a summary of the 20 October press conference in its main, Dari section and no updates on its English section.

Turnout – unknown 

Head of the IEC Abdul Badi Sayyad said on Saturday evening that more than three million people had voted on Saturday. Already this was unusual as, normally, such figures are not rounded up or down, but are exact to the last digit. In the IEC election ‘flash report No.2’ distributed to reporters on Saturday afternoon, the IEC had said that by 2pm, turnout had been 1.5 million voters (in 27 provinces). It is hard to believe that 1.5 additional million voters showed up that afternoon to cast their votes (this would mean that people went to vote between 2pm and 4pm, and in the late opening polling centres, until 8pm). It goes against what AAN researchers in various provinces, as well as accounts from many other sources, journalists, civil society and observers, witnessed, that turnout decreased in the afternoon hours. Nevertheless, given the varying figures of how many polling centres were open or were reported open on Saturday, as well as problems with communication (Badghis province, for example, was out of reach all day on Saturday while four other provinces, including Kunduz, was out of reach for much of the day), it is really hard to say how accurate the IEC’s turnout estimate may or may not be.

The long queues reported on 20 October morning in many places, with great numbers of people waiting between ninety minutes and three hours to cast their vote, may be an indication of massive turnout – or of administrative failures. These failures were reported from all over country and ranged from biometric verification devices not working or working only slowly or not sufficiently charged for the whole day or staff not knowing how to use them; to staff arriving late, some of because they had not been told which centres to go to; to voters with stickers on their tazkeras, proving they had registered, finding their names were missing from the voter lists. Some of the latter were allowed to vote (and their names added on a separate list). Others were not. In other words, there was inequality in dealing with this particular, widespread glitch.

Despite all of this, the IEC’s Sayyad was confident that voter turnout would rise to more than five million after figures from the remaining centres arrived, including those opening on Sunday. In the end, the figure he gave at a press conference on Sunday evening was somewhat lower, 4 million voters, a third of whom, he said, were women.

Bearing in mind that nine million Afghans had registered, turnout can hardly be said to have been good. Moreover, several million other eligible voters were unable even to register because they live in Taleban-controlled areas; the IEC only managed to register voters in two-thirds of its polling centres. By these metrics, the IEC’s estimate of turnout, even if correct, looks a great deal less healthy.

Known irregularities and election-day casualties

On top of all the confusion over turnout and the number of opened/closed polling centres, counting was allowed to start in some places and tally reports are now trickling in from some provinces. In Takhar, for example, counting began last night and ended around midnight. The counting happened despite voting having been authorised for a second day in 15 polling centres (ten had been closed and five centre opened late in Yangi Qala and Dasht-e Qala districts on Saturday). This was probably the result of a lack of instruction by the IEC. However, it should have seemed obvious, surely, that counting cannot start until all voting has ended. This could invalidate the election in Takhar because candidates or officials would know how many votes were needed to tamper with the election result (and turnout figures) ahead of the continuation of voting on Sunday. This is something to watch, especially bearing in mind that candidates’ observers in Takhar told AAN their estimate of turnout on Saturday in the province was very low and most of the candidates had got unexpectedly low numbers of votes.

Some observers’ initial reports are also coming in. The Fair and Free Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA) had 1,500 observers in over 1,000 polling centres countrywide. (1) The head of FEFA, Muhammad Yusuf Rashid told AAN that, of over 1,000 centres the organisation observed on Saturday, around 130 had opened late. He said the biggest issue it witnessed was late opening. (2) “There were also issues with the biometric voter verification (BVV), a lack of printing paper and a lack of IEC staff in many stations,” he said.

Among other serious irregularities FEFA observed were illegal armed groups interfering in the voting in some provinces by forcing people to vote for certain candidates. Rashid also told AAN that “In a number of provinces – Logar, Kunar, Kabul, Takhar, Badakhshan – candidates’ agents interfered in the voting by distributing money to voters who agreed to vote for their contenders.” He also said that in some provinces, “linkages between IEC staff and political candidates had been observed.” AAN has also been told about similar incidents, of voters being interfered with by armed men including in the Deh Sabz district of Kabul.

Some agents have complained about irregularities and ballot stuffing in Kabul city. AAN also received reports about possible ballot stuffing in Paktia and in Mazar-e Sharif and of boxes full of ballot papers without the marks of the IEC.

Tolonews has reported that it received at least 10,000 complaints from voters across the country via WhatsApp and hundreds more on Facebook. Complaints covered a wide range of issues, including “polling station chaos,” Tolo said.

The government also appears to have underplayed the number of Afghans killed and wounded in election-related violence on Saturday. Minister of Interior Barmak at the end of the day reported that 17 civilians had been killed and 83 wounded, with 11 members of the Afghan National Security Forces also killed and 17 injured  (see this AAN analysis). AFP, carrying out its own round-up of casualties, has put the total number of civilians and members of the security forces killed or wounded in polling-related violence on Saturday much higher, at nearly 300.

Conclusion

 The IEC has already come in for damning criticism by the Electoral Complaints Commission for the “serious problems in the management of the elections”  which the EEC said could call into question the “transparency and fairness of the elections.” In this, the discrepancy in the numbers for polling centres open on Saturday given by the IECto the public (4,530 opened) and in its off-the-record, shared spreadsheet (3,187) is particularly worrying and needs to be cleared up as soon as possible.

Yet, despite the chaos, complaints, irregularities and the fact that several million eligible voters live in Taleban-controlled areas and could not even register to vote, both the election organisers and President Ghani have announced the parliamentary elections “a success.”

 

Edited by Thomas Ruttig and Kate Clark

 

(1) One FEFA observer was injured in Kabul in an attack on a polling centre. Several FEFA observers in the provinces were caught in the security incidents, but all of them were unharmed. In Logar, the IEC staff did not allow a FEFA observer to enter the polling centre. “After refusing to leave,” spokesman Rashid told AAN, “our observer was arrested by the NDS and kept in custody for several hours.”

The ECC also reported, “In some polling centres, observers were prevented [from entering the centres] or faced threats.” The ECC said  their own staff were not able to enter some polling stations or the necessary materials were not provided to them.

(2) Even Second Vice-President Sarwar Danish waited for 45 minutes for his polling centre to open. He told Tolo reporter that the centre, at the Baqir ul-Ulum mosque, only opened after election observers arrived.

 

 

 

 

In our first update of the day, AAN reported on the mixed turnout – far higher in the cities and other secure places and lower in districts where the Taleban could close roads and prevent voting. Those determined to vote faced not only Taleban violence, but also many technical problems and late-opening polling centres. In response, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) ordered an extension of voting hours today for some centres and for some to be opened tomorrow. In others, the count has already begun. The Election Complaints Commission has been damning of the IEC’s management of the poll, saying it could call into question the “transparency and fairness of the elections.” Kate Clark, Thomas Ruttig and the rest of the AAN team, bring you this update of what has turned out to be the first day of Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections.

This is a follow-on from our earlier report on the day’s events. A dossier of our pre-election coverage can also be read here.

Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections were marred by Taleban threats and violence, and chaotic preparations by the IEC.

Taleban violence: rising casualty figures

As the day wore on, reports of attacks and explosions continued to come in – and the casualty figures kept rising. Minister of Interior Wais Barmak told Tolonews at the end of the day that 192 security incidents had been reported countrywide. While this looks like an underestimate, it is still grievous enough.

Barmak told Tolonews at least 17 civilians had been killed and 83 civilians wounded. 10 policemen had also been killed, he said, along with an Afghan National Army soldier, and 17 members of the security forces had been wounded (note: according to the Laws of War, the police, if guarding election sites, would be categorised as civilian). AFP, quoting officials in the late afternoon, reported a somewhat higher civilian casualty figure – 170 civilians killed and injured. Unfortunately, that figure may yet rise. In Baghlan, for example, the Afghan news website, Khabarnama, quoting provincial health officials said that in their province alone, 12 people had been killed and around 100 injured in election-related violence.

In the early evening came reports of a suicide attack on a polling centre in Kabul’s Sar-e Kotal area (PD 17) – between Khairkhana and the Shomali plain: five policemen and ten civilians were killed and 25 more people injured. Kabul, along with Kunduz and Baghlan, suffered the worst of the day’s violence. In Kunduz, where the Taleban sent more than twenty rockets into the city, health officials told AFP that three people had been killed and 39 injured.

Technical shambles

“Participation was good,” the IEC announced at a press conference at the end of the day, “despite problems and security threats.” The commission’s conclusion is curious, even based on its own statistics. By 2 pm, it said, 1,510,659 million people had voted in 27 provinces (it was still waiting for information from Badghis, Kunduz, Paktia, Wardak, Parwan). Even though the final turnout figure will be higher, it still looks as if only a small portion of Afghanistan’s nine million registered voters will have cast their ballots.

[The following two paragraphs have been corrected, 21 Oct 2018, 9.15am] The IEC further said that 4,530 
out of the 4,901 polling centres due to open had opened (92 per cent) and that only 370 polling centres had remained closed. There also was an unknown but definitely large number of polling centres that opened late, often hours later, judging by numerous media and other reports that had come in from around the country.

Moreover, the IEC has not specified how many polling centres will open on Sunday 21 October. These centres should include the 370 centres that never opened on 20 October and, according to a decision by the IEC, those that only opened after 1 pm on election day one. The IEC so far has not given that second number. It has also not given the number of how many polling stations closed on time, at 4 pm, or after the extended time, at 8 pm.

To make the confusion complete, a number of polling centres have already started the count “The closing of polls in Saturday’s Parliamentary elections,” wrote AP, “was as chaotic as the opening.”

AAN (see annex and our earlier update) and other observers witnessed the following technical problems:

• Voting centres opening late, including staff turning up late. This affected some areas in particular – such as west Kabul where teachers hired for the elections had, reportedly, not been told which centre they should go to;
• Lack of voting materials;
• Biometric verification devices not working or working only slowly or staff not knowing how to use them;
• Voters with stickers on their tazkeras (to prove they had registered) finding their names missing from the voter lists;
• Long queues, with people having to wait several hours to vote;
• Problems with the Kuchi ballots, with some polling centres not having any.

The IEC itself summed up today’s problems, as follows:

• Ineffectiveness of IEC field staff;
• Technical and administrative issues;
• Polling staff – teachers – not showing up;
• Security incidents perpetrated by insurgents and warlords and the use of force at some polling centres;
• Lack of monitoring in some areas;
• Late arrival of biometric verification devices;
• Negative messages discrediting the process though social media.

The technical, bureaucratic and logistical problems were not evident at every polling centre in the country, but they were widespread enough to warrant AFP’s description of IEC preparations for this long-delayed ballot as “shambolic”.

In mid-afternoon, the country’s Election Complaints Commission (ECC) also came out with a damning statement, listing what it called the “severe shortcomings on how the elections had been managed thus far.” For the first time, it said, it had at least one official in each polling centre to receive complaints from voters, observers and candidate agents and who could report own observations. The ECC therefore, presumably, felt confident in its criticism. Part of the statement, as seen on television, said:

1. In a large number of polling centres and stations, polling centres have not been opened and activated yet.
2. In a large number of other polling centres and stations, polling centres have been activated after hours of delay.
3. In a number of polling centres, the necessary electoral materials, totally or partially, were not provided to the IEC staff on time.
4. In some polling centres, the biometric system encountered problems and was not activated on time.
5. In some polling centres, observers were prevented [from entering the centres] or faced threats.
6. There are reports of boxes containing sensitive electoral materials not being intact.
7. In some polling centres, representatives of the ECC were not provided with the opportunity to be present [in the polling stations] or necessary materials were not provided to them.

So far, the impact of violence and mismanagement have overshadowed reports about alleged fraud. AAN has however started collecting reports of incidents and hopes to give a fuller account of this in a future dispatch.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of Afghans turned out to vote, showing commitment and bravery in the face of Taleban threats, and patience in the face of an often shoddily-run election. Where Afghans could vote, it seems they did try. Reports of people waiting several hours to vote were received from many provinces. If these elections were faulty, it was not because of a lack of commitment shown by Afghan citizens. At the end of what has turned out to be in some places, the first day of voting, the conclusion of the ECC may be the one to watch:

[S]erious problems in the management of the elections… have led to the disenfranchisement of some voters, to serious concerns among the citizens and election stakeholders, especially for the ECC. The continuation of the current trend can seriously call into question the transparency and fairness of the elections.

 

Annex: AAN observation of voter identification and voting

AAN has selected some observations by its researchers from various provinces on how voting went and what problems voters faced. Their reports illustrate why voting hours needed to be extended.

Paktika 

In Paktika, many voters complained that their names were not on the voters’ registration list. These were people who had registration stickers on their ID cards, but their names were not on the voter registration list. At the Ali Baba High School, with more than 3,800 voters registered, and the provincial hospital, with 2,247 voters registered, about 200 people found they could not vote and went back home disappointed. According to one tweet, two of Paktika’s candidates also found they were not on the list.

An official that AAN interviewed at the polling centre at the provincial hospital said there were two possible reasons why this had happened.

People got stickers outside of the registration process, ie they got a fake sticker. It might be that they bought or acquired stickers illegally from the IEC officials through a bribe, or the candidates illegally bought stickers to put it on the tazkiras of their people. The second possibility is that their names were among more than 30,000 names that were removed from the main voters’ database, in order to eliminate ‘ghost voters’.

The official did not address the possibility that there had been a bureaucratic muddle. As will be seen below, this was a very common problem.

Other than that, voting seen by the researcher – who visited Sharana and Yusuf Khel and Musa Kheldistricts – went normally and there were no major problems reported. Voters were enthusiastic in Sharana. There were no cases observed where voters refused to be photographed or ‘biometrically verified’. Observers appeared happy with the voting process and did not report irregularities other than the problem of names missing from the voter lists.

Daikundi 

248 polling centres were reported open in Daikundi province. At four polling centres seen by AAN in the provincial capital, Nili, the biometric devices were not working. One voter told AAN that in his polling centre, around 150 voters showed up at 8am, only to find the biometric devices not working. He left for work, saying he might return later.

In the polling centre in the Sang-e Mum High School, most of the voters had to queue for two to three hours before they could cast a vote, but said once they got to the front of the queue, it took only a few minutes to vote. Voters reported similar timings in the polling center in Sar-e Nili High School – they waited more than three hours for their turn to vote, but then it took no more than four minutes to cast their ballot. The longest step in voting process, AAN observed in Nilli, was not the fingerprinting, but finding the voter on the voters’ list. The main concern of the voters was that they would not have an opportunity to cast their votes before the polling centres closed, if voting continued to be so slow. The polling centres reported this problem to the IEC.

In the polling centre in Chahar Dar High School, voters were also waiting for two and a half hours and then found it took five minutes to vote. There was no room in the polling stations for all the observers, so they were taking turns to monitor. They told AAN that 13 voters, with stickers issued from the centre, found their names were not on the voter list.

Takhar

In Taloqan city, most of the poling stations had closed their doors by 4pm and counting had begun. Candidates’ agents continued to monitor. AAN visited around 20 polling stations and found some irregularities, with mismanagement and technical issues to do with the biometric devices and voters lists, mainly in the morning. There were no obvious signs of manipulation or fraud.

In most of the polling stations there were problems with the biometric system. For instance, in Bibi Marya, the biometric system in the women’s polling station did not work until 8:45am. IEC officials also had trouble finding people’s names on the voter lists. It took more than five minutes for the queue controllers to find each voter and check their name and sticker. In a few cases, AAN noticed voters had to go from one polling station to another to find their names. Observers and agents also raised no serious issues of concern; most of their complaints were about technical problems.

Outside the provincial capital, though, the security forces came under criticism from many candidates who complained they had not been able to secure the area and allow people to vote in Dasht-e Qala, Durqad, Yang-e Qala, Khawja Bahauddin and Khawja Ghar districts.

Balkh

The polling centre in the Oil and Gas Institute in Mazar-e Sharif opened 20 minutes late. The biometric machines worked properly, but turnout was very low, at least initially. AAN observed some voters taking photos of the ballot paper while voting (a female observer also said she saw women photographing their ballot papers). They explained they had sold their votes and needed to take the photos as proof. (Photographing ballot papers is illegal – see here). There were 80 to 85 male observers, mainly candidates’ agents. A female observer told AAN there were 40 female observers, but the female voter turnout was very low in the centre.

In the Kart-e Bokhdi area of Mazar, an observer told AAN the polling centre was very crowded and that it had run out of ballot papers.

The voting process took between three and five minutes in most polling centres in Mazar, while checking the voter’s tazkeras against the voter registration took a little longer.

One observer told AAN that many centres had received the wrong voters’ lists, and that voters who were not on the list of the polling station they had (or thought they had) registered and were sent to wander from centre to a centre in search of their names. AAN interviewed one female voter whose name the IEC staff said they had been unable to find. She was asked to wait outside for one hour, but went home instead, without voting.

Herat 

In Herat city, polling centres opened an hour late, at around 8am. However, it seems there was a good turnout. Beginning from about 6:30am, queues were already forming, for men outside the polling centres and for women inside. The queues were already long by 08:00am when the polling centres opened.

In the districts, some polling centres opened much later. One in Guzara district opened at 11:00am. Polling centre officials said election materials had not been provided to them. In some polling centres, election staff did not come on time. Many people have had to wait for more than an hour to get into the polling station.

It generally took more than ten minutes for each voter to cast their vote (less than five minutes in less busy stations). In some cases, the biometric equipment was not working. A more common problem was that the names of some voters could not be found on the voter list, despite having the relevant sticker of the polling centre pasted on their tazkera.

 

Read our earlier report about Election Day One here.

 

 

 

Afghanistan’s third post-Taleban parliamentary elections have started slowly, with a lot of technical chaos and significant fighting in a number of provinces. Polling hours have now been extended. Even in many areas of Kabul, polling centres had not opened by 9:30am. There are widespread reports of a lack of polling material, electoral staff being unfamiliar with the biometric devices, that are being used for the first time to try to prevent multiple voting, and reports of explosions, attacks and Taleban closing roads and keeping away voters. By noon, dozens of casualties from rocket and mortar fire and explosions had been reported in Kunduz and later in Kabul. Apart from in Daykundi, where the governor held a small ceremony in the capital, Nili, voting began without ceremony. Thomas Ruttig and the rest of the AAN team have put together this initial look at ‘E-Day’ 2018. With reporting from Ali Mohammad Sabawoon (Kandahar), Obaid Ali (Taloqan), Rohullah Sorush (Mazar-e Sharif), Ehsan Qaane (Nili/Daikundi), Said Reza Kazemi (Herat), Fazal Muzhary (Sharana/Paktika) and Ali Yawar Adili and Jelena Bjelica (Kabul).

General observations on preparation and turnout

By noon, according to IEC sources speaking unofficially, only around 3,000 polling centres were open around the country, about 60 per cent (by 10am, it had been 2,300). Measures were underway, the sources said, to increase that number. Voting had been scheduled to close at 4pm, but IEC chairman Abdul Badi Sayyad has now announced at a press conference that polling centres will stay open beyond that, to “compensate” for the lost time. He apologised for the late opening. Sayyad said that polling centres where opening was delayed can now stay open until 8pm today, while in those not open before 1pm, polling would also take place on Sunday, 21 October (media reporting here). (1)

In many areas of Kabul and Herat as well as in Paktika and Balkh, IEC staff arrived at polling centres only at 7am when the centres were due to open. They started preparations and often did not allow observers to watch this. (2) AAN staff observed in a polling centre in Rahman Mena in southeastern Kabul that ballot boxes were not ready and observers were not allowed in, while long queues of voters gathered, on both the women’s and men’s sides. Voting started late at 7:45. AAN received reports from local sources in Paktika that, in a number of polling centres, voter lists were incomplete and many names were missing. (3) IEC personnel in the Paktika capital, Sharana, defending the late start, told AAN that people in the province “only wake up or start working about 8am.” In many places, IEC staff also banned the use of phones with cameras, probably to prevent voters from taking photos of their ballots (a method used to show to candidates who might have paid for the vote that the voter had complied), but also making observation difficult. Those voters then had to leave because there was no provision for leaving phones outside the centres; some may not return to vote. There were complaints that the IEC had not announced this ban.

In Kabul, only a few polling centres opened as scheduled at 7am. They included Amani High School where President Ashraf Ghani and IEC chairman Sayyad cast their votes. Ghani held a short, uninspired speech, explaining once more why the vote in Ghazni and Kandahar had been postponed and assuring voters there they would not lose their franchise. In Herat, as AAN witnessed, voting mostly began around 8am. Afghan media have published photos of a number of provincial governors casting their votes.

It appears that in many rural areas, however, there has been no voting, either after threats on the eve of elections or because the Taleban closed roads or there was fighting (reported from at least ten provinces). The first security incident in the morning was reported from Khushi district of Logar province where a polling station came under fire from a nearby hill shortly after polling opened officially. According to security sources in Kabul, there have been 107 incidents countrywide, 27 of them in Kabul province by noon. Most of the other incidents were reported from Kunar and the northeast, particularly Kunduz.

At noon, one of the country’s major observer organisations, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said “the situation is out of the control of the IEC.”

According to the spokesperson of the Ministry of Interior, Najib Danesh, quoted by Kabul-based news agency, 4,900 polling centres with more than 20,000 polling stations (4) should have opened in 32 of Afghanistan’s provinces. The figure looks overstated – very likely this is the number the Independent Election Commission (IEC) intended to open. By mid-morning, anyway, many were still shut.

On the eve of the elections, the IEC had given a number of 5,074 polling stations it intended to open (a few days before the elections, it had used a figure of “around 5,100”), but Kandahar has [corrected: 172] polling centres and voting there was delayed after the murder of Provincial Police Chief General Abdul Razeq on Thursday (read AAN analysis here) , so neither figure is fully accurate. Even before that, another 2,292 polling centres originally envisaged to be used were dropped, as the Afghan security forces could not see themselves able to defend them (more detail in this AAN overview).

The IEC had also officially claimed that there would be no voting in ten districts in five provinces, Musa Qala, Dishu, Nowzad, Reg/Khaneshin and Baghran in Helmand; Kakar/Khak Afghanin Zabul; Yamgan and Warduj in Badakhshan; Dahana-ye Ghori in Baghlan and Kohistanat in Sar-e Pul. However, AAN found from local sources that in Zabul, for example, there was no voting before noon in four districts – Arghandab, Mizan, Syuray and Kakar/Khak Afghan – due to ongoing fighting. The way to another Zabul district centre, Shahr-e Safa, was also closed due to fighting in the morning, so that election material only arrived briefly before noon. In Shajoy, the wrong election material was sent to one polling centre. This had to be corrected before voting could start. After noon, government forces started operations in two Zabul districts where the election process had also not started, Syurai and Mizan.

At the IEC press conference the day before the elections (19 October), IEC chairman Sayyad had called on the Taleban to allow the people to vote by announcing a ceasefire on that day. This plea remained unheeded. Over the days immediately before the election, the Taleban had instead issued a series of statements: they called on teachers and ulema not to support the elections, while the movement’s military commission threatened to close “all major and minor roads” on election day and called on people to stay indoors (quoted here). In early October, the Taleban had called for a boycott, stating it would “leave no stone unturned” to prevent the elections from taking place, but adding the movement would “instructs all its Mujahideen (…), while taking extensive and intensive care of civilian Afghan lives and their properties” and only attacking those who “secure” the polls (quoted here).

Turnout

Turnout has, so far, been mixed. In the large cities and many of the provincial centres, it has been good. Footage from Afghan media has shown queues of both male and female voters in Kabul, Herat, Maimana, Jalalabad, Lashkargah and Gardez, as well as some districts near to cities like Injil and Guzara in Herat province, and Batikot near Jalalabad, and Panjshir province as a whole. The tendency of good turnout in the cities and nearby districts was also confirmed by AAN staff members in Herat and Mazar-e Sharif.

In some places, such as Hazara-dominated west Kabul and some parts of Tajik-dominated Khairkhana, the turn-out has been massive. At one polling station in Khairkhana, however, voters reported to AAN that there were “more observers than voters” and that three candidates had distributed money to voters. In one centre in Nili, AAN saw 500 voters already queuing at 6:30am. In Mazar-e Sharif, it was good in the morning, but had dropped significantly by noon. In other places, there have been fewer voters. At one centre in Paktika’s capital Sharana, only one out of 25 registered women appeared to vote this morning.

In many places, voters arriving early or on time were left waiting because of the lack of IEC preparation; anger was already growing. In Qarabagh district, north of Kabul, angry voters blocked the main Kabul-Parwan highway with burning tires in protest that no election material had been delivered.

Government officials talking to AAN who wanted to remain anonymous played down the problems, saying there had only been “some minor difficulties” with IEC staff being late.

Biometrics

As to the new biometric procedures, AAN found that in Paktika’s provincial capital Sharana, the process took between four to eight minutes – rather than the one minute envisaged (see AAN reporting here). It appeared the Biometric Voter Verification (BVV) devices did not easily read voters’ fingerprints, but most of the  devices did work. Those not functioning were sent for repair or to be changed.

In at least four polling centres in Daykundi’s provincial capital Nili the biometric devices did not work. In the polling centre in Sang-e Mum High School most voters had to queue two to three hours before they could cast a vote. A group of ten observers, mainly from candidates, AAN talked to at this polling centre said the process was very slow. The longest step in voting process, AAN observed in Nilli, was not fingerprinting, but finding the number of a voter on the voters list. In one centre, where there were problem,  some voters left, saying they would come back later.

In several polling centres in Taloqan city there were issues with the biometric system that failed to operate. IEC workers spent more than five minutes on each voter, and it took a long time for the queue controllers to find a voter name on the voter registration list. In few cases AAN noticed, voters had to go from one polling station to the other to find their names.

In Kart-e Bokhdi area of Mazar, an observer told AAN that the polling centre in the area was really crowded and that it had run out of ballot papers. An observer told AAN that many centres had received the wrong voter lists, and that the voters were sent off to wander “from centre to centre” in search of their name.

In Mazar-e Sharif, AAN observed that some voters took photos of the ballot paper while voting. They explained that they have sold their votes and they take photos for proof.

Afghan journalist Ahmad Wali Sarhadi reported via social media from Kharjui, Zabul, that a long line of voters was still standing in the polling station by noon and waiting for the biometric devices to work. In one Kabul polling centre visited by AAN staff, the whole voting process was taking between three and five minutes.

Female voters queue in Sharana, provincial capital of Paktika. Photo: Fazal Muzhary

Security incidents round the country

The most casualties by far were reported from Kunduz. According to an AAN colleague observing the region from Takhar, who spoke to journalists in Kunduz, around 30 people – civilians and members of the security forces – were wounded in the morning as a result of rocket and mortar fire and scattered clashes ongoing in some parts of the city, outside the city centre. According to election observers who spoke to AAN, two mortar rounds hit polling centres in the centre of Kunduz. According to officials from the Kunduz Provincial Hospital, the casualty figures later rose to three killed – among them two IEC staff who were killed at Charkhab secondary school east of the city centre – and 39 others injured.

The shelling in Kunduz had decreased by 11am, as more security forces came in and candidates tried to persuade people to come out and vote, offering transportation. Even so, many people were reported still to be too scared to vote. The Kunduz-Takhar highway remained blocked.

In Kabul, at least 30 people have been taken to a trauma hospital run by the Italian NGO Emergency, including a dead child, AFP reported. Afghan health officials said, there were at least three dead and over 30 wounded,

There were also reports of Taleban rockets fired on Lashkargah (Helmand). By noon, one person was reported injured – in Paktia (more on which below). Explosive devices were used mainly in Kabul, designed, it seems more to scare voters from voting, not to harm then.

The Afghan media has (so far) been notably quiet about security incidents. AAN heard from reliable sources working with the media that there was a tacit agreement between some key media outlets not to report security incidents until noon.

Kabul

The capital had experienced ten small explosions by 12:30pm and one rocket, which landed in the Gulayi neighbourhood of Khairkhana in the city’s north. The first explosions occurred in the south-eastern area of Arzan Qemat (PD 12) in front of a high school polling centre and in Bibi Sara high school polling centre (PD 15). Two mines exploded outside Zabihullah Esmati school in Rahman Mena in southeastern Kabul (PD 8). The centre was temporarily evacuated. An explosion in Qala-ye Shahda (PD 6), in front of the Ahmadi mosque also caused the evacuation and closure off a polling centre. No casualties were reported in Kabul.

Voters from southeastern Kabul said there were sufficient police and NDS personnel, while reports from Hazara-dominated areas in the west said police were scarce.

Herat

Herat, like other cities, has strict security measures. There has been little traffic on the streets inside the city and the roads leading to it from nearby. The streets leading to the provincial government’s seat are all closed to public traffic.

In the contested districts of Obe and Pashtun Zarghun, voters turned out in the more secure areas. In Obe, a young man accompanying his wife, who is an IEC staff member, reported to AAN that people were voting “in good numbers” in about ten polling centres located in safe areas in the district especially those near the district centre. There were problems, he said, in the three remaining centres in the district. There, the Taleban had distributed night letters threatening all those working for or taking part in the elections, that they would kill them and cut off their fingers. In one of those stations, no one had turned up to vote this morning. Security forces had been deployed in order to make voting possible later in the day.

An IEC staff member in Pashtun Zarghun district reported that “Queues have formed for men and women, and people are voting. According to his estimation, there would  be a good turnout, with polling centres opened in about 70 per cent of the district. In the remaining 30 per cent, polling centres were closed and not expected to open. (It was unclear whether these were among the 2,292 the IEC said it would not be able to open or additional ones.)

Takhar and Kunduz

Polling centres are operating normally and groups of people are still arriving from villages to the nearest centre to vote. They were less crowded this afternoon. The polling in Takhar has been interesting because it seems more women are turning out to vote than men. The IEC workers and voters are now better familiar with the biometric verification devices and are quicker using them. In two PC, AAN witnessed it taking three minutes for voters to vote.

The capital Taloqan city is quiet with people making only limited movements. NDS has set up checkpoints at the entrances to the city. The army are also stationed around the city and the police are active inside and are in charge of security at the polling centres, where they search all voters. The NDS and the army are searching all vehicles wanting to enter the city. The Taleban destroyed a power line at around 11am, as a result of which at least parts of Taloqan city are without electricity. AAN has further confirmed fighting near Dasht-e Qala and Khwaja Bahauddin district centres. It is not clear whether this has stopped voting altogether in those places. The Taloqan-Dasht-e Qala road has also been closed by the fighting.

Kunduz city has no electricity since the Taleban have destroyed an electricity pylon. They have also closed the Takhar-Kunduz highway for the last two days. This, along with the frequent rocket fire and fighting in the morning kept turnout low. More security forces were being deployed and candidates were sending vehicles to take voters to the polling centres, so the turnout was slowly increasing.

Paktia and Paktika

A small explosive device was planted in Tera High School, just outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia early this morning, but it was defused. In the city, there was a good turnout.  In Zurmat district, a Taleban stronghold, only three polling centres have opened in the immediate district centre, in the Muqarabkhel and Batur neighbourhoods and in Zurmat Lycee. All other centres are closed and armed Taleban have been standing in front of them, so that election materials cannot be transferred. A rocket landed at Tamir, the district centre, and wounded one person.

In Paktika, Taleban fighters have fired rockets at the Jehad Mena area, which is about 15 kilometres to the north of Sharana city, as well as at locations in Urgun, Sarhauza, Matakhan and Sarobi districts. No casualties have been reported. According to deputy police chief Hamidullah Omarkhel, 2,000 security forces have been deployed to provide security for the election. They do not allow anyone riding motorbikes into the city, but they do allow cars.

Wardak and Logar

In Maidan-Wardak province, there was no voting in the Sayyedabad and Sheikhabad district centres. Near Sayyedabad, in Tangi-ye Duab, the Taleban have set up a checkpost and are not allowing people into the bazaar to vote. In Sheikhabad, after a local candidate visited the day before the elections, Taleban fighters appeared and started firing into the air. This morning, all the shops were closed, the bazaar was empty and there was no voting. The two IEC staff members and two policemen who turned up this morning also left. There is also no voting in Chak district, after the Taleban issued warnings to the population.

A similar situation was reported from local sources from Muhammad Agha in Logar province. There, also, the Taleban are not allowing anyone into the bazaar and no voting is taking place. Local people sent photos of Taleban in camouflage uniforms on motor bikes in the area. In the high school of Zahedabad village, near Muhammad Agha, voters turned up to cast their ballots at 9.30am, but there were no IEC staff, no ballot papers, no voter lists or biometric devices. The voters left again.

Baghlan

Local sources in Tala wa Barfak district of Baghlan told AAN that no polling stations were open and ballot boxes instead had been delivered to the guest house of one of the candidates, a sitting MP.

IEC information policy

Apart from two press conferences, the IEC has distributed information only very sparsely. It has so far not published any updates on their English website and the Dari website just has a summary of one of the press conferences. Candidates and voters have urged the IEC over social media to show up at problematic sites. The latest news item on its website is dated 26 Mizan (18 October 2018), its last tweet, made this morning, at the scheduled time of opening, is now over eight hours old.

Edited by Kate Clark and Martine van Bijlert

 

(1) More detail on the IEC decisions to address arising problems:

Since voting started this morning the IEC has issued two decisions to manage the fallout from issues that have plagued some polling centres but not others: late openings and problems with the voter lists and biometric devices. In decision 88- 1397 the IEC stated that in polling stations where the voter list is unavailable or where parts are missing, the provincial offices should print and send the lists. If this is not possible, voting should be done based on voter confirmation stickers [whoever has tazkera labelled with a registration stickers tied to the same polling centres should be allowed to vote] and a manual voter list be made.

In decision 89- 1397 the IEC ordered that in polling stations where biometric machines failed to work or were not delivered, technical options [not clear what it means] should be used to solve the problem. If the problem remains [unresolved], contingency machines or the machines belonging to the closed polling centres should be used. If the problem still remains [unresolved], the voting should continue based on the voter list and people should be allowed to vote. At the end, the polling station chairperson and monitors should log the issue in the journal and get the approval of the agents and observers. 

It further decided that in polling stations where employees arrived late (the IEC said that some of the teachers working as IEC staff had been unable to report on time due to security problems) or election materials arrived late, voting would be extended (the written statement said 6pm, while the IEC chairperson during the press conference said that it should be extended until 8 pm] and the voting should continue until [all]the voters who are in queue by that time have voted. Fort he the polling centres that were not opened until 1 pm, the elections will be held tomorrow. 

(2) The IEC polling and vote counting procedure says that “the polling station chairperson shall announce the opening of the polling station for voting at 7am in the presence of agents and observers.”

(3) On the subject of unavailability of voter lists, the IEC decided that:

In polling stations where the voter list is not available at all or some letters [of the names] are missing, the voter list should be printed by the provincial offices and sent to the polling centres that are close to the provincial offices, and in other [faraway] polling centres, voting should be conducted based on the voter confirmation stickers [whoever has tazkera labelled with election stickers tied to the same polling centres be allowed to vote] and a manual voter list be made for them in accordance with the voter list sample [similar to the printed and real voter list] and approved by the chairperson and monitors of the polling station. [In this case], If the list of the excluded [those who had registered to vote but were later excluded from the voter list by the IEC] is available in the polling stations, the voters who are on this list cannot vote.

The text was unclear and AAN has put explanations in brackets; IEC deputy spokesperson Kobra Rezayi has confirmed our understanding.

(4) A polling centre consists of least two polling stations, one for female and one for male voters.

 

 

 

Tomorrow’s parliamentary vote will use biometric voter verification machines, the first time ever in an Afghan election. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has said the use of these machines in every polling station will boost transparency and deter fraud. Yet questions abound. The decision was made at the last minute and because of political pressure. There are concerns that the system can trace fraud, but not prevent it, and that its linking of (encrypted) voter data to ballot papers raises questions about the secrecy of the vote. The IEC, in the meantime, seems mainly to have been preoccupied with the logistical task of actually receiving and shipping the devices to the provinces. On the eve of the election, AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili, lays out the new procedures and delves into the host of new problems which the new system could spawn (with input from Martine van Bijlert).

AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in the Election Conundrum series will be added to it.

What exactly did the IEC decide? A last-minute compromise

In a last-minute decision, only about one month before the election, the IEC decided to procure, ship and distribute 22,000 biometric devices to verify the identity of voters at polling stations on election day. In its official decision of 3 October 2018, the IEC said the last-minute change was made “to ensure more transparency, mitigate fraud and gain public confidence in the electoral process.” This was also reflected in its outreach video released on its Facebook page on 14 October 2018, only six days before the poll. Observers criticised the decision as hasty. Yusuf Rashid of Free and Fair Elections Afghanistan (FEFA) told AAN on 16 October 2018 that such a last-minute decision could have been justified if there had been previous technological infrastructure investment, expertise, and experience, all of which were absent. He called the decision unprofessional: “The IEC started from zero andon a much too short notice.”

However, the IEC had come under increasing pressure as it became clear that its new voter registration drive, that was implemented earlier this year (see here), had not resulted in a clean database of voters. A large number of political parties joined forces and – impractically – called for a completely new biometric voter registration. The current decision appeased the demands of the political parties, but has not solved the election’s looming problems to do with

How did the IEC come to its decision? Political party demands

At a conference in Kabul on 24 February 2018, the leaders and officials of 21 political parties and groups gathered to demand a change to the electoral system. (1) At the time, they were not yet calling for biometric voter registration. The IEC rejected their demand and gave a statement that, “Changing the electoral system at this sensitive time would seriously affect the preparations for the upcoming elections, and probably may [sic] result in delaying the elections.” On 25 March 2018, the political parties reiterated their position and threatened to reconsider their cooperation with the IEC if it continued to take “unconsidered stances.” (See AAN’s previous report here)

On 14 July 2018, the leaders of the parties met again. (2) This time they called on the government and the IEC to suspend voter registration and use biometric technology to start voter registration anew, calling the manual voter registration “flawed and fraudulent” (see media reports here  and here). The voter registration was launched on 14 April and ended on 6 July. (For details about its procedures, see AAN’s previous reporting here and here). The IEC was at the stage of verifying the registration at IEC headquarters when the parties made their call to suspend the whole process.

A joint committee was established on the president’s orders, to discuss the political parties’ demands; it consisted of representatives of the political parties, the government and the IEC, led by second Vice-President Sarwar Danesh. During one of the technical meetings, on 1 August 2018, a German company called Dermalog gave a presentation on the use of ‘biometric technology’. This was less than three months before the poll. (3) In the committee’s last of five meetings, on 5 August 2018, according to Danesh’s media office, the committee concluded that the government “had stressed the use of biometric technology in elections more than any other organisation in the past. Now if the IEC agrees, the government does not have any problem [with it] and also calls on the IEC to pave the way to use this technology in the [next] presidential election.” (emphasis added) See also here) (4)

On 8 August 2018, the IEC reiterated this same conclusion, saying that since only around 70 days were left before the election, it was no longer possible to procure and implement the necessary technology and promised  to use technology in the presidential elections scheduled for 20 April 2019, to ensure more transparency.

However, the opposition did not accept the IEC’s reasoning and threatened to reject the results of an election which used the manual voter registration and in the absence of any change to the electoral system (see this Khabarnama report) quoting Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, head of the New National Front of Afghanistan, who satirically likened the manual registration system to “Mullah Nasruddin’s grave which had doors, but lacked three walls”. They reached  out to more political groupings and on 8 August 2018 leaders and officials of the Grand National Coalition (5), the Council for Protection and Stability of Afghanistan (see the council’s background here) and independent figures issued a joint statement (see here and here) giving the government and the IEC a two-week ultimatum to (a) announce biometric voter registration for both the parliamentary and presidential elections; (b) change the electoral system to a multidimensional representation (MDR) system (background here); and (c) pave the way for  political parties and civil society organisations to effectively monitor all electoral processes. After the two weeks passed without any result, the parties announced the launch of a “civil disobedience campaign” (media report here).

In mid-August 2018, President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree tasking the Central Statistics Office (CSO) with buying “modern technology” to verify the exact number of voters (media report here). It was unclear at the time what the decree referred to and whether this would include a biometric identification system. On 29 August, during a demonstration in Kabul, the political parties said they would continue their protests until their demands were met (media report here and here).

On 1 September 2018, the Grand National Coalition increased the pressure as it displayed to the media what it said were “thousands” of fake tazkeras with voter registration confirmation stickers. The tazkeras had photos of well-known government officials, MPs and deceased people, and included multiple documents with the same pictures on them. The coalition said it had collected the fake documents with the help of IEC employees (although it was not clear how the IEC employees themselves had obtained them).The Afghanistan Central Civil Registration Authority (ACCRA) responded by saying that the tazkeras the Grand National Coalition had displayed had no legal validity and called on the security and judicial agencies to investigate how the coalition had got hold of them and identify the perpetrators of the forgery. A day later, on 2 September 2018, the IEC tried to reassure the public that it had “created a database in which all voter registration books that had been sent to polling centres in the provinces, districts and villages are recorded and can be tracked.” (6) The IEC further accused the Grand National Coalition of trying to sabotage the national election process and of disturbing public opinion.

This did not end the commotion. On 3 September, BBC Persian claimed it had been able to verify that several of the fake tazkeras and stickers displayed by the Grand National Coalition had been entered into the IEC’s database. According to the BBC report, it had taken 50 fake tazkera and 35 election stickers to the IEC where they were checked against the database in the presence of IEC commissioner Mazallah Dawlati and head of the IEC’s technology department Ibrahim Sadat. All five tazkeras that were checked were found in the system. In one case, the report said, three fake tazkeras had been made for one individual, with all details recorded in the system. The IEC’s Sadat was quoted as saying that there might be tens of thousands of such tazkeras and they may have been entered into the IEC database. On 4 September, President Ghani appointed a “competent commission” led by the Attorney General’s Office to investigate fraud in the distribution of tazkeras.

On 15 September 2018, supporters of the Grand National Coalition forcibly closed the IEC offices in three ‘heavyweight’ provinces: Herat, Balkh and Kandahar (media reports here and here). The Herat office was re-opened by force on the same day, on the order of Herat’s provincial police chief General Aminullah Amarkhel. The police dispersed the protestors by firing shots in the air, and rolled up their protest tent, injuring and arresting some people in the process (see AAN’s previous reporting from Herat here). Senior deputy interior minister for security Akhtar Muhammad Ibrahimi told the media on 15 September that he had ordered security forces in the provinces to not allow any person or group to close provincial offices, telling them they could “use force if necessary.”  On 17 September 2018, however, the coalition’s supporters proceeded to shut down the IEC office in Nangrahar (media report here). All this happened at a very crucial time, when the IEC offices had to be in full swing in order to prepare for the looming elections.

On 19 September 2018, the IEC made its first move towards public acceptance of the political parties’ demands when IEC chairman Abdul Badi Sayyad told a press conference: “We are currently in contact with different companies for the biometric registration of voters on the parliamentary election day.” Sayyad added that their only concern was that the election process should continue to be controlled by the IEC (media report here) – seemingly a reference to concerns that they might be forced to outsource a key component of the vote to other government institutions or private companies. On 22 September, less than a month before the poll, IEC spokesman Hafizullah Hashemi told the media that the IEC’s assessment of one biometric system on 20 October had been completed “by up to 70 per cent, but there are still questions. We hope we can find answers for them.” He also hinted that Dermalog would be the company providing the technology as he said that a German company had presented its proposals for a biometric system and that discussion on this was ongoing.

On 24 September 2018, the Grand National Coalition announced that two of their major demands had been accepted and that they had allowed the reopening of the IEC provincial offices they had closed down. Muhammad Nateqi of the of the Grand Coalition told AAN that although biometric voter verification on election day had not been their first option, the parties had “accepted it out of necessity.”

What did the IEC do after it decided to go biometric?

On 27 September 2018, the IEC announced that 4,000 sets of biometric devices had arrived in Kabul and 18,000 other sets would be delivered shortly – this happened on 5 or 6 October 2018 (see here. All of this happened while, as reported by the president’s office,  the contract was only approved four days later, on 1 October. On 10 October 2018, IEC spokesman Hafizullah Hashemi announced that 10,000 – almost half – of the biometric devices had been charged, updated with local languages and packaged. (7)

IEC chair Gula Jan Abdul Badi Sayyad told a number of political parties on 14 October 2018, less than one week before the poll, that all the biometric devices had been sent to 33 provinces (Ghazni is not holding parliamentary elections) after having been “received and activated.” He also said the company had provided two servers to the IEC, which would be “installed and activated by technical personnel of the company in the next few days.” This was echoed by IEC spokesman Hafizullah Hashemi who told a press conference on the same day that the devices had been delivered to the 33 provinces and their transportation to the districts would be completed by the end of the week.

In the meantime, on 3 October 2018, the IEC signed its official decision to use biometric voter verification. Itapproved an annex to the polling and vote-counting procedures, on how to use the devices, on 7 October 2018 – less than two weeks before election day.

What will the biometric machines do?

The biometric machines do not replace the old, manual voter registration or the manual voting system. Instead, they represent an attempt to introduce an additional anti-fraud measure, following questions about the integrity of manual voter registration, and the pressure from political parties. At the polling station, a voter’s biometric data is registered before he or she casts their vote. The data is then entered both into a central database and printed and attached – in encrypted form – to the ballot paper. According to the IEC, this will enable them to identify those who vote more than once, and to invalidate duplicate votes and ballots that are without biometric verification sticker or that have fraudulent voter details.

According to the IEC’s new procedures (the main parts of which have been reproduced in the annex to this dispatch, below), the biometric voter verification machines are configured to capture the following data:

• Fingerprints of both the right and left index fingers (90 per cent of the finger should be placed on the machine to minimise error; if a voter does not have an index finger, the fingerprint of the thumb of the same hand will be captured; if the voter does not have a thumb either, the fingerprint of any other finger of the same hand will be captured; if a voter does not have any fingers, a photo is mandatory, regardless of whether the voter is male or female);
• Photo of the voter’s face with a voting screen in the background to show that it was taken at a polling station – optional for women (8);
• Photo of the voter’s tazkera and the voter registration confirmation sticker that was fixed on the voter’s tazkera during the latest round of voter registration;
• A printed QR code sticker that includes the polling centre code, the date of voting, the time of voting, a unique code and an encrypted QR image (see the IEC’s 3 October decision for more details.

The data capture will be carried out by the biometric registration officer (previously the queue controller) of the polling station, who will then guide the voter to the ballot paper issuer. The ballot paper issuer will be responsible for:

• Preparing a ballot paper for the voter
• Inking the index finger of the voter
• Collecting the biometric certificate (QR sticker) from the printer
• Attaching the biometric certificate (QR sticker) on the top left side of the stamp on the back of the ballot paper.
• Giving the ballot paper to the voter and guiding him/her to the voting booth.

According to the IEC, ballot papers that do not have a QR sticker will be invalidated, as will multiple votes (that have been cast under the same identity). Both the IEC procedures and the publicity campaign say that only the first of any multiple votes will be valid. The other duplicate votes will be invalidated and the violators “will be prosecuted.” But there are doubts as to whether the IEC will be able or willing to implement this stringently, particularly if irregularities are widespread, as was the case in previous elections.

What if the biometric machines are not used or not used properly?

First, there is the concern over what happens if machines are not delivered to the polling stations or if IEC employees fail to operate them properly, or at all. On 13 October, a week before the election, IEC deputy spokesman Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi told Hasht-e Sobh that the IEC would train 125,000 employees on how to use the system by Wednesday 17 October. Experts, however, doubt the quality of the training and whether all employees will have indeed learned how to operate the machines in such a short period of time. Added to this is the concern that the machines have not gone through proper field testing, a common necessary practice when preparing to use new technology in elections.

The rules also appear to have been made on the fly, with still some room for ‘discretion’. On 7 October 2018, IEC spokesman Hashemi said that the IEC had decided to accept only the votes of the people registered on biometric devices, but that the IEC had not yet decided what to do if biometric devices were not delivered to all polling stations on time, or if the devices became dysfunctional. “If any problem happens with the transportation [of the devices] or any other problem arises,” said Hashemi, “the commission will make a decision on the day.”

The IEC’s annex on the voting and counting procedures says that:

The use of biometric machine is mandatory at each polling station. If the biometric machine in a polling station stops functioning for any reason or has not been delivered to a polling station due to problems, the contingency biometric machines or biometric machines of another polling station shall be used.

However, it does not state what should be done if no functioning machine can be found, or what the IEC will do with the voting data if IEC staff do not (properly) use the machines.

Although the IEC has stated that it will invalidate all ballots that do not carry a proper QR sticker, it may find this difficult to uphold if this affects large numbers of polling stations or certain areas more than others. In past elections, safeguards and fraud triggers were often abandoned when it turned out that large portions of the polling station staff – intentionally or unintentionally – had not followed procedures. As one international expert highlighted in a conversation with AAN, all these questions mean that the IEC has “stored up many difficult decisions.”

Moreover, it turns out that the machines can be deliberately misused. On 4 October 2018, Tolo TV reported that the head of the CSO had called the devices that were just coming into the country “flawed,” as it turned out they could record duplicate voters without alerting anyone. CSO head Ahmad Jawid Rasuli said that if a voter registered on one device twice, it would show that he or she had already voted, but if that voter went to another polling station, they would be able to vote there. He also said that it would only be possible to detect the duplicate or multiple votes only after the votes had been counted and that it would be up to the IEC officials whether they discarded the duplicate votes or added them to the total.

Muhammad Nateqi, a member of the Grand National Coalition, told AAN on 16 October that when they tested the device at the IEC, they found that voters could vote more than 45 times by playing around with their fingerprints, registering more than once by using different fingers each time. He said thatthe machine still printed the QR stickers, as if the identification had been valid. (9)

In response to these issues, the political parties raised their concerns on 6 October 2018, They demanded that (a) the biometric technology should be used online wherever there is internet, as offline use could lead to a huge wave of duplicate and invalid votes which would cause a lot of problems when they have to be cleared after the data is loaded onto the central server; (b) biometric verification should be used countrywide and that from polling stations where the biometric fingerprint was not carried out, the votes should be invalidated; (c) political parties and civil society organisations should be allowed to fully observe the central database to ensure that the separation of valid votes from duplicate ones was not manipulated and that there should be a separate audit of the ballot boxes in which there were duplicate votes and the audit of the boxes in which the number of ballots differed from the biometric statistics; (d) the fingerprint of two index fingers and the photo of the voter and their tazkera should be mandatory; (e) because the manual voter registration with its stickers was plagued by fraud and a large number of people had not been able to register, every eligible Afghan should have the right to vote at any polling stations by providing an identification document on polling day.

Some of their demands appear to be IEC policy, although it is not clear to what extent they will be upheld, while others – in particular the wish that all Afghans regardless of their registration status should be allowed to vote – do not seem to have been accepted. There is however still a considerable lack of clarity, as the rules were hastily made while the IEC scrambled to make this happen in time.

Who is in charge of the biometric system?

There has also been a lack of clarity, and some concerns, over who would be in charge of the implementation of the system and the management of the data. Yusuf Rashid of FEFA wondered whether the IEC would undertake the management of the biometric or if it was some special company. If a special company had the responsibility for the biometric voter verification on the election day, he said, the political and legal credibility of the company should be carefully reviewed. Muhammad Nateqi of the Grand National Coalition raised the question of whether the IEC would guarantee that the gathered data would not be handed over to any group or agency and said it had to specify where the final data would be collected and kept.

On 27 September, Ahmad Jawid Rasuli, the head of the CSO, reiterated that the biometric technology belonged to the IEC and that no other agencies, including the CSO, could access its data. He told the media that “No agency has access to the [biometric] system. We alone had the responsibility to provide it.” On the same day, IEC officials stressed that the IEC itself had “collected all equipment directly from the airport, so no other organization could meddle in the process” and that it would be the IEC that would employ the biometric operators on election day.

However, the management of the system is obviously more than just the physical custody of the devices. AAN’s conversations with both national and international sources have, for instance, shown that the CSO has been the main agency in charge of the procurement and has been most closely aware of the details. This was illustrated when, during a joint meeting of the IEC, CSO, civil society organisations and donors on 26 September 2018, the IEC commissioners asked the head of the CSOto provide information on how the system would be used on election day.

IEC officials have insisted that the biometric devices are secure and that no one will be able to access the data even if they are stolen. This was said in response to concerns that strongmen or local commanders could take them and meddle with the data. (Media report here). However, since the details of the contract are not known and it was not the IEC that determined the specifications of the biometric solutions or carried out the procurement, there is a question as to who controls the coding and programming of the machines and the servers. AAN’s conversations show that Dermalog’s engineers and technicians have been at the IEC in Kabul to assist in setting up the server. However, they will apparently not be in the country on election day, in a bid to dispel concerns about the ownership of the system. This could be problematic, if problems arise.

There have also been questions about the quality of the devices and the process of procurement. On 11 October 2018, Tolonews reported that the devices that had been delivered differed from the samples that had been shown to the IEC by the government before it signed the contract with Dermalog. For instance, these biometric devices, Tolo said, do not bear Dermalog’s logo and the power bank and chargers are “made in China.” This has led to doubts as to the quality and specification of the delivered devices.

The contract that was signed with Dermalog has, moreover, not been made public and there is no clarity about the way the procurement was done. However, it appears to have been single-source and without a regular tender procedure. This is allowed only under certain conditions. (10) A National Procurement Authority press release on 16 October 2018 called it a “government to government (G2G) contract” with both the German company and the German government assuring the standardisation of the devices and systems. German embassy officials in Kabul have, however, told AAN that Berlin was not in the deal and that the biometric machines were not part of their government’s official assistance to the Afghan government.(11) Other donor sources also told AAN that the money for the devices had not been taken from the funds they contributed for the elections through UNDP. It seems that the procurement was financed from the government’s own budget. (12)

A whole host of new concerns

In an attempt to address rising concerns over a faulty registration process, the IEC has introduced a new anti-fraud system that has a host of concerns of its own. So far, nobody has had the time – or the information – to fully assess or prepare for the possible problems this might cause.

First, there is the concern over what will happen if the machines are not delivered to the polling centres, if they are delivered but not used, and if they are not used properly. The IEC says they will invalidate all ballots without the required QR sticker, but they may be forced to rethink this if the number of invalidations becomes very high.

Second, there is a continuing concern over multiple voting, as several tests have shown that devices will accept registrations that have already been made on other machines and duplicate registrations by those playing around with fingerprints and photographs to get multiple QR stickers. It is not clear how strong the capacity of the servers is to recognise such duplications. Moreover, there seems to be a fair amount of discretion where the IEC can decide how stringently they want to track and address the irregularities that the system could find.

Third, there is concern about the lack of clarity regarding what will happen to the data after the elections. It is also not clear whether the data can or will be used to clean up the voter list ahead of the presidential election, slated to be held on 20 April 2019.

Fourth, there are concerns around who has control over and access to the system and its data. Since the details of the contract are not known and it was not the IEC that carried out the procurement, there is a question about who controls the coding and programming of the machines, as well as the servers. The last-minute decision to change the procedures, against the IEC’s wishes, appears to have further undermined the IEC’s independence and its control over the electoral processes and materials used for the elections. There is moreover a complete lack of clarity on how immune – or not – the system is to hacking, especially given that this has become a growing reality and concern, globally.

Fifth,the constitution (as well as the electoral law) stresses that elections, voting and ballot should be “free, general, secret and direct.” Given the fact that a sticker with – albeit encrypted – voter data will be fixed to each ballot paper, the secrecy of the vote appears to be under question. This is especially the case as the QR image can be read with the right software. AAN’s conversations with different interlocutors within the international community show that this concern has still not been resolved.

Finally, the last-minute decision to use biometric verification has led to a fair amount of ambiguity which could easily be – and, on past record usually is – exploited. It is also debatable whether the last-minute changes were legal given the fact that article 19 of the electoral law stipulates that the IEC cannot amend the laws and procedures during the electoral process.

The biometric machines are intended to mitigate fraud, but they have changed the rules of the game at the last-minute, complicated the voting procedure and added major concerns.

 

 

(1) These are the 21 parties that first coalesced around these demands in February 2018. Since then, they claim that the number has increased up to 35 (see here).

• [Hezb-e] Eqtedar-e Melli
• Afghan Mellat
• [Hezb-e] Paiwand-e Melli
• Jabha-ye Nawin-e Melli Afghanistan
• Jabha-ye Nejat-e Melli Afghanistan
• Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan
• Jombesh-e Melli Islami Afghanistan
• Herasat-e Islami Afghanistan [previously known as Hezb-e Wahdat-e Melli Islami-ye Afghanistan]
• Harakat-e Islami Afghanistan
• Harakat-e Islami-ye Mutahed Afghanistan
• Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami Mardom-e Afghanistan
• Hezb-e Islami Afghanistan [both Hekmatyar and Arghanidwal factions]
• Hezb-e Islami-ye Mutahed Afghanistan
• Hezb-e Etedal-e Afghanistan
• [Hezb-e] Haq wa Adalat
• Rawand-e Hefazat az Arzeshha-ye Jihad wa Muqawamat
• Hezb-e Qeyam-e Melli Afghanistan
• Mahaz-e Melli Islami Afghanistan
• Nahzat-e Hambastagi-ye Melli Afghanistan
• [Hezb-e] Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan
• [Hezb-e] Wahdat-e Islami Mardom-e Afghanistan

(2) Those attending the meeting were: Hezb-e Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; Jamiat-e Islami leader and foreign minister Salahuddin Rabbani; Hezb-e Islami Wahdat-e Mardom leader and deputy chief executive Mohammad Mohaqeq; son of Jombesh-e Melli leader and first Vice-President Abdul Rashid Dostum, Bator Dostum; representative of former President Hamed Karzai, Zerar Ahmad Moqbel; member of Council for Protection and Stability Yunus Qani; leader of Hezb-e Mahaz-e Melli Sayyed Hamed Gilani, and head of New National Front of Afghanistan Anwar-ul Haq Ahadi. (see here.)

(3) Sayyed Mosavi, the chief executive officer of MyICT, a local partner of Dermalog, told AAN on 17 October that Dermalog and MyICT had been approached by “friends in the government, political parties and the IEC” in July 2018 to offer a biometric solution, since they had also submitted a proposal for hybrid technology when the government had earlier explored the use of full biometric technology (for details on the earlier decision to implement “plan B” – manual instead of biometric voter registration – see AAN’s previous reporting here). Mosavi said that they had, in the end, not participated in the earlier – biometric registration and polling – bid “since the IEC had wanted to purchase only the hardware, not the solutions. It simply wanted to buy 8,000 devices, whereas the trump card in these devices is the solution that provides the possibility of de-duplication.” A similar concern was communicated by Smartmatic, a company that had also been an early contender to provide an “integrated technology-based solution proposal” to address electoral fraud. In a 5 September 2018 letter to the IEC, which AAN has seen, Smartmatic wrote that it would not participate in the tender as “the way it was structured exposed the automation project to a high risk of implementation failure” since it did not include essential implementation services, but simply involved the purchase of “off the shelf hardware.” A similar case – hardware without proper fraud prevention and de-duplication solutions – could be made for the current approach that has been chosen.

(4) With respect to the parties’ demand to change the voting system from SNTV to MDR, the vice-president’s media office reported that the committee had concluded that this proposal “in addition to the time constraints, has its own complexity and thus, requires a broad national debate. Even if this proposal could be passed through a presidential legislative decree, it might still be rejected by the parliament. Therefore, the best way is that the [next] Afghan parliament [should] decide about changing the electoral system.”

(5) The Grand National Coalition was launched on 26 July (media report here). It is an expansion of the proto ‘Ankara coalition’ that was formed in June 2017 (AAN background here) to include the New National Front (AAN background here), Mehwar-e Mardom (AAN background here) and influential figures from the Greater Kandahar Unity and Coordination Movement and the Eastern Provinces Coordination Council (AAN background here).

(6) The statement saidthe IEC was able to establish which registration books belonged to which polling centre, who had been responsible for transporting, distributing and using them and who had done the registration in each polling centre. The IEC also said that, based on reports it had received and using its tracking system, it had found that 60 registration books had gone missing or had been burned. The books had been tracked and invalidated and would not be included in the voter list.

(7) Deputy IEC spokesperson Kobra Rezayi told AAN on 17 October that the updates they made to the settings includedchanging the operating language into Dari and Pashto, and entering the province, district, polling centre and polling station (male or female). According to the IEC procedure, however, these are entries that need to be made at the polling stations on election day:

The IEC procedure tasks the queue controller with making the following entries after switching on the machine at the polling stations on elections day:

• Province
• District
• Polling centre code
• Polling station code
• After switching on the biometric machine, the biometric registration officer should go to the statistics option and show the agents and observers that no data has been recorded.

At the end of the vote, the biometric registration officer will show the agents and observers how many voters have been recorded.

(8) On 3 October 2018, the IEC, in decision number 74-1397, determined that the taking of facial photographs of women would be optional. Three IEC members – deputy for operations Wasima Badghisi and commissioners Maliha Hassan and Mazallah Dawlati – disagreed with this decision.

(9) Mosavi of the MyICT told AAN that they had been told to offer a solution that was “cheap, simple and understandable to the public. It is a portable device. If the procedures are implemented and two index fingers are fingerprinted, it can prevent duplicate votes. The de-duplication can happen in two phases. The preliminary de-duplication can be performed by the devices at the polling stations, as it will show when the same fingers are entered [at that station]. After that, when the devices are retrieved and all data loaded into the server, the server can de-duplicate two similar fingers. The full de-duplication can be done by the server, but not on the elections day.” He also said that “a solution able to capture all ten fingers, iris and face would have been better, but we were told that due to limited budget and time, we should come up with a solution that could prevent ‘buji buji-level’ fraud [ie fraud on the level of gunnysack’, mass fraud, not just the odd individual].” He concurred with Nateqi, however, that “one person could deliver 35 to 45 patterns of fingerprints.” There is also the concern that the IEC’s decision not to photograph women will pave the way for fraudulent voting.

(10) According to rule 22 of the general procurement rules, such single-source procurement may only be used when: 1) a particular potential bidder has exclusive rights in respect to the provision of goods, works and services or the procurement can only be conducted from single source; 2) there is an emergency need for the goods, works or services, involving an imminent threat to public health, welfare or safety, or an imminent threat of damage to property, and engaging in open tendering proceedings or other procurement methods would be impracticable or; 3) where the estimated value of the procurement does not exceed 5,000 Afghanis (around 70 USD). (See the Dari version of the rules of procedure here);  see also previous AAN reporting about a similar procurement by the IEC of tablets used for polling centre assessment here.

The political parties in their 6 October statement called on the government to share the contract with the people of Afghanistan so they could know the details.

(11) The NPA statement said that the contract “with the largest German company by the name of Dermalog Identification System” had been entered into “in collaboration with [CSO] … through a government to government (G2G) contract.” It further said that the total cost of “22,000 central biometric devices and systems including: printers, batteries, software, electoral stickers etc. is more than 18 million EUR paid by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. … Moreover; the contract will control and support [sic] by the Ministry of Finance (BUNDESDRUCKERE) of Germany.”

The German government is an indirect minority stakeholder in Dermalog, as a state-run printing company called Bundesrucherei has a 20 per cent share. German embassy officials told AAN that the company has knowledge and experience, designed the devices and the software itself and delivered the machines with “speed on a very short notice,” but that it might have partners in other countries. This was in response to the media reports that the delivered devices had been made in China.

 

Annex English translation of new procedures on using biometric machines

This is an English translation of an annex to the polling and vote counting procedure about using biometric machines. AAN obtained the original Dari version on 14 October from the head of the IEC legal department, Jafar Nuri. In this version, the queue controller of a polling station is tasked with capturing the biometric data, while in an earlier version that AAN had obtained, the biometric data capturing was assigned to the identification officer. In this version, the duties of queue controller have been given to the polling station chairperson. An international who was privy to the IEC internal discussion told AAN that that the IEC had been struggling to decide who should do the biometric data capturing. AAN is not sure if this is the final version to be applied tomorrow, 18 October. (In this translation, AAN excludes the introduction).

Poll opening

• A voter shall carry his/her citizenship tazkerabearing the voter registration confirmation sticker on the election day.
• No one has the right to take a photo or video of their own ballot or that of any other person. In order to adhere to the principle of the secrecy of the ballot and prevent its violation, carrying any photographic or video equipment behind the voting booth is prohibited.

(3)   The body searcher is duty-bound to prevent voters from bringing in the above-mentioned equipment.

(4)   The use of biometric machine is mandatory at each polling station. If the biometric machine at a polling station fails to function properly for any reason or has not been delivered due to problems, the contingency biometric machines or the biometric machines of another polling station shall be used.

The Biometric machine

The biometric machine to be used in the upcoming elections is an electronic device in which multiple types of data applications can be installed.

 

How to use the biometric machines:

Biometric registration will be conducted at exactly the third phase of the polling process by the biometric registration staff (who had been queue controller before):

1. The biometric registration officer shall ensure that the biometric machine has been set in a way that the exact date and time of recording voter information into the biometric machine is set and [then] select the following options after switching on the biometric machine:

• Province
• District
• Polling center code
• Polling station code
• After switching on the biometric machine, the biometric registration officer should go to the statistics option and assure the agents and observers that there is no [pre-]recorded data on it.
• At the end of the process, [the biometric registration officer] shall show the agents and observers how many voters have been recorded.

How to use the biometric QR of the biometric machines:

Use of printer:

• The printer shall be used for printing the biometric confirmation [QR code] for each voter. Once the biometric registration phases are completed, a biometric confirmation with an adhesive QR code will be printed for every voter.
• The biometric QR code certifying the presence of the voter will be printed and fixed onto the rear of the ballot paper to be used by the voter.
• The biometric confirmation will have a unique serial number for each voter which will show that the voter’s information has been recorded on the biometric machines. [The information] comprises the following information:
  • Polling centre code
  • Date of voting
  • Time of voting
  • Encrypted QR code
• After the completion of the biometric process, the biometric officer shall press the “print” option to print the biometric confirmation [sticker] using the printer.
• One biometric confirmation shall be printed for each voter. Re-printing of the biometric confirmation is not allowed.
• Attaching the biometric confirmation on the back of the ballot paper is mandatory.
• The first vote cast by those who have voted multiple times shall be valid and their remaining duplicate votes shall be invalidated.
• Anyone who has voted more than once shallbe identified and introduced to the Complaints Commission to be prosecuted in accordance with the electoral law.

 

Polling phases

1. The chairperson of the polling station, in addition to the duties specified in the Polling and Counting Procedure, shall also undertake to control the queue at the polling station.

2. The identification officer shall see the voter’s tazkera in accordance with the polling and counting procedure

• that it bears a voter registration confirmation sticker
• [he/she should] check the back of the tazkera with a special torch provided to [ensure] there is no sign of a pen whose ink is invisible [has been used].
• check the name of the voter is on the voters list and if it is on the list, mark it with (√)sign
• mark the left-hand side of the voter registration confirmation with a (√)sign with a pen whose ink is invisible.
• guide the voter to biometric registration officer

3. The biometric registration officer (who had previously been the queue controller[in earlier versions of the procedure]) shall ask the eligible voter to:

• Place the entire index fingers of both hands on the machine, first the index finger of the left hand and then the index finger of the right hand, in such a way that 90 per cent of the finger is placed on the machine to minimise the error.

• If the index finger of the voter is not available, the thumb of the same hand shall be used.

• If the thumb is not available, other fingers of the same hand shall be used.
• If fingers of neither hand are not available, no fingerprint shall be captured, and he/she shall be referred to the next option.
• After reading the fingerprints on the machine screen, the machine will record them and the biometric registration officer shall click on “next” to prepare the machine for taking facial photo of the voter.
• The voter’s photo shall be captured in a way that shows the voting booth in the background (the photo shall show that it has been captured at a polling station).
• After taking the facial photo, [the biometric registration officer] shall again click “next” to complete taking the photos of the tazkera and the voter registration confirmation number.
• S/he will take photo of the voter’s tazkera vertically.
• S/he will take a photo of the voter registration confirmation sticker on the back of the tazkera vertically.

Note: If both hands are not available, taking photos of both female and male voters is mandatory.

• The [biometric registration officer] shall go to the print option and guide the voter to the ballot paper issuer

4. The ballot paper issuer:

• The ballot paper issuer, in accordance with the polling and counting procedure, shall separate the ballot and show the voter how to fold the ballot
• Unfold the ballot again and remove the biometric confirmation sticker from the biometric machine printer
• Attach the sticker on top left side of the stamp on the back of the ballot .

 

• check the fingers of both hands of the voter to ensure that his/her fingers have not been inked with indelible ink before
• Clean the voter’s index finger with a handkerchief
• shake the ink bottle and then open it
• then put the index finger of right hands into the indelible ink bottle. The entire finger of the voter should be covered with ink and should touch inside the bottle
• ask the voter not to clean his/her index finger until the ink dries
• give the ballot paper to the voter and guide the voter to the polling booth Note: the voter shall use his/her vote behind the voting booth.

5. The Ballot box controller shall

• guide the voter in casting the ballot in the box
• tell the voter to take his/her tazkera and not put it inside the box

The photo will be used for facial recognition and the system will be able to identify duplicates based on fingerprint and facial photographs, photos of tazkeras, and photos of the voter registration confirmation sticker

• Taking photos of females shall be optional (unless they lack fingers).
• One minute has been considered [sufficient] for each voter [to vote].

Note: biometric machines are configured to work offline

Training of Biometric Staff

• The polling center managers will have the technical skills.
• The training process for biometric staff will be conducted using cascade training methodology as follows:
  • The HQ trainers will train the IT staff.
  • The provincial IT staff will train district electoral officers and their deputies.
  • The district electoral officers and their deputies will train the polling centre managers, polling station chairpersons and the identification officers.
  • The polling station chairpersons will train the ballot paper issuers, the ballot box officers and the queue controllers.

Spoiled Ballot Papers

If a ballot paper is spoiled for various reasons as mentioned in the polling and counting procedure, the ballot paper issuer will act as follows:

• Detach the biometric confirmation sticker from the spoiled ballot paper and re-attach it to the ballot paper to be issued to same voter. On the spoiled ballot paper, on the bottom of the area identified for attaching the biometric confirmation sticker, write “The biometric certificate is attached on a new ballot paper” and the issue shall also be recorded on the journal.

Vote Counting

• Prior to the commencement of the counting process, the biometric registration officer shall open the statistics option in the biometric machine and show and read the information recorded on it to the agents and observers.
• Vote-counting shall be conducted in accordance with the relevant polling and counting procedure
• Pack the machine and place it in the relevant box, put the temper-evident barcode (TEB) of the polling station results on the biometric machine box
• The ballot papers lacking biometric confirmation stickers will be considered as invalid and counted as invalid votes.

Movement of Biometric Machines

Up to five biometric machines are put into an empty ballot box (without ballot papers) and sent to the provincial offices to be sent on to the districts and to polling centres and stations.

(The number of biometric machines equals the number of polling stations). At the end of the process, the biometric machines shall be put into empty ballot boxes (without ballot papers) again and sealed and along with other sensitive materials handed by the polling station chairperson to the polling centre manager, then to the district electoral officer and then transferred to the provincial office. The seal numbers like other sensitive materials shall be recorded in accordance with polling and counting procedures.

 

 

 

 

 

On 20 October, more than 400 female candidates will compete for the 68 parliamentary seats reserved for women. Many more women – there are over three million registered female voters – will cast their votes on Saturday, in an attempt to have their say on who represents them in the lower house of the parliament. AAN’s Jelena Bjelica and Rohullah Sorush have been looking back at women’s political participation in earlier decades and hearing from female candidates in Afghanistan about running for office despite threats, campaigning (in some places) despite having to wear a burqa, and being told by men that it is a sin to vote for a woman.

Afghan women, according to a 2014 UNDP report, have a higher political participation at the national and subnational level of governance than women do in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The reason for this is Afghanistan’s constitutional quota system, which reserves 68 out of 250 seats in parliament (27 per cent) for women (see this AAN’s guide to the Afghan parliament). (See Annex 1) Yet despite this high ’gender score’, any Afghan woman actually wanting to get into parliament needs courage – or money or, according to one report, ‘warlord backing’.

The quota system means there will always be at least 68 women in parliament. In 2018, as in 2010, the number of women candidates is roughly the same – about 400 women out of a total of about 2,500 candidates. (See Annex 1 for detail about the women running and AAN’s basic facts about the 2018 elections here.) In 2010, official women turnout was significant, comprising about 39 per cent of the total (1,668,617 out of a total of 4,265,354 votes cast according to the Independent Election Commission [IEC]). There needs to be some caution about this figure, though, as particularly in southern provinces there was ‘bulk voting’, ie men casting votes ‘for their women’ without them being present at the polling centres (AAN reporting here).

In Nimruz province, there was a particularly high female turnout – 60 per cent of the votes were cast in female polling stations. The two main female candidates there were locked in such a fierce competition that they won both parliamentary seats allotted to Nimruz (see this AAN analysis here), both the reserved women’s seat and the ‘open competition’ seat. This is turn meant that women secured 69 seats in the 2010-elected Wolesi Jirga.

This year has seen a slightly lower proportion of women registering to vote­. In 2004 and 2010, the proportion of registered voters, male to female, was roughly 40:60. This year, it is 36:64 (3,067,918 women in total). (See this AAN analysis).

Although the numbers look good on paper, they belie the difficulties many Afghan women face, both those pursuing a political career and those exercising their right to vote, given Afghanistan’s traditional patriarchal society.

Favouring men

The most evident challenge that women candidates face is that they are women in a male-dominated and largely sex-segregated society, one that, in many areas, castigates women for taking public roles. The fact that a lot of politicking is done in all-male gatherings just adds a further obstacle. As the renowned historian, the late Nancy Dupree, wrote in her 1981 paper “Revolutionary Rhetoric and Afghan Women”, being an MP also hardly fits the dominant model of idealised Afghan womanhood:

Afghan history and folklore is replete with idealized accounts and legends of heroic mothers and wives who provided inspiration to their menfolk in times of crisis. If the ideal personality type for Afghan men is the warrior-poet, a lauded personality type for Afghan women is the poet-heroine.

In other words, the model Afghan woman inspires and supports her menfolk, rather than acting in her own right. Dupree, in the same paper, looks at how the first handful of women went against the grain by standing for the 1965 parliament (women were given the vote in the 1964 constitution). This was in the pre-quota era when all candidates, men and women, ran in open competition with each other (as was the case globally). It is only in more recent years that some parliaments and some political parties have established quotas for women. Four women, said Dupree “stood for, and won election to the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) of the 12th Parliament.”

During the 1969 parliamentary elections, women failed to secure any seats (see Hafizullah Emadi’s paper, “Establishment of Afghanistan’s Parliament and the Role of Women Parliamentarians: Retrospect and Prospects”, 2015). Emadi points out that between the 1973 coup that brought down the monarchy and constitutional changes in 1987, noparliamentary elections were held. Nevertheless, four women participated in Prime Minister Daud’s Melli Jirga (National Jirga), a hand-picked parliament that was convened in 1977. During much of the pro-Soviet PDPA rule, the Revolutionary Council ruled the country had a number of female members.

After Najibullah introduced a new constitution in July 1987 that revived the parliamentary system, there were a number of women MPs from Kabul and the provinces. “Parliamentary elections under the Soviet occupation were supervised by the pro-Soviet ruling party and individuals with close ties to the party secured seats in both houses of parliament,” Emadi concludes. The 1988 election was mainly based on seats allocated in advance, with some given to non-party members, newly registered (leftist only) opposition parties and some seats kept for the mujahedin, and with only symbolic voting. All in all it was designed to safeguard a majority for Najibullah’s Watan party (the renamed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan).

On the ‘other side’ of the war, in the exiled communities of Pakistan where millions of Afghan refugees lived, as Dupree noted in a 1989 paper “Seclusion or service: Will women have a role in the future of Afghanistan?” which also deals with women’s political participation, women’s lives there were deliberately limited. Dupree noted that the ‘interim government’ formed by the seven major Sunni mujahedin factions severely restricted the lives of Afghan women in refugee camps in Peshawar, on ideological grounds, to family duties and roles of mother and wife. The Supreme Council of the seven parties, she wrote, directed the interim government, to “Develop moral virtues and combat corruption and denigration by observing the principles of purdah…”(1) Dupree also noted that the political charters issued by the seven factions, in addressing women-related issues, ranged from “explicit insistence on strict seclusion to generalized statements supporting women’s participation in the task of development.” (see page 3 to 5 of the paper). She added:

At the two-week Shura (Consultative Council) meetings held in Islamabad in Feb.-Mar. 1989 to elect yet another interim government, a proposal to include women was flatly rejected (personal communication).

Since 2001, Afghan women have not only had the right to vote and stand, but the quota system reserves them seats. Even so, the social stereotypes referred to by Dupree in 1981 have survived, as have the obstacles women encounter if they attempt to go ‘against the grain’ and run for parliament, as AAN found out when hearing from some of the female candidates.

Going against the grain

Mariam Durrani,one of 13 female candidates from Kandahar province for the 2018 Wolesi Jirga elections told AAN that the people in her province are actively advocating againstwomen candidates:

I heard from a friend that a taxi driver was telling passengers not to vote for women. He said it was illegal [to vote for women]. We openly see that men have more [public] support than women. 

Mina Jalal, one of the three female candidates from Kunar province, shared a similar story:

The day before yesterday I went to campaign in an area. A woman told me that she and other women were told not to take part in election, but if they did, they should not cast their votes for female candidates because it was a sin.

Jalal praised the woman for her wittiness. “If voting is a sin,” she had told those trying to lay down the law, “it’s a sin for both men and women.”

IWPR also reported that Shahba Shahrokhi, one of the six female candidates running for one seat reserved in Samangan province was facing difficulties within her own family:

When I decided to nominate myself, my family immediately disapproved of my decision, with my close relatives then following suit by expressing negative ideas that, as a girl, I would be unable to succeed… [They told me] that there were too many problems, that this society and its traditions have always been against women who somehow make trouble for men. All these words and excuses were intended to change my mind, but I refused to accept this.

In Helmand province, where out of 92 candidates nine women are running for two reserved seats, one of the female candidates, Jamila Niazi, complained to Pajhwok that she was unable to conduct her election campaign, “We face public criticism – culturally motivated – if we display our photographs as part of the campaign.”

Some other candidates, like Shekiba Hashemi, sitting MP and candidate from Kandahar province have not been allowed to campaign in public places. Hashemi told AAN she was not allowed to campaign in the central Shia mosque in Kandahar, the Imam Bara mosque, because she is a woman. “They only allowed one candidate, Sayed Moqtada Miran, to campaign in the mosque, but not the others, specifically not me, a woman,” she said.

Yet ‘sisterly’ support is also not forthcoming, said some of the women candidates we spoke to, with fierce rivalry among women running for office. Shirin Mohseni, a female candidate from Daikundi said that, although she is in her view a leading candidate in Daikundi, “there is a strong and negative rivalry” among women contenders in her province. She told AAN:

There is a rumour that my name has been removed from the list of Daikundi candidates. I know it is the women who are saying this.

Samira Khairkhwa, a female candidate from Balkh also said her problem come from the competition. “Some rival candidates whose names I can’t say have torn down my photos in some areas,” she told AAN.

Security issues

Insecurity during the election campaign is, however, probably an even bigger problem facing women candidates. Humaira Ayubi, a former MP from Farah province and one of the three female candidates running there this year, described the problems:

I have not been able to get out of home and go for campaigning. I am running my campaign from home and people come and visit me here, but I was hoping to go to the villages and see the people. Now, when someone does not have a good appearance and comes to my home, I am really scared he might be an attacker. Insecurity is very high in Farah.

She said that in many villages in Farah province, elections will probably not take place, like in the village of Genahkan, where the fighting is so intensive that all its residents have left the area. This according to Aybi means 900-950 fewer voters. She said that in Kahdanak village, the Taleban have threatened people not to participate in the election.

In Kahdanak, there is propaganda against another female candidate, Belqis Roshan. People have been told [by the Taleban] not to vote for her because she is an infidel.

(Belqis Roshan is close to leftist-feminist former MP Malalai Joya, also from Farah, who has been expelled from the Wolesi Jirga in 2007 after she raised some vehement criticism of the warlords in its ranks.)

Mariam Zurmati, one of eight female candidates in Paktika province has similar concerns. She is reliant on meeting the people, she says, because she cannot afford to pay voters – but meeting the voters is difficult because she is a woman.

There are threats from the Taleban. It is against all Afghans and the candidates, but it impacts women more because it prevents women from having big gatherings and campaigns. Also, because the society is very traditional here and the level of awareness is very low, it is difficult for women candidates to appear in big gatherings. Some former MPs and also current candidates are spending a great deal of money to buy the people and their votes, but I can’t do this.

Mina Jalal, one of three female candidates from Kunar province also pointed to the restrictions female candidates face. She said many have to wear burqas when they go to campaign in the villages, which for a candidate campaigning in Afghanistan where his or her face is their identity, is a serious impediment. She told AAN:

I went to campaign in my own district, Narai. There were security threats from the Taleban… I went only with a driver and another person and I also wore a burqa so that nobody could know me on the way. Women candidates can’t hold big campaigns due to threats. They also must wear a burqa when they go to villages.

Many other women candidates AAN spoke to faced the same or similar security concerns, with threats coming not only from the Taleban, but also local armed groups. Gulalai Nur Safi, a former MP from Balkh province who is running again, told AAN that security concerns in her province revolve around ‘irregular armed groups’. One of her campaigners was beaten up in Salarzayi village by “powerful irregular armed men,” she told AAN. For security reasons, she did not want to name them.

In Takhar, in Rustaq district, a campaign rally for female candidate Nazefa Yusofi Beg was targeted with a bomb (see here). 22 people were killed and many others injured in the attack, although Yusofi Beg escaped unscathed. Given the marginal presence of the Taleban in the district and the history of irregular armed groups there, suspicion has largely fallen on the latter (see this AAN report about insurgent groups in Takhar). (There is more information about female candidates in this AAN overview).

Women – once they get into parliament

Justbecause Afghan women can stand and vote and have a secured presence in parliament does not mean, however, that women MPs will necessarily work for women’s rights. A study by Oxfam in 2011 on safeguarding women’s rights found that Afghan female MPs lack of unity holds them back. Women MPs have not capitalized on their chunk of seats and their potential influence in parliament to try to improve women’s lives. The Oxfam study pointed not only to disunity, but also who was backing at least some of them and who they might actually be answering to.

Female parliamentarians are disunited; many are elected with the support of warlords and are answerable to them. One result of this is that female politicians do not necessarily work to support women’s rights. For example, the 2009 Shia Personal Status Law was passed by a parliament with over 25 per cent female representation despite the fact that it drastically restricts the rights of Shia women and violates the constitution.

Another case in point is the 2013 parliamentary discussion on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law, when MP Fawzia Kufi insisted the law be debated, a move which almost cast it into oblivion (for more detail on this, see AAN reporting here and here).

If running for parliament in Afghanistan as a woman is a job for a heroine – facing down security threats and fighting stereotypes – the record of women MPs once in power has been something less than heroic. Afghanistan’s high ‘gender score’ based on the parliamentary quota system belies a less attractive reality.

Edited by Kate Clark

 

 

(1) The Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen (IUAM) interim government included: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami; Hezb-e Islami-ye Afghanistan headed by Mawlawi Muhammed Yunos Khales; Mahaz-e Melli-ye Islami-ye Afghanistan led by Sayyed Ahmad Gailani; Rabbani’s Jamiat-e Islami; Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami-ye Afghanistan led by Mawlawi Muhammadi; Mujadidi’s Jabha-ye Nejat-e Melli-ye Afghanistan; and Sayyaf’s Ittehad-e Islami-ye Afghanistan.

Dupree writes in a 1989 paper “Seclusion or service: Will women have a role in the future of Afghanistan?” on page 6:

An official published pronouncement which disturbed many men as well as women was issued in March 1988 when the Supreme Council of the 7-party Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahiden (IUAM) sponsored the formation of an interim government. On 4/24/88, they published a set of guidelines (Itehad-e-Islami; Afghan Jehad 1(4):2). This document consists of four chapters with 87 articles. Only one specifically mentions women. Article LVII, in Chapter III, outlining the Powers and Duties of Government, directs the government to:

Develop moral virtues and combat corruption and denigration by observing the principles of purdah (seclusion) provided for in the Sharia, ensure the unalienable rights of all individuals, men and women alike, and provide dignified conditions in the light of Islamic teachings.

Although the effectiveness of the interim government is widely questioned, this document seems to reflect a disturbing collective thinking among the Peshawar leadership and projects a dim future for women. One article cannot adequately address the problems facing women and certainly the insinuation that corruption and denigration must necessarily rise from women’s public presence is deplorable.

  

Annex 1: Number of reserved seats for women in Wolesi Jirga and number of women candidates for the 2018 Wolesi Jirga election (by province)

1. Kabul has 13 reserved seats, out of a total of 33 seats allocated for the province. Of the 119 female candidates for Kabul province, nine are incumbent MPs. Shahgul Rezayi who represented Ghazni province in the 2010-elected Wolesi Jirga, withdrawn her candidacy for this year’s election. Two female candidates, Sayyeda Masuda Yari and Mariam Sediqa Sadat, are former members of Kabul provincial Council. Two other female candidates for Kabul are members of political parties.  Nabila Sayedjan Zada Hamid affiliated to Hezb-e Ensaf-e Islami-ye Melli and Anisa Maqsudi is affiliated to Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami.

2. Bamyan has one reserved seat out of a total of four seats allocated for the province. Of 11 female candidates competing for Bamiyan procince, one is an incumbent MP, Safor Elkhani. One female candidate, Sharifa Arman Wasiq is affiliated to Hezb-e Ensejam-e Melli-ye Afghanistan.

3. Nuristan has one reserved seat for women, of a total two seats allocated for the province. Of seven female candidates competing in Nuristan, none are incumbent MPs and none are affiliated to any political parties.

4. Kunar has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats allocated for the province. Of three female candidates competing in the province, one is an incumbent MP – Wajma Safi. None are politically affiliated.

5. Khost has one reserved seat, out of a total of five seats allocated for the province. One of the two female candidates competing for a seat is Sahera Sharif an incumbent MP. Neither one is politically affiliated.

6. Uruzgan has one reserved seat, out of a total of three seats allocated for the province. None of the eight female contenders is an incumbent MP. One candidate, Duranil Nurzai is affiliated to National United Movement Party of Afghanistan (De Afghanistan de Melli Wahdat Wolesi Tahrik Gund)

7. Nimroz has one reserved seat, out of a total of two seats allocated for the province. One of the three contenders, Farida Hamidi is an incumbent MP.

8. Balkh has three reserved seats for women, out of a total of 11 seats allocated for the province. Of 22 female candidates competing, three are incumbent MPs (Gulalai Nur Safi, Breshna Rabi and Saifora Niazi); and the other three are politically affiliated (Sonia Rajabi to Hezb-e Melli-ye Taraqi-ye Mardom Afghanistan (Afghan People’s National Progressive Party), Merman Robaba Nayebi, to Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom-e Afghanistan and Shekiba Shekib is affiliated to Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan).

9. Daikundi has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats allocated for the province. Of eight female candidates competing two are incumbent MPs (Shirin Mohseni and Raihana Azad). Raihana Azad represented Uruzgan province in the 2010-elected Wolesi Jirga. Shirin Mohseni is affiliated to Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom-e Afghanistan.

10. Herat has five reserved seats, out of a total of 17 seats allocated for the province. Of 28 female candidates competing, three candidates are incumbent MPs (Simin Barakzai, Massuda Karokhi and Nahid Ahmadi Farid). None of 28 contenders are politically affiliated.

11. Kapisa has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats allocated for the province. Of eight female candidates competing none are incumbent MPs, nor are politically affiliated.

12. Paktika has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats allocated for the province. Of eight female candidate,competing, Najia Babakarkhel Urgunyar is an incumbent MP. None of them have political affiliation.

13. Panjshir has one reserved seat, out of a total of two seats allocated for the province. Of two female candidates competing Rahila Salim is an incumbent MP. Neither one is politically affiliated.

14. Parwan has two reserved seats, out of a total of six seats allocated for the province. Of 11 female candidates competing, two emale candidates are incumbent MPs (Zakia Sangin and Samea Azizi Sadat). None of 11 female contenders from Parwan are politically affiliated.

15. Wardak has two reserved seats, out of a total of five seats allocated for the province.  Of nine female candidates competing, two are incumbent MPs (Seddiqa Mubarez and Engineer Hamida Akbari). Two other candidates are politically affiliated. Rohina Walizada is affiliated to Hezb-e Islami and Dr Zia Gul Rezayi is affiliated to Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom.

16. Laghman has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats allocated for the province. Of four female candidates competing, Zaifnun Safi is an incumbent MP. None of them have political affiliation.

17. Sar-e Pul has one reserved seat, out of a total of five seats allocated for the province. Of four female candidates competing, Aziza Jales is an incumbent MP and Marzia Ramazani is affiliated to Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom.

18. Badakhshan has two reserved seats, out of a total of nine seats allocated for the province. Of 9 female candidates competing, Nilofar Ibrahimi is an incumbent MP and Sadiqa Adib is affiliated to Jombesh-e Melli Islami.

19. Jawzjan has one reserved seat, out of a total of five seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of four female candidates competing none are incumbent MPs nor politically affiliated.

20. Faryab has three reserved seats, out of a total of nine seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of 19 female candidates competing, two are the incumbent MPs (Asifa Shadab and Rangina Kargar); and two others are affiliated to Jombesh-e Melli Islami (Gita Said and Shafiqa Sakha Yolchi).

21. Zabul has one reserved seat, out of a total of three seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of six female candidates competing, none are incumbent MPs nor politically affiliated.

22. Samangan has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of six female candidates competing, none are incumbent MPs, nor politically affiliated.

23. Kandahar has three reserved seats, out of a total of 11 seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of 13 female candidates competing, three are incumbent MPs (Fariba Ahmadi Kakar, Shekiba Hashimi and Bibi Hamida Yosufi). Shamsia Fazli is affiliated to Hezb-e Motahid-e Melli Afghanistan.

24. Helmand has two reserved seats, out of a total of eight seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of nine female candidates competing, Nasima Niazi and Habiba Sadat are incumbent MPs; and two other candidates, Razia Baloch and Nargis Rokhshan are former Provincial Council members of Helmand.

25. Kunduz has two reserved seats, out of a total of nine seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of 16 female candidates competing for two are incumbent MPs (Shukria Paikan and Dr Fatema Aziz). Two other female candidates are politically affiliated. Shukria Sarbeland is affiliated to Hezb-e Islami and Frozan Golchi is affiliated to Jombesh-e Melli Islami.

26. Nangarhar has four reserved seats, out of a total of 14 seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of 18 female candidates competing two are incumbent MPs (Sayeam Khogyani and Arian Yun). Another candidate, Shafiqa Sherzai Seyar is affiliated to Hezb-e Islami.

27. Badghis has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of nine female candidates competing, only Safia Aimaq is an incumbent MP.

28. Logar has one reserved seat, out of a total of four seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of five female candidates competing, Dr Shakila Hashimi is an incumbent MP.

29. Baghlan has two seats, out of a total of eight seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of 12 female candidates competing, two are incumbent MPs (Najia Aimaq and Shukria Isakhel).

30. Paktia has one reserved seat, out of a total of  five seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of five female candidates competing, Razia Saadat Mangal is an incumbent MP.

31. Takhar has two reserved seats, out of a total of nine seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of 12 female candidates competing, Habiba Danesh is an incumbent MP and Shahnaz Mariam Mahtab is affiliated to Jombesh-e Melli Islami.

32. Ghor has two reserved seats, out of a total of six seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of 5 female candidates, Ruqia Nayel is an incumbent MP.

33. Farah has one reserved seat, out of a total of five seats in the Wolesi Jirga. Of three female candidates competing, Humaira Ayubi is an incumbent MP.

34. Kuchis have three reserved seats for women, out of a total of ten seats allocated for them. Of eight female candidates competing, Hamida Ahmadzai is an incumbent MP.

35. Ghazni has three reserved seats for women, out of a total of 11 seats in the Wolesi Jirga. However, Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni will not be taking place as planned on 20 October. (see AAN analysis here)

An attack in Kandahar city has left the province’s governor, NDS chief and police commander, the unrivalled strongman of southern Afghanistan, General Abdul Razeq, dead. The commander of United States and NATO forces, General Scott Austin Miller who had just been meeting the three, was unharmed. The attack mimics earlier assassinations of officials and strongmen. With a slew of well-documented war crimes to his name, Razeq was also credited with keeping the south of Afghanistan relatively stable. Yet the repercussions of this assassination are difficult to underestimate and not just because the deaths of the province’s main officials came two days before an already shaky election, concludes AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig. (With input by Kate Clark and a short biography of Razeq by Jelena Bjelica.)

How the attack happened

The full details of the attack on 18 October 2018 are yet to emerge, but Afghan media reports, based on sources in Kandahar, and official statements by Afghan authorities, Resolute Support and the US military in Afghanistan (USFOR-A) have begun to make the contours of the incident visible.

The attack took place in the afternoon of 18 October at the governor’s compound, after a high-ranking meeting about election security had ended, and the participants were on their way out. “Provincial officials including the governor, the police chief and other officials were accompanying the foreign guests to the [helicopter] when the gunshots happened,” said Sayed Jan Khakrezwal, head of the Kandahar provincial council according to the BBC.

Spokesmen for the ministries of defence and interior said at a press conference later in the day reported by Kabul daily Etilaat-e Ruz that a member of Kandahar governor Toryalai Wisa’s bodyguard opened fire. They identified him as “Gulbuddin.” The Taleban, who immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on their website, said he was an “infiltrator” called “Abu Dujana.” According to officials quoted by the BBC, there were also at least two hand grenade explosions. Photos of the alleged assassin appeared on the social media but their source remained unclear.

According to the ministries of defence and interior statement, Razeq was killed along with the provincial NDS chief, Abdul Momen Hussainkhel, while Governor Wisa and the police chief of the southern zone, General Nabi Elham, were injured and hospitalised.

Resolute Support tweeted confirmation of the attack and reported that Gen Miller was “uninjured,” the attacker was “reportedly dead” and “3 Americans [were] wounded.” Later tweets by USFOR-A specified that those wounded had been “1 US servicemember [sic], 1 US Civilian and 1 [non-US] Coalition contractor” and that they had been “medically evacuated and are stable.”

The Associated Press quoted “Army Col. David Butler, who attended the Kandahar meeting with Miller, [saying …] Raziq […]  was clearly the target, not the U.S. general. “It was pretty clear he was shooting at Raziq,” Butler told The Associated Press, adding that Miller was nearby but not in the line of fire.” And further

The delegates had just gathered for a group photo when gunfire broke out inside the provincial governor’s compound in Kandahar City, according to an AP television cameraman who was present when the shooting began. Everyone scattered, and the U.S. participants scrambled toward their nearby helicopter. But a firefight broke out between the U.S. service members and Afghan police when they tried to stop the U.S. delegation from reaching their helicopter, said the cameraman.

There were also reports about further casualties. The Afghanistan Journalists Centre tweeted the photo of Muhammad Salim Angar, cameraman for the Kandahar branch of Radio Television Afghanistan who was reportedly killed in the incident. Akmal Dawi, a journalist with the Voice of America, said, also on Twitter, that “several were killed in cross fire by various armed parties” (as in the original).

The Taleban statement posted quickly after the killings as ‘breaking news’ signed by “Qari Muhammad Yusof Ahmadi, spokesman of the Islamic Emirate” evolved over the hours to follow. First, it was a two-paragraph simply reporting that an infiltrator had killed “the brutal commander (wahshi kumandan) Abdul Razeq”, without mentioning Miller. Later, it grew to four paragraphs, claiming that “the actual targets were the American commander Miller and Kandahar’s brutal commander Abdul Razeq.”

By contrast, the RS and USFOR-A statements soon after the attack insisted, also in tweets, this was an “Afghan-on-Afghan” incident, in what sounded like an attempt to rescue the recent started US-Taleban talks led by Washington’s special peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Although in the past “fighting and talking” went on simultaneously, it is difficult to imagine how the US government will be able to defend holding talks with an organisation that claims it attempted to kill the US supreme commander in Afghanistan.

Hours after Razeq’s assassination, what the Voice of America’s Pashto service called “his tribesmen” called on President Ashraf Ghani to appoint his younger brother, Tadin Khan, as new police chief in Kandahar. According to information AAN received from Kandahar, also member of the Karzai family, former Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai (who do not belong to Razeq’s Achakzai tribe) and many members of Kandahar’s provincial council attended the meeting.

A constellation of the southern strongmen

Although all three Afghan deaths will reverberate, the death of General Razeq will have the greatest consequences. Like many powerful Afghans, he was greater than his official position, the police chief of Kandahar province, implied. He was, in fact, the strongman of greater Kandahar, the whole Afghan south (Afghans sometimes call the region the south-west). He had began as the border police chief in Spin Boldak, initially as a client of Ahmad Wali Karzai, the younger brother of then president Hamed Karzai. Because he was devoid of a strong, armed power base in his home region, the president had made Ahmad Wali into a kind of regional warlord. Officially, Ahmad Wali Karzai was the head of the elected Provincial Council of Kandahar, a position that in most places rarely rises above the ceremonial. Unofficially, though, he presided over a network of provincial strongmen who, like him, tended to be appreciated, admired and courted by parts of the US military and CIA, as well as some Afghans for their ruthlessness and anti-Taleban prowess. (Allegations against Ahmad Wali, that he was on the CIA payroll and played a major part in the southern drugs trade can be read here.)

Razeq was one of the constellation of strongmen, allies of the Karzais, who emerged in the south in the early years after 2001. Others included former Uruzgan governor Jan Muhammad (assassinated in July 2011 – AAN background here), his nephew, Uruzgan police chief Matiullah (assassinated in 2015 – AAN background here and here); former governor of Helmand, Sher Muhammad Akhundzada; and Assadullah Khaled, former governor of Ghazni and Kandahar (2005-08) and chief of the NDS (2012-15), who was maimed but not killed by a Taleban assassin in January 2012. (Khaled, has recently returned into Afghan politics and set up his own political group, Omid-e Sabah (Hope for Tomorrow; media report here). He appears to harbour ambitions for the 2019 presidential elections. (1))

After Wali Karzai was assassinated by a member of his personal entourage in July 2011, five days before Jan Muhammad, Razeq replaced and surpassed him as a much more powerful strongman, with clout across southern Afghanistan.

As of January 2018, Razeq started to support then Balkh provincial governor Atta Muhammad Nur who was fighting not to be replaced by President Ashraf Ghani. He then came under threat to be removed himself, by the Interior Ministry (media report here). He states these attempts were conspiracies to destabilise southern Kandahar and countered the removal threats by saying the Ghani-Abdullah government had not appointed him (he came into his latest position in May 2011, under President Karzai, following the assassination of his predecessor as Kandahar’s police chief, Khan Muhammad Mujahed; media report here), so it also could not fire him:

“This government has neither appointed me, nor it can remove me. I have been appointed based on the demands of Kandahar people and I will leave based on Kandahar residents’ demands,” Raziq said in the interview.

Razeq was also critical of the peace agreement between the Afghan government and Hezb-e Islami. He alleged that Hezb fighters who had released as a result of the deal has joined the Taleban insurgency in his domain southern Afghanistan.

As a result, Razeq received Atta‘s support and was courted by newly emerging anti-Ghani opposition groups, particularly the so-called ‘Ankara Coalition’ (see AAN background here) of which Atta is one of the leaders. After today’s incident in Kandahar, Atta issued a statement online (quoted here), that Razeq’s assassination in a safe place and under strict security measures proved that he had been killed “due to conspiracies of his rivals and ‘inner circles’ having links with the top government officials.” Observers in Kandahar told AAN Razeq’s involvement in a countrywide political issue like that of Atta’s replacement was more a policy of self-insurance than real appetite for a political role on the national level – in contrast to Atta’s political ambitions.

The Taleban had tried to kill Razeq several times before. The most spectacular attempt was a sofa bomb that, in January 2017, killed 11 people, including the UAE ambassador and four more UAE diplomats (which led to a crisis between the Arabic country and the Taleban), but left Razeq, who had left the room just before the bomb detonated alive. (A similar bomb killed Helmand candidate Abdul Jabar Qahraman in nearby Lashkargah only one day before the attack on Razeq.)

US dilemmas

The killing of Razeq shines a new light at one of the dilemmas of US policies in Afghanistan. All too often, the international military, diplomats and donors look for individuals, single strong men, that they can ‘work with’. (The same was the case on the national level, with president Karzai – until, in US government’s eyes, he no longer complied.) Yet, men like Razeq are also extremely brutal, committing atrocities that have stirred up resistance. An account of this is provided by Canadian journalist Matthieu Aikins as he described how Nurzais in Panjwayi responded to violence by Razeq’s Achakzai-dominated border police, including the extrajudicial killings of 16 tribesmen in 2006 by joining the Taleban. (See also this Chatham House report.)

In May 2017, the United Nations Committee against Torture released a report describing “numerous and credible allegations” that Razeq is “widely suspected of complicity, if not of personal implication, in severe human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and …secret detention centers.” In response, Human Rights Watch’s Patricia Gossman asked “Will Afghanistan Prosecute Kandahar’s Torturer-in-Chief?“ Razeq “operates far outside the law,” Gossman wrote, “and has powerful support, notably from US intelligence and security officials, who consider him an ally in the fight against the Taliban.”

HRW had earlier accused Razeq (and a number of other strongmen and commanders) in a 2015 report titled “’Today We Shall All Die’: Afghanistan’s Strongmen and the Legacy of Impunity“ of well documented allegations of “serious human rights violations [with] impunity [that] include allegations of mass killings, murder, rape, torture, beatings, enforced disappearances, theft, and arbitrary detention. (…) Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq ha[s] committed many acts of torture and enforced disappearances, and there is strong evidence that Raziq himself has been responsible for extrajudicial executions.” A graphic account of these disappearances was provided by journalist Anand Gopal reporting on more than 40 unidentified bodies that were found in Kandahar city and other places in the province in October 2013 alone, many of which could not be identified “because of smashed teeth, and missing noses, eyes or heads”. (See also this 2011 piece by Aikins.)

Both US and Afghan governments turned a blind eye to the numerous atrocities which Razeq was accused of, because they felt Kandahar’s security depended on him. (The same pattern of international supporters ‘holding their noses’ and ignoring war crimes can be seen in their dealings with Ahmad Wali Karzai, Matiullah, Assadullah Khaled and a host of others.)

Razeq’s rule drove the insurgency, but also contained it. Kandahar, under his watch, especially in recent years, has been relatively stable. He drove the Taleban out of Kandahar city and adjacent districts, while there is significant but static Taleban control over more outlying areas.

This means that, whatever comes of the 18 October bloodshed at the Kandahar governor’s mansion, it is unlikely to be good. Relying on single charismatic, if brutal individuals to keep order will always leave the Afghan state vulnerable if that individual is killed. Here, what happened in Uruzgan province, after Jan Muhammad and Matiullah were killed is a warning. Both men were brutal. The actions of both had driven the conflict. Yet, after they were assassinated, the Afghan National Security Forces fragmented. Smaller commanders started competing for power and security deteriorated. A number of observers have expressed that Kandahar could experience the same fate with the ‘kingpin’ gone (see for example here and here).

Conclusion: an attack not on the elections that will affect the elections

Everyone has been expecting that the Taleban would take aim at Afghanistan’s soon-approaching parliamentary elections. They had said they would “leave no stone unturned“ (quoted here) to prevent them. Indeed, ten candidates have been killed in the last two months and four others injured in attacks although, with the exception of Qahraman, the Taleban have not taken any responsibility for any of them. However, this attack, on Razeq and the other senior officials was not expected at this time.

Assuming the Taleban were responsible, the elections do not seem to have been the point of this attack. Eliminating a formidable opponent was the goal. The death of Razeq could reduce the southern region to turmoil, if only because there will be wrangling over who will replace him (chief of police in Kandahar is a powerful and, because near the border and major drugs producing areas in Helmand, lucrative position). Also, in the very short-term, his death – and those of the two other senior provincial officials and the hospitalisation of a fourth – will affect the elections. Security forces, primed to safeguard polling stations and other electoral infrastructure, have been left leaderless. An imminent Taleban attack on Kandahar city cannot be ruled out.

Edited by Kate Clark and Martine van Bijlert

 

(1) A former Canadian deputy ambassador to Afghanistan who worked closely with Assadullah Khaled, testified before the Canadian parliament in 2009 that Khaled was directly involved in torture (media report here). Sher Muhammad Akhundzada was Helmand governor (2001-05) under Karzai, then removed under British pressure as a precondition for the UK sending NATO/ISAF troops to Helmand because of his involvement in the drug trade (900 tonnes of opium were found in his home). Karzai then appointed him senator, and Sher Muhammad is now running for parliament.

 

Annex: Abdul Razeq, a short biography

Abdul Raziq was born in 1979 and spent early years of his life in Spin Boldak, a border district with a major border crossing to Pakistan in Kandahar province. He is an Achakzai Pashtun.

It is not clear when his family fled to Pakistan, but Razeq probably spent his teens in exile. He joined Gul Agha Sherzai’s and Fayda Muhammad’s unit formed in 2001. He was then about 22 years old and still completely unknown. The Institute for the Study of War in its 2010 report, “Politics and Power in Kandahar” points out that in post-2001 ‘Sherzai came to rely heavily on Razeq and his militias to provide him with military muscle’.

It is not clear when exactly Razeq was given a colonel rank of the Afghan Border Police (ABP). According to an international organisation working closely with the ABP, this probably happened as early as 2004 or 2005 (personal communication with UN law enforcement official). But Razeq played all cards: military, political and economic. “Raziq’s influence in Spin Boldak derives not only from his military strength, but from his ability to use his power to exert considerable influence over Spin Boldak’s transit economy,” said the Institute for the Study of War in its 2010 report, using a euphemism for what is a mix of legit and illicit trade.

A Canadian journalist Matthieu Aikins, who wrote extensively about Razeq described him in 2006:

At thirty years of age, Razik was the most powerful Afghan Border Police officer in the southern part of the country—a former child refugee who scrambled to power during the post-9/11 chaos, his rise abetted by a ring of crooked officials in Kabul and Kandahar as well as by overstretched NATO commanders who found his control over a key border town useful in their war against the Taliban. With his prodigious wealth, loyal soldiers, and connections to top government officials, Razik was seen as a ruthless, charismatic figure, a man who brooked no opposition to his will. 

He also pointed out to a role Razeq and his militia played in 2009 presidential elections (see AAN report here):

In the 2009 presidential elections, Raziq proved that he could deliver vote counts through his commander network that extends through the districts of Maruf, Arghestan, Spin Boldak, Reg, Shorawak, and Daman.

But Razeq’s most important was a military role he played in his home-province Kandahar. According to Aikins’s report in The Atlantic), in the fall of 2010:

Raziq and his militia were given a starring role in the U.S.-led military offensive into Taliban- controlled areas west of Kandahar City, a campaign that boosted his prestige immensely. Mentored by an American Special Forces team, Raziq’s fighters won public praise from U.S. officers for their combat prowess. After the offensive, Raziq was promoted to brigadier general—a rank requiring a direct order from President Karzai—in a January ceremony at the governor’s mansion. As Ben Moeling, who was until July the State Department’s senior official in Kandahar province, explained to me at the time, the promotion was “an explicit recognition of his importance.”

Following the assassination of the police chief of Kandahar province, Khan Muhammad Mujahed, on 15 April 2011, Razeq was appointed the chief of the police of the province in May 2011. He continued to command his border units.

Razeq, Aikins reported, has long been publicly suspected of drug trafficking and corruption; allegations that he and his men have been involved in extrajudicial killings, torture, and illegal imprisonment. Razeq categorically denied all these charges, when Aikins confronted him.

Gen Razeq was quoted in January 2018, after the Ministry of Interior warned that it might take “legal action” against him, as saying that the National Unity Government had neither appointed him, nor could remove him from the post. “I have been appointed based on the demands of Kandahar people and I will leave based on their demands,” Raziq said,

 

 

 

Afghanistan’s parliamentary election campaign ended on Wednesday 17 October 2018 with the killing of Helmand candidate Jabbar Qahraman by a mine explosion in his campaign office – the fifth candidate killed during the campaign period. “Taghir” – change – has been a key word in many of the campaigns and a hope expressed by many voters, even though the slogans were rarely backed by detailed political programmes. Among the 2565 candidates running countrywide – 418 of them women according to IEC figures – there are many new faces, alongside a majority of the sitting MPs. Thomas Ruttig and the AAN team look at the spectrum of candidates and ponder what the turnover in the Wolesi Jirga might be (without claiming to be complete or exhaustive).

AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in the Election Conundrum series will be added to it.

A desire for change

“Taghir” – change – had already been a key word during the presidential election in 2014. Chief Executive Dr Abdullah represented a coalition called “Taghir wa Omid” (change and hope) and although president Ashraf Ghani did not use the word in his slogans, he did run on a promise of change, while preserving what had been achieved: “tahawol wa tadawom” (“transformation and continuity”). This time, “taghir” features again, as illustrated by many candidate posters and in some of the programmes that candidates distributed, some in print, others on memory sticks.

A surprising number of candidates who declare themselves ‘pro-reform’ are wealthy businessmen. One of them is Fahim Hashemi, running in Kabul. He is the owner of one of the biggest private television channels, One TV, and a big contractor for the international troops and oil import business. On his election materiel, the word “taghir” is the only feature, apart from his name, election symbol and ballot number. Similarly, another big business candidate for Kabul, Khan Muhammad Wardak, owner of one of Afghanistan’s biggest companies, Khan Steel, and also in the contracting business, further developed the slogan to say: Khan Muhammad ta raya, musbat badlun ta raya (“Vote for Khan Muhammad, vote for positive change”). So did Muhammad Latif Fayaz, from Ghazni province but running from Kabul under the slogan: Ba tadbir ba su-ye taghir (“With a plan for change“). He has worked for the United Nations and several national and international NGOs and is now teaching at private universities. Muhammad Sangar Amirzada, also competing in Kabul and a former member of ex-president Hamed Karzai’s chief of staff office, heads the youth activists’ network Shabaka-ye Eslah wa Taghir (“Network for Reform and Change“) affiliated with former minister and presidential hopeful for 2019 Omar Daudzai.

Many of the candidate businessman, and also some of the candidates with civil society background, own or run institutions of higher learning. This caters to the widespread demand for higher education, gives them an air of philanthropy, and helps create a voter base. Jan Muhammad Sherzad, a candidate in Helmand, told AAN that he believes that all 300 students of his English courses will vote for him (although, as usual, candidates have a tendency to overestimate the strength of their ties).

The next generation?

Conversations with many Afghans in the run-up to this election, as well as media reports indicate that there is widespread hope, again, that a new, young generation of candidates will make it into the now 250 seats-strong Wolesi Jirga. The hope underneath is that they will behave more honestly than the current set of parliamentarians who, as the New York Times recently wrote, are “notoriously corrupt” (see also AAN research on corruption in the Afghan parliament here and this AFP news item here). A poll by the Afghanistan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) published this month showed that only 9.6 per cent of respondents answered ‘yes’ when asked whether they were “satisfied” with the work of the current set of members of parliament (15.1 per cent said “somehow”) and only 6.5 per cent said they had “benefited” from their work (10.2 per cent said “somehow”).

This hope that a new generation will be voted in is fortified by the many new and young faces on some candidate lists, particularly in Kabul. In the capital alone, 804 candidates are running – the ballot paper has a newspaper format, with 15 pages – which leaves enough space for new, young faces. The officially published candidates’ lists however (see here; the lists themselves are in Dari only) do not give the dates of birth of the contenders, so their ages must be guessed. On many provincial lists, from Kunar via Uruzgan, Parwan and Panjshir to Herat, the faces of elders and mid-agers dominate.

Sons, daughters and relatives of the post-2001 establishment: politicians, former mujahedin leaders, businessmen

Among the younger candidates, the children and relatives of well-known warlords-turned-politicians and members of other prominent families are most easily identifiable. Some Afghan media have already browsed through the lists and categorised the candidates – foremost the Dari-only news website Khabarnama (see here).

One subcategory extensively described are the sons, daughters and other relatives of the first tier of the mujahedin party leaders, such as:

• Bator Dostum running from Jawzjan province: son of General Abdulrashid Dostum, first vice president and leader of the Uzbek-dominated Jombesh party,
• Muhammad Baqer Muhaqeq and Muhammad Ali Muhaqeq, running from Kabul and Balkh respectively: sons of Haji Muhammad Muhaqeq, leader of one of the Hazara-dominated parties, Hezb-e Wahdat and second deputy of the chief executive,
• Muhammad Alem Khalili running from Kabul: son of Muhammad Karim Khalili, the leader of another Hazara-dominated party, Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom, a former vice president and now chairman of the High Peace Council (HPC);
• Haji Abdul Reza Khalili running from Kabul with the slogan “Excellence, pragmatism and accountability”: a nephew of HPC chief Khalili, with interests in real estate; he reportedly also owns production companies for mineral water and construction materials,
• Jamaluddin Hekmatyar running from Kabul: son of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the recently reconciled leader of Hezb-e Islami Afghanistan (AAN background here),
• Zaher Qadir, a sitting MP already and the son of late eastern mujahedin leader Haji Qadir, in Nangrahar,
• Sayed Taha Sadeq running from Herat: son of western Afghanistan’s grey eminence, former governor Ismail Khan,
• Sayed Mujtaba Anwari and Sayed Mahdi Anwari, both running in Kabul: sons of the late Sayed Hussain Anwari, leader of the Shia mujahedin party Harakat-e Islami, former minister of agriculture and of planning and former governor of Kabul and Herat.

None of the major ‘mujahedin party’ leaders are running themselves: not Sayyaf, Qanuni or Muhaqeq who were members of both the 2005 and 2010 Wolesi Jirgas (1); HamedGailani, who was candidate in 2005, or Ismail Khan and Hekmatyar, who had so far never ran.

Other – not so young – close relatives of powerful politicians include Muhammad Rafiq Sherzai, the brother of 2014 presidential candidate and former Kandahar and Nangrahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai, and Humayun Ramazan, the brother of Ahmad Shah Ramazan, a sitting MP; both are running from Balkh. Also, Sayeda Massuda Yari, daughter-in-law of late Haji Sulaiman Yari, who was a selected senator for the Upper House from Maidan Wardak, and Ruqia Alemi Balkhi, sister of minister for Refugees and Returnees Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi. Both are running from Kabul.

Almost as well known, at least among Afghans, are those from the families of the second tier of former mujahedin leaders:

• Zabihullah Almas, running from Kabul: son of sitting MP Haji Muhammad Almas Zahed from Parwan province, who was recently appointed as presidential advisor and is not running again,
• Haji Ajmal Rahmani, running from Kabul: nephew of General Baba Jan, a major commander in the area of Bagram airbase, who became rich as a contractor providing for the base’s supplies and is said to be financially supporting a number of other candidates; Haji Ajmal himself recently injected substantial capital into Afghanistan’s professional football league – now named the “Rahmani Foundation Afghan Premier League” in his honour – and bought one of its teams. (A brother of Baba Jan is also running, again: Mir Rahman Rahmani, currently the head of the Wolesi Jirga’s economic commission),
• Azizullah Amiri, running from Kunduz: son of late commander Amir, one of the famous Ittehad-e Islami leaders in the north, running for the first time,
• Haidar Khan Naimzai, a current MP who is running for the kuchi constituency again: son of Naim Kuchi, a former Taleb who reconciled with the Karzai government after he was released from Guantanamo,
• Mir Wais Salam, running for a kuchi seat, while his father, sitting MP Abdul Salam Raketi, runs in Zabul,
• Shah Aghasi Ibrahimkhel, running from Balkh: son of famous Jihad-time commander Akhtar Muhammad Ibrahimkhel (better known as Akhtar Luchak),
• Bashir Ahmad Ziayi, running from Takhar: son of Mullah Piram Qul Ziayi, one of the most important Jamiati commanders in the northeast and a 2005 MP, who branched out into the militia ‘business’ (AAN background here),
• Ahmad Tamim Jurat, running from Kabul: son of General Din Muhammad Jurat, a commander under late commander Ahmad Shah Massud, former deputy National Security Advisor and presidential advisor on security and defense who was sacked on 1 October 2018
• with Zia-ur-Rahman Kashmir Khan, in Kunar, the son of insurgent Hezb-e Islami commander Kashmir Khan, who reportedly died in a Pakistani capital in 2016, runs.

Many candidates use photos of their prominent family members to make the relationship plain. In some cases even non-relatives do this. Kabul candidate Sayed Baqer Mohseni Kazemi, for example, has put a picture of assassinated Shia party leader Mustafa Kazemi in the background of his posters – even though they are no relation of each other (he belongs to the same party, though).

Campaign poster of Kabul candidate Sayed Baqer Mohseni Kazemi with assassinated party leader Sayed Mustafa Kazemi in the background. Photo: Thomas Ruttig

There are also wealthy businessmen, or their young relatives, running who do not have a commander’s past. They include owner of Afghan United Bank, Ahmad Jawed Jaihun, who has a paid-for banner on the top of the ToloNews website (and, according to Reuters, “started life selling water on the streets of Kabul”); Ajmal Nawab, son of former governor of Paktika, Helmand and Nangrahar Gulab Mangal who have also branched out into the construction business; and Rais Muhammad Ibrahimzada in Balkh province, son of Ghulam Abbas Ibrahimzada, who is one of the richest men in the north and currently the deputy head of the Wolesi Jirga’s economy commission.

But the overlap between the categories of those who had a leadership background in the fight against the Soviets and those who have joined in the post-2001 wealth is obvious. Khabarnama has published two lists with 16 of the country’s richest businessmen – no businesswoman among them – running in the 20 October election. Part 1 can be found here and part 2 here (AAN’s English translation in the annex).

Relatives of (former) government officials

With Mariam Soleimankhail, Jamil Karzai (both in Kabul) and Rohullah Khanzada(in Kandahar), young, distant relatives of both post-2001 presidents are running. Soleimankhail is a niece of president Ghani who worked as head of the international affairs department in the presidential office and later in the government’s rural education programme. Jamil Karzai, a distant nephew of Hamed Karzai, was already an MP in the 2005 parliament. He is a minor businessman and runs his own National Moderation Party (Hezb-e Etedal-e Melli). Khanzada, a  businessman and contractor, is another cousin of Karzai.

In Herat, Basir Ahmad Arwin Taheri, a nephew of Rangin Dadfar Spanta, foreign minister and national security advisor under Karzai, is among the candidates. A cousin and a brother of Sayyed Abdul Wahid Qatali, President Ghani’s chief of staff – Sayyed Azim KabarzanI and Sayyed Khalil Qatali – are also running from Herat. Kabarzani has a background of working for Afghan cultural and international NGOs. There are also the sons of a former Herat mayor (Omar Nasir Mujaddedi), the influential head of the ulama council in western Afghanistan (Juma Gul Rahmani) and the former commander of the regional army corps who lost his life in a helicopter crash (Muhammad Omid Ghori).

A relative of a member of the Independent Election Commission is running from Herat: Naqibullah Arwin, brother of commissioner Wasima Badghisi.

A special case is the candidacy of Baktash Eshchi in Jowzjan. He is the son of former Jombesh politician Ahmad Eshchi, better known as Engineer Ahmad, who fell out with General Dostum. His outspokenness over the abuse he suffered led to a political crisis between president Ghani and his vice president Dostum that has still not been fully resolved. It will be interesting to see how Eshchi’s son will fare on 20 October. In Takhar province, former Jowzjan provincial governor Alem Sa’i, another Jombesh dissident, is running (more AAN background on both Eshchi and Sa’i here).

A Kabul shopkeeper has pinned a poster of former TV presenter and sitting MP Baktash Siawash to the wall of his stall. Photo: Thomas Ruttig.

Civil society, social movement and media candidates

At the other end of the spectrum, in particular when it comes to financial means, are the candidates with a background in civil society, social movements and the media. Probably the most prominent among them is Soraya Rahim Sobhrang, a previous member of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) who did not apply for the renewal of her AIHRC mandate (AAN background here). She is running in Herat. Maria Bashir, a former civil society activistrunning in the same province, was the first woman to hold a prosecutor’s position in the country.

In Nimruz, among only 12 candidates for two seats, Mir Ahmad Baloch is running, the head of the now defunct Baloch Social and Cultural Center in Zaranj that was ransacked and looted by local vested political interests. Somaya Ramesh, a long-standing civil and human rights activist, was a Herat provincial council member and before that director of a civil foundation called Nawandishan (New Thinkers) and founder of local radio station Shahrzad Radio. In Kabul, Baqi Samandari is well-known for his work with street children, as is Zahra Yagana, who organises support for families of victims of terrorist attacks and who heads a group of environmentalist volunteers who frequently clean Kabul’s notoriously dirty parks and streets. Zakia Wardak is the head of a charity organization, which her husband founded, and women’s rights activist. She is also head of the female engineers association. All three are running in Kabul.

Ahmad Behzad, a well-known sitting Herat MP who became one of the leaders of Jombesh-e Roshnayi (the Enlightenment movement, see AAN reporting here), is now running from Kabul.

Asef Ashna, running in Kabul too, also became active in several social movements – the Tabasom Movement (AAN background here), the Enlightenment Movement and Uprising for Change – after he resigned as deputy spokesman for the NUG’s Chief Executive. He had started his political career with the Right and Justice Party (AAN background here) but separated from it during the 2014 presidential election.

Ajmal Balochzada was a member of the Transitional Justice Action Group and the – promising, but now somewhat less active – youth network Afghanistan 1400 (AAN background here). In 2014, he supported the presidential campaign of Zalmai Rassul. After that he worked in the National Directorate for Security under its then chief Rahmatullah Nabil. He is now allied to Nabil’s Mehwar-e Mardom opposition group (AAN analysis here).

A somewhat special category are the former journalists, such as sitting MP and glamorous former Tolo TV host Baktash Siawash running from Kabul again or newly running Belal Sarwari in Kunar. There are several dozens of similar candidates, including a number of women such as Mariam Sama and Saleha Sadat, both formerly of Tolo TV, and Pashtana Arabzai from Shamshad TV.

Particularly the former TV hosts among them benefit from their face and name recognition. These include Muslim Sherzad and Same Mehdi. Mehdi worked for One TV and Tolo TV, where he was anchorman of the popular Siah-o Safid (“black and white”) weekly political show. He now runs the Payk investigative journalism centre. He is a son of Jamiat-e Islami MP Mohiuddin Mehdi who is also running again from Baghlan. An English-speaking journalist told AAN he recognised at least six former Afghan BBC reporters among the candidates. The number of former Tolo journalists is in the same range.

There are also a number of political and military analysts who are regular guests in TV talk shows that are running for parliament. These include Fazl-ul-Minullah Mumtaz from Parwan who is deemed to be close to Hezb-e Islami and General Jawed Kohestani, who used to head a moderate political party, was active in various anti-Soviet resistance groups and unsuccessfully ran in earlier elections.

As various prospective voters (and non-voters) told AAN, these candidates will try to build on their on-screen “fame” and may hope to appeal to a broad audience across ethnic boundaries. With successful journalist-turned-MP Baktash Siawash they have already a role model who, in 2010, was still a pioneer with this shift in his career.

But candidates with a civil society and social movement background are not necessarily independent or without political influence of their own. Various private TV channels are linked with political parties. Also, the presidents – Karzai, in his later years, and increasingly also Ghani – pulled younger personnel into their administrations, including from civil society, the media, NGOs and international organisations. A number of these figures later left the government, joined its critics or are preparing to play a role in the various presidential candidacies that are building up to compete with Ghani’s re-election campaign.

… and many known faces

Of the 230 MPs that are currently still in the Wolesi Jirga (after deaths and resignations) 174 have registered as candidates for the upcoming election– 58 women and 116 men. They include current Wolesi Jirga speaker Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi who served in this position during the whole extended tenure of eight and a half years. His slogan – “entering the parliament again to fight mafia and thieves” – somehow sounds hollow, as he had been involved in a corruption case himself and was ordered to pay back 5.4 million Afghani to the house which he was ruled to have inappropriately received (AAN reporting: here). Ibrahimi has repeatedly been urged to comply with the order by well-known critic, Kabuli MP and former planning minister, Ramazan Bashardost, who is running on an anti-corruption platform. Bashardost’s slogan: Palau az duzdha, ray az ma (“[Take the] palau from the thieves, [give your] vote to me”).

There are also two women from Ibrahimi’s family running, both in his home province of Kunduz: his daughter Kamela Ibrahimi and Basira Rasuli, who is a more distant relative.

Ibrahimi is joined in his candidacy by the entire current administrative board. (2) At least nine of the current heads of the 15 standing parliamentary commissions are also running again (revisit AAN’s guide to parliament here). (3) These are influential candidates, as they have been able to muster majorities in the house to be elected, often including support from both camps in the National Unity Government, who compete against each other for positions.

At the provincial level many influential and long-standing MPs are also running again, and for many it would be surprising if they did not win. Examples include Khaled Pashtun in Kandahar, Mawlawi Shahzada Shahed in Kunar, Jamiati commander Hazrat Gul and Mir Wais Yasini in Nangrahar, Amanullah Guzar in Kabul; Nader Khan Katawazai in Paktika, Sayed Muhammad Jamal Fukkuri-Beheshti and Muhammad Akbari in Bamian, Gul Pacha Majidi and Humayun Humayun in Khost, as well as the Zabuli heavyweight triumvirate of former commander Haji Abdul Salam Raketi, former provincial governor Hamidullah Tokhi and Abdul Qadar Qalatwal. This time, they are joined by Haji Muhammad Hashem Granai, a member of the Zabul provincial council and an influential war-time commander, running for Hezb-e Islami. He will compete with them for the three male seats in this province. Furthermore, there are former mujahedin commanders Mullah Malang (known as Lala Malang) in Badghis who was linked with Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami, and Ibrahim Malekzada in Ghor, the latter linked to Jamiat-e Islami.

A rest from work under a collection of election posters. Photo: Thomas Ruttig.

Ex-ministers and former government officials

Among the candidates for the new tenure of Wolesi Jirga there are at least six former ministers who are running themselves. Most of them belong to less powerful political forces or are independent, so it is difficult to gauge how big their chance to win are:

• Masuda Jalal running from Kabul: a former minister for women’s affairs and first female candidate for head of state in Afghanistan – during the 2003 Constitutional Loya Jirga and in the 2004 presidential election,
• Sayed Makhdum Rahin running from Kabul: former minister of information and culture, member of one of the pre-war elite families of Kabul and head of a new political party named Hezb-e Khedmatgar-e Afghanistan (Servants of Afghanistan Party) (media report here),
• Abdulhadi Arghandiwal running from Kabul: a former minister of economy and, more importantly, leader of a rival Hezb-e Islami faction that has not joined the party’s mainstream led again by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (AAN dossier here),
• Assadullah Zamir running in Kabul: a former agriculture minister and member of the Afghanistan 1400 network,
• Muhammadullah Batash running from Kunduz: former Minister of transport and governor of Faryab. He belongs to Jombesh party,
• Muhammad Aref Norzai running from Helmand:minister of tribal affairs in the Karzai era and MP in the 2005 Wolesi Jirga.

They are joined – all running from Kabul – by Mirza Muhammad Yarmand, former deputy minister of interior; Lutfullah Mashal, former deputy head of NDS and governor of Laghman; Tamim Nuristani, the former governor of Nuristan; Yunos Nawandesh, a former mayor of Kabul; General Sayed Aman Sadat, the former deputy chief of the Afghan Border Police; Hawa Alam Nuristani, a former MP for Nuristan and member of High Peace Council; Muhammad Qasim Jangalbagh, an ex-police chief of Kunduz (according to the Afghanistan Justice Project he was involved in the Afshar massacre in 1993); and former MP Shinkay Karokhel who is also running, after resigning as ambassador in Canada. Muhammad Omar Sherzad, former governor of Uruzgan and Farah, is running from Kandahar. Finally, Jawid Faisal, running in Kandahar, and Dawa Khan Minapal, a candidate for the kuchis, are both former government spokesmen.

Party politicians as independents

Only 205 candidates out of the total of 2565 – eight per cent countrywide – have registered as members of political parties. A fair number of known political party members, including leading ones, have registered as ‘independents’. Many of them seem to assume that they can garner more popular support if they do not publicise their membership. Among many Afghans, political parties are not particularly popular; many of the older ones are despised for their role in the wars of the past, while many new ones are considered vanity or money and influence generating schemes. Nevertheless, there are currently 72 political parties registered with the Ministry of Justice, of which 26 are fielding candidates under their name (more detail in this AAN analysis).

Among the candidates that have not declared their party allegiance are leading members of Jamiat-e Islami such as Nur-ul-Rahman Ekhlaqi, Abdul Hafiz Mansur and Mohiduddin Mehdi, as well as one of Hezb-e Islami’s chief negotiators for the 2017 peace deal (AAN background here), Karim Amin. There are also Ibrahim Malekzada, a well-known Jamiati commander from Ghor, and Hamidullah Tokhi from Zabul, who is known for his Hezb-e Islami affiliation. Even the high-profile leader of the small Hezb-e Kangara-ye Melli (National Congress Party), Latif Pedram, registered as ‘independent’. Ex-minister Rahin did not register under the name of the party he founded, and Zulfeqar Omid, who ran unsuccessfully from Daykundi in the past and now is a Kabuli candidate, did not give the name of the party he leads, Hezb-e Kar wa Tausea (Labour and Development Party). The same goes for Sayed Muhammad Hadi Hadi in Kabul from Harakat-e Islami-ye Mardom.

Nangrahar candidate Muhammad Sediq Patman is a member of the leadership council of the New National Front established by former finance minister and Afghan Mellat chairman Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi. In Kandahar, a young candidate, Nesar Ahmad is supported by leftist Hezb-e Watan activists.Jombesh and Hezb-e Islami members seem to have less problems to identify themselves as such. They are the two parties with most candidates registered, over 40 in each case.

Other candidates, such as sitting MPs Muhammad Naim Lalai Hamidzai and Hamdullah Nazek, the former head of NDS in Zabul and Helmand, and former senator and Helmand governor Sher Muhammad Akhundzada are known as close to ex-president Karzai – who is not represented by a political party.

Rahmatullah Wahidyar, a former Taleban member and later member of the High Peace Council is running again in Paktia.

Conclusion: new faces, old faces

Looking at the 2018 candidate lists, there is continuity in the overall number – as in 2010, some 2500 candidates are running. Also the percentage of the female candidates among them has remained stable, slightly over 15 per cent (for 25 per cents of the reserved seats). The bad image of the parliament has clearly not translated in a decreased interest to run: the number of candidates vying for a Wolesi Jirga seat is similar to that in 2010, with some 2500 contenders. The promise of access to power and resources, the possibility to build up political prestige and, for some, the parliamentary immunity that membership in the lower house provides has clearly not lost its attraction.

There is also continuity in the fact that a large majority of the sitting candidates – some 170, out of 230 by now (there were demises and resignations) – are competing for a seat again. Although their images might drown in the sea of the posters, their established influence – and their chances of winning – should not be underestimated. And on many provincial lists, from Kunar via Uruzgan, Parwan and Panjshir to Herat, it is the faces of elders and mid-agers that dominate over the young ones.

There is also a clear wish for change – reflected by, and attached to, the many new faces that are running. Some might run to because they want to serve their constituencies and do better than their predecessors, but many of them are linked to vested interests. And not all young, new or female candidates are reformers. On the other hand, even though several of the young and rich might run with the intention to protect or expand their families’ influence, they may not be opposed to reform. So far many voters hope for change, but they are not holding their breath.

 

(1) At the end of the 2010 Wolesi Jirga session none of these three leaders were still MPs. Qanuni replaced Fahim as Karzai’s vice president after his death in March 2014, Sayyaf resigned to run for the presidency in 2014 and Muhaqeq resigned to be on Abdullah’s presidential ticket (again).

(2) The current administrative board of the Wolesi Jirga, which is running again in its entirety, consists of:

1. Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, the current speaker of the house, running from Kunduz
2. Humayun Humayun, first deputy speaker, running from Khost again
3. Amir Muhammad Khan Yar, second deputy speaker, running from Nangarhar
4. Mirdad Khan Nejrabi, secretary of the Wolesi Jirga, running from Kapisa province
5. Erfanullah Erfan, deputy secretary of the Wolesi Jirga, running from Kabul

(3) In 2010, there were 18 standing commissions (“committees”) in the Wolesi Jirga, which by 2016 had been reduced to 15. The committee heads that are running again include:

• Mir Rahman Rahmani, head of the commission for the National Economy, NGOs, Rural Rehabilitation, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, running from Parwan again
• Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, head of the legislative commission, running from Herat again
• Eqbal Safi, head of the internal security commission, running from Kapisa
• Muhammad Azim Mohseni, head of finance and budget commission, in Baghlan
• Obaidullah Barekzai, head of the complaint commission, from Uruzgan, this time running from Kabul
• Sayed Muhammad Hassan Sharifi Balkhabi, head of the judiciary affairs, administrative reform and anti-corruption commission, running from Sar-e Pul
• Kamal Naser Osuli, head of education/higher education commission, running from Khost
• Muhammad Naim Lalai Hamidzai, head of counter narcotic commission, running from Kandahar
• Abdul Hafiz Mansur, head of the central audit commission, running from Kabul

Kabul street with banners for the 30 October 2018 parliamentarian elections in Afghanistan. Photo (c): Reuters/ Omar Sobhani – RC17C584F110

 

Annex: Businessmen running

Source: Khabarnama (here and here – some of these candidates are already discussed in the text)

Nine Known Rich Candidates for the Wolesi Jirga Election 2018

Haji Ajmal Rahmani: he is one of the richest young businessmen of Afghanistan. He is original from Parwan province. His father, Mir Rahman Rahmani, is currently a member of the Lower House, head of the economy commission. He made most of his wealth from oil trade and transportation services. He is thought to be one of the well-known contractors of foreign troops in Afghanistan. He is a candidate for Kabul in the Wolesi Jirga election.

Muhammad Fahim Hashimi: he is one of the richest businessmen of Afghanistan. He made most of his wealth trough oil and gas trade, transportation and producing military clothes. He is the owner of One TV and Ufuq-e Sharq airline. He is a candidate for Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga election.

Ahmad Jawed Jaihun: he is one of the richest businessmen of Afghanistan. He made most of his wealth through oil and gas trade, transportation, armored vehicles, mines and banking. He is a stakeholder and general director of the Afghan United Bank. He is a candidate for Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga election.

Nurullah Dawoodzai: he is also one of the richest young businessmen of Afghanistan. He has made most of his wealth through contracts from foreign forces in Afghanistan, oil and gas trade, and transportation.He has also invested in real estate. He is from Qarabagh district of Kabul. He is a candidate for Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga election.

Abbas Ibrahimzada: He is thought to be one of the richest businessmen of Afghanistan. He has made most of his wealth through oil and gas trade in the north, building construction and money services. He is currently a member of the Wolesi Jirga from Balkh Province. He is again a candidate from Balkh for the 2018 Wolesi Jirga election.

Haji Shekib Ahmadyar: One of the youngest businessmen of Afghanistan. He has made most of wealth through oil trade in north Afghanistan. He is originally from Panjshir province and his brother, Tawakol Ahmadyar is the head of Afghanistan oil and gas union. He is a candidate for Panjshir in the Wolesi Jirga election.

Haji Hafizullah Jalili: he was born in Qarabagh district of Ghazni province. He is one of the rich national businessmen of Afghanistan. He has made most of his wealth from Arabic countries where he has hotels and restaurants. In Afghanistan, he is active in real estate section and construction. He is a candidate from Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga election.

Nesar Ahmad Faizi Ghoryani: he was born in 1970 in Ghoryan district of Herat province. He is also one of the richest businessmen of Afghanistan. He has made most of his wealth through electric supplies. He is currently a member of the Wolesi Jirga from Herat and a candidate for the same province in the election for the Wolesi Jirga.

Feraidun Nurzad: he is one of the richest national businessmen of Afghanistan. He has made most of his wealth from money services and banking. He is graduated from Kabul Medical University. He has worked as deputy CEO for Kabul Bank and Azizi Bank. Currently he is the owner of Maiwand TV and Maiwand Bank. He is a candidate for Kabul in the Wolesi Jirga election.

Rich Candidates for the Wolesi Jirga (Second part)

1. Ahmad Hamid Warasta: he is running from Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga Election with the slogan “One Nation, One Goal”. He was born in Kabul in 1983 in a political, cultural and economic family. His father was one of the well-known businessmen of Afghanistan and his grandfather was one of the pioneers of novel literature. He has done his higher education in business and administration outside of Afghanistan. He has several business companies under the name of “Hamid Warasta Group”. He made most of his wealth through business activities and contracts.

2. Rajab Ali Andishmand: he is one of richest businessmen of Afghanistan. He has made most of his wealth through car imports in Middle East countries. He is politically active as well and has close relations with some of Afghan politicians. He is running from Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga Election. (note: mostly the people in west Kabul know him as Bacha-e Sharbat – ‘Sharbat’s son’. He was the one who give each cabinet minister a land cruiser at the beginning of the Karzai administration)

3. Abdul Sabor Gardizi: he is son of the famous and biggest businessman of iron products in Afghanistan, Rahim Gardizi (he imports iron products from Russia and Tajikistan). He has made most of his wealth through importing iron products or ironware and construction. He is running from Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga Election with the slogan ‘Commitment, Honesty/Integrity, action and providing justice’.

4. Haji Abdul Reza Khalili: he is son of Haji Muhammad NabiKhalili and nephew of Muhammad Karim Khalili, current chief of HPC. He has made most of his wealth through real estate. Now he has several product companies such mineral water and stone. He is running from Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga Election with the slogan ‘Excellency, pragmatism and accountability’.

5. Khan Muhammad Wardak: he is one of the richest men of Afghanistan. He is running from Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga Election with the slogan Khan Muhammad ta raya, musbatbadloon ta raya – ‘Vote for Khan Muhammad, vote for positive changes’. He has made most of his wealth through transportation and oil business for foreign troops. He has one of the biggest companies ‘Khan Steel) producing rebar and other ironware for constructions. He has invested more than 50 million dollars in two phases of his company.

6. Sayed Javid Andish: he is one of the Afghan businessmen. He is running from Kabul for the Wolesi Jirga Election. He has made most of his wealth from educational services and contracts. He is the chief and owner of Karwan Private University.

7. Haji Gul Ahmad Nurzad: he is one of richest businessmen. He is running from Nimroz province for the Wolesi Jirga Election. He has made most of riches through oil and gas business. He is also involved in exchanging money services as well. He has several product companies in west of Afghanistan and his business activity is in Nimroz and Herat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a vibrant electoral atmosphere in Herat city and nearby district centres. Rival political forces have brought supporters onto the streets to show their power and candidates have opened campaign headquarters and engaged in a range of heated campaign activities. In the midst of the bustle, there are also concerns over a series of small-scale bombings and the arrival of tens of thousands of internally displaced families – whose presence may have repercussions for the elections. Moreover, the farther you go from the city and nearby district centres, the more insecurity grows and the election campaign diminishes. AAN researcher Said Reza Kazemi writes from Herat city that deteriorating security poses serious questions about how many voters will be able to get to the polls on 20 October and therefore how representative the election can be.

AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in the Election Conundrum series will be added to it.

Electoral atmosphere in and around Herat city: from reluctance to liveliness

When voter registration began in Herat city on 14 April 2018 (see here), there was a reluctance to participate. The previous fraudulent presidential and provincial council polls had fostered a disillusionment with the Afghan government and with elections. For one working day, the government closed its offices and public places such as institutes of higher education to at least get public servants, university teachers and students to register for the vote. Fears about security and Taleban threats fed into the disinclination to get involved. Thousands of people decided they did not want election stickers pasted on the back of their tazkeras (national ID cards). In some areas in some districts of Herat, where the Taleban hold sway, there was no registration at all. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) was not able to access one district, Farsi, when it carried out a security assessment of registration and polling centres in late 2017 (see AAN reporting on this here).

The consequence of all this was that, out of an estimated one million voters in Herat province, only around half registered (see also a previous AAN dispatch on new voter registry here), with, it is alleged, some communities hit harder than others. A Hazara elder who has lived around Herat city for more than a decade and a half and recently met two Hazara candidates (Habibullah Ghoryani, a newcomer, and Muhammad Reza Khushak Watandost, a sitting MP) for campaign purposes put it bluntly: “Thousands of our people did not register because they were afraid that… if they needed to travel overland between Herat, Kabul and elsewhere,” the Taleban, “would cut off their heads if they caught them with sticker-pasted tazkeras.” His estimate was that the Hazara vote should be 60,000-strong in Herat, but this year registered voters had “fallen to 26,000.” Some influential Shia Hazara and Sayyed residents of Herat told AAN they believed the threats could have been a conspiracy to scare their people away from the elections in order to disenfranchise them.

Even now, so soon before the vote on 20 October, there are contradictory voter registration figures. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) in Kabul has reported 539,141 registered voters (297,391 men, 239,818 women and 1,932 kuchis or nomads) (see page 9 here). According to Ahmad Shah Qanuni, head of the IEC office in Herat, the figure is less: 500,057 (about 55 per cent men and 45 per cent women). Meanwhile, an IEC official in Herat, who asked not to be named, told AAN that 557,720 people (308,613 men, 247,434 women and 1,673 kuchis) have registered to vote in the coming parliamentary elections in the province.

Nevertheless, despite all this, as time has gone by, Heratis have become increasingly interested in the elections. The city is bustling with election activity, some of it confrontational as rival groups face off ahead of the poll. (1) Protests have been deployed in a game to show off apparent power. One of the two main players in this game are those affiliated to the Grand National Coalition, an alliance of political parties that emerged from the so-called ‘Ankara coalition’ of several senior politicians, including First Vice President and leader of Jombesh-e Milli Abdul Rashid Dostum, Second Chief Executive and leader of Hezb-e Wahdat Mardom Muhammad Mohaqeq and (now former) Balkh Governor and Chief Executive of Jamiat-e Islami Atta Muhammad Nur (see AAN analysis here, here and here). Locally, the coalition is mainly represented by former Herat governor and regional strongman Ismael Khan who among others has his son Sayyed Taha Sadeq running for parliament. The other main party in the protest game are supporters of the central government, led by Sayyed Abdul Wahid Qatali, former head of the provincial council, subsequently Herat mayor and currently President Ashraf Ghani’s chief of staff.

On 15 September 2018, dozens of Grand National Coalition supporters staged a sit-in in front of the IEC office and closed it down for public access. They were protesting alleged lack of transparency in election preparations and what they claimed was the deliberate engineering of it by President Ghani and the team in and around the presidential palace. The following morning, Herat provincial police chief General Aminullah Amarkhel ordered police forces to reopen the premises by force. The police dispersed the protestors by firing shots in the air, and rolled up their protest tent, injuring and arresting some people in the process (see here). On 26 September, the government brought a large crowd of its supporters to the city centre, those who, according to a statement issued by the Administrative Office of the President (and seen by the author), backed “the national election process, national development projects and the peace process.” There have been reports that both sides paid daily-wage labourers, who are not few in number in the city, to participate in the demonstrations to increase protestor numbers as a show of strength directed at the other side.

The election atmosphere has become even more vibrant – and in a more positive way – since campaigning began on 28 September 2018. The face of the city and nearby district centres such as Injil, Guzara and Zendajan changed overnight. In these places, many of the 161 candidates, among them sitting MPs, (2) 28 women and several young people (see the list here), are fiercely engaged in the campaign, both in real terms and online, particularly through Facebook. In their bid to try to gain one of Herat’s 17 seats (five reserved for women) in the parliament, they have recruited and paid campaign staff, opened their campaign headquarters where they receive and feed large numbers of local people, met people from different walks of life and put up a great number of billboards, posters and banners in and around the city, courting and wooing people for their votes. So many restaurants, hotels, printing houses, marketing companies and scaffolding businesses are all extremely busy nowadays in and around the city. In Herat city, local environmentalists have voiced their concern about the sheer number of candidate posters and banners, the hammering of nails into trees and urban cleanliness in general. In response, Herat Municipality has been removing posters and banners from trees and traffic signboards.

The city: pressure building up

In the run-up to the election campaign period, from August 2018 onwards, Herat city witnessed a series of small-scale improvised electronic device (IED) attacks. On 9 August, explosives planted in a motorbike went off opposite a vehicle carrying a former Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander, Haji Amir Shindandi, in the Old Corps Road in Police District (PD) 1, killing at least four people and injuring 12 others including the ex-commander. On 5 September, there were two consecutive explosions in Chawk-e Gulha area in downtown Herat, injuring at least six people, including two traffic police officers. In late August, earlier in the same place (ie Chawk-e Gulha), an explosion killed at least two people. On 4 October, a blast targeted a parked police vehicle in Darb-e Khush area in the city centre, injuring about ten people, among them a child. In the same place, Herat police later on seized IED equipment in a hotel. On 12 October, there was an IED attack on an audio-video centre in Gawaliyan area in the south of Herat city which damaged the centre but left no casualties; the centre has been involved in the management of some high-profile events.

What could be called ‘social pressure’ has also been building up in Herat city. Quoting several sources, including the Provincial Directorate of Refugees and Repatriation, the Afghan daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh said there are about “one million internally displaced persons from Farah, Ghor, Badghis and some southern provinces” currently living in and around Herat city. (3)  This seems to be a cumulative number reached over several years. Most recently, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and its partners have reported that in the western region as a whole, over 250,000 people have been displaced of which about 60,000 are in Herat city and twice that number in Qala-ye Naw in Badghis province (see here and here). People from the insecure and drought-affected districts of Herat province – Shindand, Adraskan, Kushk-e Kuhna, Kushk-e Rubat Sangi and Gulran – have either also been displaced to the city or have fled to Kandahar province (see also here). In Herat, most IDPs have settled in tents set up on plots of land, due to be built on, but as yet clear, in the areas of Sheydai, Dasht-e Hawz and Maslakh, respectively in the east, north and south. These neighbourhoods are regarded as the ‘gates’ to Herat city from these three directions. AAN heard from several IDPs in Sheydai about the severity of the drought and the insecurity in their areas of Badghis province that has forced them to leave their houses, orchards and lands for the sake of protecting their families.

A growing number of local government officials and residents have drawn a direct connection between the displacement and the rise in security-related incidents. They have attributed responsibility to IDPs for the recent security and crime incidents. The Killid Group, a media organisation that is also active in Herat, said in a research paper that local security and justice authorities had said the IDPs were implicated in “30 per cent of security incidents in Herat” (see here). These officials claimed that the Taleban and other insurgent and criminal groups had established links with some of the IDPs with a view to destabilising the city and the wider province. Many local Heratis and government officials, alarmed by the scale of the displacement – not seen since the drought of 2000/2001 – have increasingly called for the return of the IDPs to their original provinces (see for example here).

The IDPs – whether or not some are actually involved in crime and/or the insurgency – have become an election issue and a matter of debate in Herat. Some Heratis are also alleging they will be used to carry out fraud in the election. There have been reports that some of the IDPs have got tazkeras during recent tazkera distribution in Herat and then registered to vote in the upcoming elections by getting stickers fixed to the back of their tazkeras. It is, of course, their legal right to be registered to vote in their place of sanctuary. Still, some local Heratis worry that the sheer number of outsiders, not all from the province, could affect who will represent Herat in the next parliament.

Unfortunately, given this charged atmosphere, security-wise and politically, the suffering of a large number of people who have been displaced because of the war or the drought or both is glossed over.

Because of fears about security in Herat city, the districts and neighbouring provinces, there is a greater, visible presence of security forces at the gates to and in key intersections in the city. Government security forces have also conducted two military manoeuvres or parades, one on the streets inside the city and the other on the way from Herat city to Shindand district in a display of power and attempt to boost confidence in the security arrangements for the coming elections (see here).

The districts and neighbouring provinces: mounting insecurity

The government is right to be concerned about security. It has been deteriorating during the last couple of years in several districts of Herat province where the government and Taleban have been engaging in a violent contest for control. Roads between several districts, particularly the faraway ones, and the provincial centre are increasingly unsafe. There are frequent Taleban checkpoints on the way that control the movement of people and goods. Some of the posts are temporary, but others are more permanent. Those working for the government and foreign organisations are particularly afraid of travelling overland as they are targets for attacks. They thus go to great lengths to hide their institutional affiliation while on the road.

The Taleban provincial base, the southernmost district of Shindand, recently divided by the government into five smaller districts to improve its managementand therefore, it was hoped, its security, is the most insecure in the province. There are continual clashes between the Taleban and government forces (see for instance here and this previous AAN analysis). The two opposing Taleban factions – one loyal to the mainstream Taleban led by Mullah Haibatullah and the other to Mullah Rasul, who set up his own group after the death of Mullah Omar was announced in 2015 – also recently resumed fighting each other in Shindand (read previous AAN analysis on Taleban after Mullah Omar here). There are also reports about recent Taleban infighting in Guzara district that left at least 17 of their members dead and eight others injured. However, according to local Kohandazh news agency, the Taleban version of events is that they clashed with the Afghan Local Police (ALP) killed 16 local policemen and captured their post.

In other districts, the Taleban have attacked government checkpoints, closed roads at least temporarily and provoked the government to launch operations in response, leaving casualties on both sides. Such incidents have occurred recently in the southern district of Adraskan, the eastern districts of Pashtun Zarghun and Obe, (4) the northern districts of Kushk-e Rubat Sangi and Kushk-e Kuhna, the eastern district of Ghoryan and the north-eastern district of Kohsan. Although there have been, so far, no large-scale attacks by the Taleban to take control of district centres in Herat, some are vulnerable.

Herat province has also seen specific election-related violence. In late May 2018, the Taleban killed one IEC voter registration centre staff member and a soldier in Chesht-e Sharif district. In another similar event in the same month, the Taleban shot dead an ALP soldier who was guarding a voter registration centre in Guzara district. In early September, a rocket was fired at a campaign office in Islam Qala Township in Kohsan district. It damaged the office compound, but caused no casualties. On 13 October, unknown armed men attacked the campaign headquarters of a candidate – Sayyed Azim Kabarzani – in nearby Injil district, killing one of the guards; a child was also killed and two other children were injured in the incident.

A similar security trend is seen in Herat’s immediate provincial neighbourhood (see also here). In neighbouring Badghis to the north, the Taleban have encircled Qala-ye Naw, the provincial centre. It seems unlikely it will fall, at least in the foreseeable future, because of a concentration of government forces stationed there as well as the dispatch of commando forces. The fall of Qala-ye Naw would be disastrous for the Afghan government in the entire western region. Recently, there have been severe clashes between the Taleban and government forces in Muqur, Qades and Abkamari districts of Badghis province. In most cases, the government has launched operations in response to Taleban attacks on its checkpoints. The neighbouring province of Ghor to the east is also unsafe, but to a much lesser extent. In a recent security incident, an attempt by government security forces to arrest an uprising commander, Alipur, who is from Behsud district in Maidan Wardak province but was visiting a parliamentary candidate in Lal wa Sar Jangal district, resulted in a firefight which left around 10 people, including one woman and four policemen, dead. To the south, Farah province remains troubled with the Taleban still near its gates since they attacked the provincial centre in May 2018 (read AAN’s recent dispatch here). Backed by NATO-led troops, government security forces have increased airstrikes on insurgent positions to keep the road access between the provincial centres of Farah and Herat open. It seems in Herat, at least, the current strategy on the part of the NATO-backed Afghan security forces is to keep attacking insurgent positions so as to make them busy defending areas under their control instead of giving them time and space to interfere in and disrupt the electoral process.

This complicated security environment has prompted senior government officials to be more outspoken to at least attract attention to what they see as happening on the ground. They consider the Taleban to be intent on extending their military influence to areas of Herat where government security forces are not concentrated and then expanding to encircle and vie for control of district centres. Muhammad Asef Rahimi, Herat provincial governor, and General Nurullah Qaderi, the top military official for the western region, have given the narrative of the government repeatedly: backed by Iran and Pakistan, the Taleban are aiming to devastate the country’s infrastructure projects, implying for example that the Salma hydropower dam in Chesht-e Sharif district in Herat province is at risk. Putting the blame on neighbouring countries obviously ignores the government’s own failings in many different areas from security to development and to governance in general.

Conclusion: elections amid growing insecurity

The vibrancy of election campaigning in Herat city and nearby district centres coupled with the rising insecurity in the rest of the province raises serious questions about the nature of the coming elections. Hundreds of thousands of Heratis did not register to vote or will not be able to vote in their areas in several districts. This is both in the provincial centre (in the case of Shia Hazara and Sayyed residents) and particularly in districts contested or controlled by the Taleban. In some areas of some districts, especially the far-flung ones under Taleban control and in one whole district, Farsi, no voter registration took place and there will be no election at all. According to the IEC official quoted above, of all 462 polling centres in Herat province (see their list here), 162 will be closed on polling day. Most of the province will be affected to some degree. In two newly created districts in Shindand, ie Zerkoh and Pushtkoh, no polling centres will be opened. Only in Herat city and the immediate district of Injil will all designated polling centres be opened.

Campaign activity has thus focused on Herat city and district centres, while voters residing in villages situated far from them are potentially disenfranchised. Some residents told AAN that powerful candidates and their local community supporters might be able to influence at least some local Taleban forces to let elections take place in particular areas, or if that did not work, would bring their supporters to safer areas where they could vote. At the same time, there are fears that insecurity in areas far away from the district centres might provide an environment conducive for widespread fraud because few candidate agents and observers can go there to monitor the vote. This has been a pattern in previous elections.

The provincial electoral landscape is thus marked by a strange co-existence of hope and fear, of participation and its lack. The parliamentary elections of 2018 in Herat are not taking place in a normal or conducive environment and there are concerns as to how inclusive they will be and whether the widespread insecurity will aid fraud. Yet, it seems the Afghan government and its international backers have decided that an election, whatever it is and however it is held, is better than no election at all.

Edited by Sari Kouvo, Thomas Ruttig and Kate Clark

 

 

(1)There has also been a protest for Herati parliamentarian Abdul Hadi Jamshidi who was initially disqualified by the IEC (read a recent AAN dispatch here), but was recertified by the Election Complaint Commission (ECC). Jamshidi had been initially disqualified for allegedly failing to hand over to the government some weapons and ammunitions his men had seized in an armed clash with the Taleban in Kushk-e Rubat Sangi district. He was then reinstated.

(2) All sitting MPs in Herat are again running for parliament, apart from Ahmad Behzad who is running from Kabul province (for the list of and some information about sitting Herat MPs, see here). A female MP from Herat – Shahnaz Hemati – died in a car accident in Iran in 2013.

(3) To the IDPs, one should add thousands of recent returnees and deportees from Iran and Turkey, some of whom stay in Herat at least for some time, according to AAN’s interviews with some Afghan returnees and deportees from Iran and Turkey in Herat city in September 2018.

(4) The information is from AAN interviews with government officials, activists and residents who are from/in Obe, September 2018, Herat city.

Almost two-thirds of voters in Faryab will not be able to vote in the 20 October parliamentary elections after insecurity prevented them from registering. Since voter registration ended in early July, the government has seen an even further loss of control and more than a dozen additional polling centres have since closed. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili recently visited Faryab and (with input from Kate Clark) wonders how inclusive an election is possible in a province now largely controlled or threatened by the Taleban. He also reports concerns that because of insecurity in this Uzbek-majority province, they will have a much smaller ‘vote bank’ and less clout in next year’s presidential elections. (A breakdown showing Faryab’s polling centres and registered voters can be read in an annex.)

AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in the Election Conundrum series will be added to it.

Maimana city is in the full flow of election campaigning, with 62 candidates competing for nine seats (with three reserved for women) in Faryab province. The city is papered with campaign posters and it is easy to come across candidates talking to voters. There is a concentration of activity in Maimana because it is one of the few places where candidates are able to campaign. One indication of how much the city is surrounded was the advice given to the author when he wanted to drive to the suburb of Imam Sahib, just twenty minutes from the centre: “Don’t go. It is too risky.” Two candidates described to us the difficulty of reaching voters. Incumbent MP and commander, Fatahullah Qaisari, said he was hoping to reach his home district on a government (ANSF) helicopter; the road was not safe for him to travel. Another, the veteran journalist Muhammad Hassan Serdash, is one of the candidates who have managed – in a limited way – to operate across frontlines:

I was the first candidate who posted his posters in Qaisar district. I sent my posters through Tamir Keprak (Iron Bridge in Uzbek) where the Taleban have checkposts. I had contacted the Taleban asking them to allow my campaign posters to be transported [to Qaisar] and they asked for the number of the vehicle. I provided the number and they allowed the vehicle to go to Qaisar. Mullah Qamar, brother of Qari Salahuddin [Ayubi, the former Taleban shadow governor in the province], an Uzbek from Tir Shadi Almar holds sway there.

However the future may, potentially, not be so easy for him.

The Taleban told me that they would not harm me in their areas because I was a journalist,” Serdash said,” but once I become an MP, I would become their enemy. I told them that I would be a fair MP and speak against the Taleban if their land-mines killed the people.

Faryab is one of the most contested provinces in the north-west. As we wrote earlier this year, it is “strategically important as it connects the western parts of the country with the north – it was through Faryab that the Taleban moved to capture Mazar-e Sharif in 1997 and 1998 and from where anti-Taleban forces came to re-capture the city in 2001.” The Taleban have fought hard to capture territory, so much so that earlier this year, both the government and its international supporters were alarmed that the Taleban were threatening to capture the provincial capital (see AAN’s previous analysis here) That means a majority of the population will not be able to vote in the upcoming elections.

Security-related election statistics – a tale of disenfranchisement

In 2014, Faryab province had one of the highest audited turnouts in the country (and one of the highest proportions of women voters) (see details here). It gave a clear majority to Ashraf Ghani (65.6 per cent): Jombesh-e Melli’s leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum featured as number two on Ghani’s ticket and his party was able to get the vote out in a province where Uzbeks are the largest ethnic group (more on which later). This election will be very different and the reason for that is the steady loss of territory to the Taleban in the last four years.

1) Most polling centres inaccessible because of the insurgency

Faryab has 14 districts including its provincial capital, Maimana. (1) The Independent Elections Commission (IEC) has allocated a total of 238 polling centres spread across the province. However, when the IEC closed voter registration on 6 July, only 108 centres, fewer than half had managed to register voters. 130 others had reported no registration. In one whole district, Kohestan, which has a total of 14 polling centres, there are no registered voters. It has long been inaccessible due to the insurgency and was one of 32 districts which IEC employees carrying out an assessment of polling centres across the country in the second half of 2017 could not get to. (The national average for polling centres that were inaccessible to the IEC because of insecurity is 24 per cent – 1,744 out of 7,180. See AAN’s previous reporting about the exercise here)and for a list of the completely inaccessible districts, see footnote 2).

2) Less than half of the estimated voting population registered

The preliminary list of registered voters (the author got a copy from the IEC provincial office in Faryab) showed a total of 197,976 people (110,869 male and 88,849 female) had registered to vote. This preliminary list had to go through a verification process at the IEC’s headquarters for detecting underage, duplicate and multiple registrations, and the final list is slightly lower (by about four per cent). (The IEC’s final list shows the number of voters per polling centre, as well as the total numbers of the voters in each district and at the provincial level and can be read here). (3) That figure is lower than estimates given earlier to AAN by a provincial IEC official, who thought about 10 per cent might be fraudulent, and candidate Serdash who thought “that 70,000 [out of the preliminary list of voters] were based on fake tazkeras, mainly in Qaisar, Maimana, Andkhoy, Juma Bazar and Dawlatabad.” Such gaps raise some questions about the robustness of the final voting list.

The main problem though is the absolute very low number of registered voters in the province. It is low relative to both the estimated voting population and the number of voters in the 2014 presidential elections. The IEC has given the following figures for Faryab:

• 189,566 total registered voters
• 104,454 male
• 84,974 female
• 138 Kuchis

Assuming that at least half of the population in the province is over 18 – the minimum voting age – it appears that just 36.7 per cent of those eligible to vote have registered. (4) Guest author Scott Worden placed Faryab among six provinces in which less than 40 per cent of eligible voters had registered. (The others are Farah (26% or eligible voters registered), Badghis (31%), Kunar (33%), Uruzgan (33%) and Kunduz (34%).)

The sharp fall in registered voters compared to the last election four years ago is also clear. The preliminary results of the 2014 runoff presidential election showed a total of 331,123 votes cast: 217,895 (66%) for Dr Ashraf Ghani and 113,228 (34%) for Dr Abdullah. The final runoff results reported 296,202 (197,118  or 67%) for Ghani and 99,084 or 33%) for Abdullah.. (This means that 34,921 votes (10.54%) were discarded as a result of the post-second round audit.) (5) Taking the final results as a baseline, that would mean a drop between voters in 2014 and 2018 registered voters of 36 per cent. This is despite strong population growth, estimated by the Central Statistics Office at 3.5 per cent.

3) More polling centres closed since registration

Since voter registration was completed in early July, the Taleban have gained yet more territory, meaning more polling centres have closed and more voters will not be able to exercise their franchise. Earlier this month, IEC provincial officials told that a total of 15 to 17 out of the 106 centres that had registered voters were now closed because of Taleban gains. The breakdown was as follows:

• Almar, two out of five centres that had registered voters closed
• Belcharagh district, four out of 11 polling centres that had registered voters are now closed
• Gurziwan, one out of three centres closed
• Pashtun Kot district, four out of nine centres that had registered voters (in Gaday-e Qala and Sar-e Howz) closed
• Qaisar, five out of 19 centres that had registered voters closed (in Khwaja Tipchaq, Chichaktu, Chaharshanba Uzbekiya, Hazara Qala and Yaka Pesta-ye Afghaniya)
• Qaramqul district, between five to seven out of eight centres that had registered voters closed

4) Displacement of the population

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), from 1 January to 23 September 2018, a total of 30,282 Faryabis were forced to leave their places of origin. (This is 12 per cent of almost a quarter of a million Afghans displaced by conflict across the country in the same period.) The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Faryab told AAN on 11 October that 13,809 families had fled their homes in the period between April and July this year and that the displacement “continues as the fighting is continuing.” NRC also said that some of the displacements had been caused by drought or a combination of drought and conflict. It is possible that some of those who were displaced earlier on in the year may have been able to register in the place where they have found sanctuary, but many of the IDPs will not have been. This displacement will likely further reduce the turnout on election day.

The reason for the sharp drop in the number of Faryabis able to get out, first to register, and then to vote is “clear-cut,” candidate Serdash told AAN. In the 2014 presidential elections, he said, “no district had fallen [to the Taleban]. Now, elections are not possible at all in two districts – Kohestan and Belcharagh. And nine districts – Pashtun Kot, Qaisar, Almar, Khwaja Sabz Posh, Shirin Tagab, Dawlatabad, Qaramqul, Kohestan and Gurziwan – are no longer secure.”

The implications of Faryab’s shrinking constituency

Afghanistan’s constitution, as UNAMA has pointed out, states that citizens have a fundamental right to “elect and be elected.” Many people in Faryab will not be able to exercise that right this year. Nationally, the security situation is grave enough for the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto to brief the Security Council (on17 September) on his concerns. “Almost one thirdof Afghanistan’s over seven thousand polling centres could not open due to insecurity. Thisis raising concerns about inclusivity. The main question, therefore, is not whether the elections will be imperfect but how Afghanistan’s electoral institutions will manage these limitations.”

The concern is not just about individual disenfranchisement in Faryab, but, as expressed by some, ‘ethnic disenfranchisement’. Although the Central Statistical Office does not provide an ethnic breakdown of the population, a 2017 UN profile of the province (of which AAN has a copy) said the majority is Uzbek, followed by Tajiks and Aimaq, Pashtun and Kuchi, Turkmen, Arab and Hazara. Earlier UN provincial reporting, from 2007, put the ethnic composition as follows: Uzbek (51 per cent), Tajik and Aimaq (22.3 per cent) and Pashtun (8.6 per cent) (see also previous AAN’s reporting here). The fact that two-thirds of polling centres in this province will be closed is potentially a much more serious issue in the April 2019 presidential election. Given that voting in this poll has tended to go on ethnic lines, having a coherent ‘ethnic’ vote block gives the chance to get a ‘representative’ on the presidential ticket and in power. (A tentative electoral calendar – AAN has a copy – leading up to the presidential vote on 20 April 2019 does not include any new or top-up voter registration. This means that, even if government control of territory improves, those who were unable to register will continue to remain disenfranchised.)

The Uzbeks have been the most coherent electoral block of any of the ethnic groups and this has given them some influence and political status nationally. As the fourth largest ethnic group in the country, this coherence is crucial because the constitution only gives three people power at the highest level – the president and the two vice-presidents. The tendency has been for those three to be a Pashtun, a Tajik and a Hazara. In previous elections, the head of the largely Uzbek party, Jombesh-e Melli General Dostum was able to deliver this ‘Uzbek vote’ to former President Karzai in 2009 and to President Ghani in 2014. Karzai gave Uzbeks few favours in return and even when Dostum was on Ghani’s winning presidential ticket and became First Vice President in 2014 partly because of the very solid block of votes delivered by Uzbeks there have been fewer Uzbeks at the heart of government than might have been expected. This time, the Uzbek vote bank will be greatly diminished and their influence potentially far less. (6)

Some have alleged the insecurity and therefore the drop in the ability of Uzbeks to get their vote out has been engineered deliberately for political and electoral reasons. As the UN Secretary General’s report described it:

Discontent over electoral preparations was largely focused in the North, where security conditions continued to deteriorate, and some opposition figures accused the Government of a deliberate plot to disenfranchise northern communities. That perception was exacerbated following the arrest by Government forces on 2 July of Nezamuddin Qaysari, a district chief of police and close associate of Mr. Dostum in Faryab Province. The arrest triggered protests in the Uzbek-majority Faryab Province that quickly spread to other northern provinces, including Balkh, Jowzjan, Kunduz, Samangan, Sari Pul and Takhar.

The arrest of Qaisari was a significant political event in his home province of Faryab. Presidential deputy spokesman Shah Hussian Murtazavi told the media Qaisari was arrested based on the complaints by the people and his behavior with government departments, while Qaisari supporters insist he was an active and brave commander, a pillar against the Taleban, and that his arrest was political. They also say it was made without a warrant, with torture (see his testimony released by Vice-President Dostum’s chief of staff Enayat Babur Frahmand who visited him on 9 August) and with his bodyguards abused by the commandos (see a video here and here). Without getting into the rights or wrongs of Qaisari’s arrest, it is clear that the government has lost at least some territory to the Taleban since. Local journalist, Qutbuddin Kohi,said that, especially after the video of the commandos kicking Qaisari’s prone, handcuffed bodyguards aired on social media, many local people felt betrayed:

Now people in Faryab see their security forces, especially the commandos as the enemy because they did not come here to carry out operations against the enemy but to suppress Jombesh and arrest Qasiari and after his arrest, the forces in Shirin Tagab and Khwaja Sabz Poshand the commandos stationed here in Maimana left the province.

A less than perfect election, but who will be fighting it?

Seven out of the nine incumbent MPs from Faryab are standing again (see footnote for the sitting MPs) (7). Dr Naqibullah Faeq’s seat remained empty after he was appointed as the head of the Afghanistan National Standard Authority (ANSA) in February 2016 (see media report here). According to article 50 of the electoral law, if a member of the Wolesi Jirga dies or resigns or loses their seats, their seat shall be assigned to the next candidate of the same sex (male or female) with the highest votes based on the IEC’s list of the final results. (8) However, this did not happen, because when Faeq joined the government, the Wolesi Jirga was already serving extra-constitutionally. Faeq is now the governor of Faryab, and is not running again. Another sitting Faryab MP, Gul Muhammad Pahlawan, former commander of Jombesh-e Islami and brother of General Abdul Malek, also a former commander of Jombesh, now the head of his own Hezb-e Azadi-ye Afghanistan (Liberty Party of Afghanistan) and an adviser to Chief Executive Abdullah, is running from Balkh province, due to insecurity in his home village of Faizabad in Shirin Tagab.

Apart from the seven sitting MPs seeking re-election, 55 new people are standing, with a total of 62 candidates in all (43 male and 19 female) (see the list of candidates in footnote 9). One hopeful, Sakhi Nawid, was disqualified by the IEC for links to an illegal armed group. (See AAN’s previous report on the disqualified candidates here).

15 candidates have registered their affiliations with the three major political parties operating in the province – 13 from Jombesh and one apiece from Jamiat-e Islami and Hezb-e Islami. (10) However, one candidate told AAN that a large number of other candidates were supported by one or another political party. This shows the usual practice of political party affiliates running independently whenever they feel it could garner more votes for them.

In the 2010 parliamentary elections, three out of the nine elected MPs identified themselves with Jombesh, as recorded by this NDI’s Wolesi Jirga directory here. Bashir Ahmad Tahyanj from Andakhoy district, Dr Naqibullah Faeq from Almar district and Fathullah Qaisari from Jegdalak village of Qaisar district. (Of these, Faeq and Fathullah Qaisari no longer identify as Jombesh.) Six others were independent.

Conclusion: growing insecurity, a shrinking constituency and disenfranchisement

This year’s parliamentary elections were never going to be easy. Nationwide, disenchantment with elections themselves, after the disastrous 2014 poll, has been coupled with a resurgent Taleban, who by controlling more districts than four years ago have been able to prevent millions of Afghans from even registering to vote. The Taleban, together with the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) in some places, have also directly threatened election workers and security services trying to guard the poll and some Afghans have felt (see here) it is a risk too far to participate. Nevertheless, once actual campaigning started, a measure of enthusiasm has been generated.

In Faryab, the effect of insecurity is being felt more than in most other provinces. Campaigning there is concentrated in a small part of the province and participation will be limited to a third or so of voters. For many among Afghanistan’s Uzbek community, as well as tens of thousands of individual Faryabis who have been disenfranchised by insecurity, this is a huge concern.

Edited by Kate Clark and Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) There has been, as we reported,an administrative “tussle” over another district, Ghormach, as to whether it is part of Faryab or Badghis. The IEC’s list apportioning seats to district councils in preparation for holding district council elections (which have now been dropped) says that Ghormach is part of Faryab based on the IDLG list, but the CSO counts it as part of Badghis. The IEC’s final list of voters per polling centre has put it under Badghis (see here).

(2) Following is the list of the districts that the IEC was not able to access for polling centre assessment.  AAN received it from the IEC:

1) Maidan Wardak: Jaghatu; 2) Nangarhar: Hisarak; 3) Baghlan: Dahana-ye Ghori; 4) Ghazni: Zanakhan (under Taleban control), 5) Giro (only district centre with the government) 6) Ajristan (only district centre with the government) 7) Nawa;; 8) Paktika: Neka, 9) Gyan and 10) Dela; 11) Badakhshan: Warduj and 12) Yamgan (both are completely under the Taleban (see this AAN’s report); 13) Kunduz: Qulbad and 14) Gul Tapa of (both under the Taleban control); 15) Urozgan: Chora, 16) Shahid-e Hassas and 17) Chinarto; 18) Kandahar: Miyaneshin, 19) Shorabak and 20) Reg; 21) Faryab: Kohistan; 22) Helmand: Nawzad, 23) Sangin, 24) Musa Qala, 25) Reg (Khanneshin), 26) Baghran and 27) Disho; 28) Badghis: Ghormach; 29) Herat: Farsi, 30) Zer Koh and31) Pusht Koh; 32) Farah: Bakwa.

(See also AAN’s previous report on the polling centre assessment here.)

(3) On1 October, the IEC reported it had confirmed 8.8 million voter registration stickers as valid nationwide (this excludes Ghazni where the poll has been postponed). The IEC said more than 600,000 others had been invalidated. The IEC has not provided a more accurate figure yet, nor has it given a breakdown of the reasons for invalidation. However, an election expert privy to the criteria listed six: duplicate registration, voter was underage, missing date of birth, missing tazkera details (such as grandfather’s name); lost voter registration books and; voters reported as having registered at polling centres that were officially closed

(4) The IEC has been using population estimates 2016-17 for election planning. This is because when the IEC started planning, the new population estimates for Faryab had not yet been released. The 2016-17 population estimates were:

• 1,032,765 total
• 528,223 male
• 504,542 female.

According to the latest, 2018-19 population estimates its population has grown by 36,775 (3.5 per cent) and now stands at:

• 1,069,540 total
• 544,865 male
• 524,675 female

Assuming that half of the population is over 18 and therefore eligible to vote, Faryab’s voting population should be 516,382. However, only 189,566 people (104,454 male and 84,974 female and 138 Kuchis) registered to vote.

(5) The final results of the 2010 parliamentary elections per province showed a total of 194,889 votes cast: 187,561 valid votes and 7,328 invalidated votes (cast for candidates whose names were on the ballots but had actually withdrawn or been disqualified by the Electoral Complaints Commission before the election day). 103,184 of those votes were for the elected candidates. The votes cast in 499 polling stations were included into the results. However, the summary results shows 195,314 (187,986 valid and 7328 invalidated). The summary report of polling stations shows 605 polling stations: 501 valid and 104 disqualified.

(6) As well as the number of registered voters being low in Faryab, it was also low in several other provinces with large Uzbek populations. Badghis (31%) was also in the top six of lowest registering provinces, while in Jawzjan and Sar-e Pul reported less than half of the eligible voters registered. The other low registers are Farah, Kunar Uruzgan, Kunduz, Ghor, Wardak, Zabul and Logar.

(7) The seven incumbent MPs running again are: Engineer Muhammad Hashim Awartaq, Haji Muhammad Hashim, Al Hajj Fathullah Qaisari, Bashir Ahmad Tahyanj, Rangina Kargar, Fowzia Raufi and Asefa Shadab.

Two other MPs: Dr Naqibullah Faeq (who resigned in February 2016 to work with the government and is currently the governor of the province, Gul Muhammad Pahlawan (who is running from Balkh this time). (See their short profiles in this NDI’s Wolesi Jirga directory.)

(8) Article 50 of the electoral law concerns how the seats are awarded in a particular electoral constituency and who should replace if a Wolesi Jirga member dies, resigns or loses their seats:

• In each electoral constituency, the seats are awarded to the candidates who have garnered the highest number of valid votes.
• In case of equality of votes between two candidates for assuming the last seat, the winner shall be selected based on the highest criteria, which are as follows in the given order:

  Level of education; work experience with governmental or non- governmental organizations.

• If an elected member of the Wolesi Jirga cannot take up his/her seat or leaves his/her seat due to any reasons or dies or resigns or is appointed to another office in accordance with the law during the term of the Wolesi Jirga; or if he/she loses his/her membership by the provision of the law; or becomes handicapped or disabled in a way that permanently prevents him/her from performing his/her job, his/her seat shall be assigned to the next candidate of the same sex (male or female) with the highest votes recorded on list prepared by the IEC, if more than one year remains until the end of the term of office of the Wolesi Jirga.

(9) There are 19 female candidatesstanding in 20 October elections (: 1) Shahr Banu Sadat Karezi, 2) Al Hajj Dr Fowzia Salimi, 3) Dr Manizha Bustani, 4) Bibi Nuria Turan, 5) Karima Zaki, 6) Gita Sa’ed (Jombesh), 7) Tahmina Shuja (not mention of affiliation/independent), 8) Aziza Sadat, 9) Ustad Maria Nuri, 10) Saranwal Amena Mokhleszada, 11) Suhaila Asa Kohi, 12) Banu Mukarrama Sadat, 13) Banu Farzana Bahman, 14) Sayyeda Asefa Shadab, 15) Al Hajj Fowzia Raufi, 16) Nasima Yuzbashi, 17) Shafiqa Sakha Yulchi (Jombesh), 18) Hajera Enayat Kamran, 19) Rangina Kargar.

43 male candidates: 1) Dr Eshanullah Wahedi, 2) Ehsanullah Qowanch, 3) Sayyed Shah Wali Parsa, 4) Sayyed Farukh Shah Jenab, 5) Hashmatullah Arman, 6) Fathullah Qaisari, 7) Haji Zahiruddin Safari, 8) Kharullah Anosh, 9) Muhammad Hashem Khan, 1) Abdul Rahim Uzbek Oghli, 11) Sanjar Kargar, 12) Muhammad Ismail Ayubi, 13) Jawid Khan Qaisari, 14) Muhammad Hassan Serdash, 15) Engineer Aman Amin, 16) Muhammad Hashem Ortaq, 17) Faqir Muhammad Sa’idi, 18) Ezatullah Kaigham, 19) Sayyed Esmatullah, 20) Sebghatullah Naderi, 21) Muhammad Anwar Bashliq, 22) Sayyed Daud Sadat, 23) Muhammad Ashraf Sherzad, 24) Bashir Ahmad Tahyanj, 25) Sayyed Farid Hashemi, 26) Ahmad Zia Ahmad, 27) Muhammad Ayub Ghafari, 28) Jamal Naser Farahmand, 29) Shah Mahmud Najwa, 30) Khairuddin Muradi, 31) Sayyed Ehsanullah Hashemi, 32) Sayyed Mamun Gahrik, 33) Muhammad Nasim Rahmani, 34) Farhad Esar, 35) Sayyed Babur Jamal, 36) Hashmatullah Rahmani, 37) Muhammad Rasul Faryabi, 38) Dr Ahmad Jawid Qazizada, 39) Muhammad Saleh Tudehpur, 40) Sayyed Jawid Sadat, 41) Muhammad Shaker Karimi, 42) Edris Barna, 43) Abdul Wakil Faryabi

(see here)

(10) They are:

• 13 Jombesh-e Melli Islami-e Afghanistan candidates: 1) Ustad Ehsanullah Qowanch, 2) Ustad Sayyed Shah Wali Parsa, 3) Sayyed Farukh Shah Jenab, 4) Abdul Rahim Uzbek Oghli, 5) Muhammad Ismail Ayubi, 6) Jawid Khan Qaisari, 7) Gita Sa’id, 8) Bashir Ahmad Tahyanj, 9) Jamal Naser Frahmand, 10) Engineer Muhammad Nasim Rahmani, 11) Engineer Hashmatullah Rahmani, 12) Shafiqa Sakha Yulchi, 13) Ustad Edris Barna.
• One Hezb-e Islami candidate (Ustad Abdul Wakil Faryabi);
• One Jamiat-e Islami candidate (Haji Sayyed Daud Sadat);

 

Appendix

No. District No of polling centres No of polling centres reported registration No of registered voters Estimated eligible voters Estimated Population 2018-2019 Estimated Population 2016-2018 1  Maimana 24 24 37,398 44,022 91,490 88,044 2 Pashtun Kot 42 9 19,400 99,542 206,072 199,084 3 Khawja Sabz Posh 11 2 1,743 26,776 55,432 53,552 4 Almar 18 5 10,678 37,064.5 76,733 74,129 5 Belcharagh 11 4 15,335 27,519.5 56,972 55,039 6 Shirin Tagab 15 3 3,594 42,953 88,922 85,906 7 Qaisar 38 19 39,606 75,121.5 155,517 150,243 8 Gurziwan 14 3 14,906 39,978 82,762 79,956 9 Dawlatabad 14 3 4,083 25,700 53,226 51,400 10 Kohistan 14 0 0 28,759 59,538 57,518 11 Qaramqul 9 8 7,306 10,354.5 21,428 20,709 12 Qurghan 11 11 11,177 24,854.5 51,455 49,709 13 Andkhoy 10 10 23,486 21,531.5 44,715 43,063 14 Khanchar Bagh 7 7 9,264 12,210 25,278 24,420

 

Kohestan is not on the IEC’s final list of voters in Faryab

Number District Total polling centres Total voters registered Difference between preliminary and final lists 1 Almar 5 10,514 164 2 Andkhoy 10 22,545 939 3 Belcharagh 4 14,407 928 4 Pashtun Kut 8 16,504 2,896 5 Khan Charbagh 7 8,963 301 6 Khawja Sabz Posh 2 1,675 68 7 Dawlatabad 3 5,296 1,213 increase 8 Shirin Tagab 3 3,622 28 increase 9 Qurghan 11 11,392 215 increase 10 Qaramqul 8 7,342 36 increase 11 Qaisar 19 39,254 352 12 Gurziwan 2 10,907 3,999 13 Maimana 24 37,208 190

 

 

 

Afghanistan’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has posted a clock on its home page that counts down the time remaining until the 20 October parliamentary election (minus Ghazni province). That’s a nice gag. It would also have been good if a counter had been provided to show, for example, the total number of registered voters (on its Dari page) or the total number of candidates. In both cases, readers need to add the figures themselves. These examples are only a few that show how the IEC does not make it easy to follow the electoral process. Therefore, AAN co-director Thomas Ruttig, with input from the AAN team, has compiled some basic facts about the Afghan elections.

AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in the Election Conundrum series will be added to it.

Afghanistan’s next parliamentary elections will be held on Saturday, 20 October 2018. The election campaign started on 28 September. There will be a 48 hour silence period on 18 and 19 October immediately before election day.

Preliminary results are scheduled for the 10 November and the final results to be made known on 20 December 2018.

The 2018 elections are the third parliamentary elections in post-Taleban Afghanistan. According to the official count (each legislative period has its number), this is the 17th in the country’s history. It is not clear which election was counted as the first. [Amended: According an article on the BBC’s Pashto service on 9 October 2018, the first  parliament under the currently used name Shura-ye Melli was established under King Muhammad Nader Shah (ruled 1929-33) with 111 members. (1)] However, it is clear that the first relatively free vote was held in 1949 that established the seventh parliament. Women voted for the first time in 1965 for the tenth parliament.

This year’s polls are three and a half years behind schedule.

The elections will take place in 33 out of the country’s 34 provinces. The exception is Ghazni (for AAN background see here and here). The kuchis (nomads) constitute another countrywide constituency.

Voters and candidates

According to the latest information provided on the English part of the website of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), 8,918,107 people have been registered as voters. This includes 3,067,918 women, 5,681,592 men, 168,015 kuchis and 583 Sikhs and Hindus (the latter are not differentiated into men and women, and all figures still include Ghazni province; see IEC’s Dari website). On 1 October, the IEC published – on Facebook and in Dari and Pashto only – an approximate figure of 8.8 million voters, without Ghazni. It also said that over 600,000 registrations had been cancelled because they were either underage people or had missing dates of birth, or were duplicate entries.The IEC has not explained to the public how they arrived at the latest figures, ie how it verified voter registration figures. (Find the number of voters per polling centre in each province in Dari on the IEC website, here)

There are 250 seats at stake in the lower house, the Wolesi Jirga. Ten seats are reserved for kuchis and one jointly for the two small Sikh and Hindu communities. This seat has added by the latest change of the electoral law in late 2016 (AAN reporting here).

The exact number of candidates is unclear. Countrywide, AAN counted 2,532 candidateson the ballot papers from the provincial lists on the IEC website. (2)

The IEC, in contrast, has provided different figures. On 4 September, IEC deputy spokesperson, Kobra Rezayi, told AAN there were 2,651 candidates in total, comprising 2,250 men, 401 women and 49 kuchi; the IEC has only figures per province on its website but no total. Media have been given other figures again. For example, The New York Times has published a figure of 2,565 candidates, among them 417 women, based on IEC information from early October. The difference may be the result of the reinstatement of candidates who earlier had been ruled out ineligible.

Overall, these numbers are similar to the 2010 parliamentary elections, when there were 2,584 candidates, including 406 women, who ran for office. This year, 35 candidates have been excluded by the IEC, mainly for their links to illegal armed groups (more detail here).

Since then, three candidates have been killed (see below). One female candidate, Fariba Rahmani, from Badghis, died in a traffic accident and another one in Kabul, Shah Gul Rezayi, withdrew. They and the candidates recently killed are still on the ballot papers.

The capital Kabul has 804 candidates, among them 119 women. They include a number of members of the 2010 parliament who were elected in other provinces but do not feel safe enough to campaign outside the capital this time. Others apparently think that winning a seat in Kabul would be easier, as the multitude of aspirants would split the vote, meaning a lower number of votes would suffice to win a seat there.

Voting system

The voting system is based on 35 multi-seat constituencies (the 34 provinces and the nomads) which are identical with the provinces. The number of seats allocated to each constituency depends on the size of population. This leads to a range from 33 seats for Kabul province (which includes the city and 14 rural districts) to Nimruz or Panjshir with two.

Kuchi representatives have criticised the IEC’s policy that all votes should cast their votes in the area where they have registered. They said this may prevent many of them from participating in the elections, as they had registered near their summer pastures, but now had moved to their winter quarters.

68 (about one fourth) of the 250 seats are reserved for women. This is again based on the population size. Kabul, for example, has the most, with nine. This does not mean that only women vote for women, and men for men. There are joint male/female candidate lists for each constituency. In both ‘segments’ (male and female), those with the most votes win a seat. For example, in Kabul, this means the 24 men and nine women with the most votes. If in any province more women than foreseen by the quota win a sufficient number of votes, all of them go into the Wolesi Jirga, thus decreasing the numbers of men. (This happened in Nimruz province in the 2010 elections, where women won both provincial seats and again, in several cases, in the 2005 election.)

There is only one candidate for the Sikh/Hindu seat, Narinder Singh Khalsa (media report here). He replaced his father, Avtar Singh Khalsa, who was originally running, but was killed by a suicide bomber in Jalalabad in early July (media report here). The IEC registered 1,105 Sikh and Hindu voters, 759 in Kabul, 342 in Nangarhar and 4 in Helmand (see here, here and here).

Role of political parties

A total of 205 candidates – eight per cent – countrywide have registered as members of political parties. The remainder are registered as ‘independents.’ According to an AAN count, Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum’s party, Jombesh-e Melli-ye Islami, has the most candidates, with 44, including eight women; followed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami with 42 (two women) and deputy Chief Executive, Haji Muhammad Mohaqqeq’s Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-ye Mardom, with 22 (five women). (3)

Political parties are legal in Afghanistan. The law allows them to compete, but only as individuals who can register themselves under their party’s name. However, parties cannot field lists of candidates. Although the establishment of party-based factions in parliament is not formally banned, it has been discouraged from 2005 onwards, for example, by former president Hamed Karzai, and, in practice, has never happened. However, amongst the ‘independent’ candidates, many are known to belong to political parties.

Polling centres and observers

Countrywide, there were supposed to be 7,366 polling centres open on election day. Each one has at least two polling stations with separate facilities for men and for women, leading to 21,000 in total. Only around 5,100 – about two thirds – of these polling centres are scheduled to open on election day for security reasons, according to the Afghan Ministry of the Interior, confirmed in a UN report.

The elections will be observed by domestic and international observers, candidates’ and political parties’ agents, as well as the media. While final figures are not available yet, the number of international observers will be lower than ever witnessed since 2001. The EU is only sending a three-member team, and there seems to be no OSCE presence, in stark contrast to earlier elections. The UN will have some 400 staff monitoring, and it can be assumed that most will be Afghans.

Five major domestic election observer organisations said in a statement distributed on 6 October, that they will deploy a total of 6,565 observers (40 per cent are women) “throughout the country to cover as many polling centers and polling stations as possible.” This will comprise: 2,500 by the Transparent Elections Foundation of Afghanistan Organization (TEFA); 1,130 by Election and Transparency Watch Organization of Afghanistan (ETWOA); 1,117 by Afghan Civil Society Forum Organization (ACSFO); 1,100 by Free and Fair Election of Afghanistan Organization (FFAEO) and 818 by the Afghan Amputee Bicyclists for Rehabilitation and Recreation (AABRAR).

The Taleban and pre-election violence

In April 2018, the Taleban announced their opposition (media report here) to the elections and called for a boycott. AAN understands there were attempts through various channels to at least persuade them not to actively interrupt the elections. This seems to have led to nothing, as the Taleban published another statement on 8 October 2018 repeating their boycott calland urged candidates to withdraw their participation, as the elections were only “bogus” and were “conducted for the sole purpose of legitimizing those stooges who are authorized by the occupying forces” and “of minimizing the [people’s] resentment against the foreign occupation.” They instructed “its Mujahidin to halt this American led process throughout the country by creating severe obstacles for it, while taking extensive and intensive care of civilian Afghan lives and their properties. (…) No stone should be left unturned for the prevention and failure of this malicious American conspiracy.” It declared “those people who are trying to help in holding this process successfully by providing security” (our emphasis) targets.

The UN reported that in the first month of voter registration after mid-April 2018, some 86 civilians were killed and 185 injured. According to the IEC, five candidates had been killed before the election campaign started in late September. Since then, a further four candidates have been killed, in Parwan, Ghazni, Kandahar and, on the day of publication, in Helmand; a fifth one wounded in Kabul and convoys of three more have been attacked in Kunar and, in two incidents, in Khost. In Kunar, three bodyguards were killed and in Khost five people were injured (see here and here). In early October, a suicide attack, claimed by the local franchise of the Islamic State in Kama district, Nangrahar, killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 30 (media report here). The 9 October attack was a suicide attack in the office of the a candidate that killed at least nine more people and injuring others.

The Ministry of Interior reported they have assigned 54,776 members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) for the security of 5,100 polling centres for the five days ahead of the elections, and will hold an additional 9,540 forces in the reserve.

Next elections

In a next step, presidential and provincial council elections are scheduled for 20 April 2019. The IEC announced on 1 October that the postponed Ghazni parliamentary elections will  be held on the same day. It is not clear yet whether this will be the case with the district council elections that were originally scheduled for 20 October and been postponed.

The counting and adjudication process for the parliamentary elections is expected to continue until 20 December 2018, and the candidate registration for the 2019 presidential election is scheduled for 11 to 25 November 2018 (their preliminary list to be published on 10 December and the final list on 16 January 2019). There is the danger that problems and possibly further delays in the former might overspill and influence the latter. (See the electoral calendar for the 20 October parliamentary elections in Footnote 4.)

With regard to local and international election observation and the use of biometrical equipment, for calculation of the voter turnout and to prevent electoral fraud, AAN will soon publish separate, more detailed dispatches.

 

(1) According to an article by Hafizullah Emadi in the German Internationales Asienforum (2008) unter the title “Establishment of Afghanistan’s Parliament and the Role of Women Parliamentarians: Retrospect and Prospects”, this parliament was established and its lower house “elected” but there is no further information about the procedure, participation or results.

(2) The IEC has published the following final provincial lists of candidates:

Kabul: 804 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/kabul.pdf);

Bamyan: 40 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/bamyan.pdf);

Nuristan: 18 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/nooristan.pdf);

Kunar: 31 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/kunarha.pdf)

Khost: 55 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/khost.pdf)

Urozgan: 25 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/uruzgan.pdf)

Nimruz: 12 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/nimroz.pdf)

Balkh: 85 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/balkh.pdf)

Daikundi: 41 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/daykundi.pdf)

Herat: 161 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/herat.pdf)

Kapisa: 35 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/kapisa.pdf)

Paktika: 33 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/paktika.pdf)

Panjshir: 12 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/panjshir.pdf)

Parwan: 28 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/parwan.pdf)

Wardak: 40 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/wardak.pdf)

Laghman: 33 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/laghman.pdf)

Sar-e Pul: 33 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/sarepul.pdf)

Badakhshan: 76 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/badakhshan.pdf)

Jawzjan: 30 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/jawzjan.pdf)

Faryab: 62 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/faryab.pdf)

Samangan: 31 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/samangan.pdf)

Zabul: 24 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/zabul.pdf)

44 Kuchi candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/kuchi.pdf); one Sikh candidate (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/sikh.pdf)

Kandahar: 112 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/kandahar.pdf)

Helmand: 92 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/helmand.pdf)

Kunduz: 90 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/kunduz.pdf)

Nanhargar: 137 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/nangarhar.pdf)

Badghis: 35 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/badghis.pdf)

Logar: 35 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/logar.pdf)

Baghlan: 88 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/baghlan.pdf)

Paktia: 78 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/paktia.pdf)

Takhar: 73 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/takhar.pdf)

Ghor: 30 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/ghor.pdf)

Farah: 42 candidates (http://www.iec.org.af/pdf/candidates-list-1397/final/farah.pdf)

(3) Here a list of the 26 political parties that have nominated a total of 205 candidates under their name and their numbers, compiled by AAN. Some of these candidates have been ruled ineligible but most later reinstated – so that an exact final number cannot provided, here, too (source: UNAMA):

• Hezb-e Jombesh-e Melli Islami Afghanistan (National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan Party): 44 –– 35 men (Kabul, Nangarhar, Baghlan, Bamian, Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz, Samangan, Balkh, Sar-e Pul, Jawzjan, Badghis, Herat, Farah, Faryab); 9 women (Kabul, Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz, Balkh, Jawzjan, Faryab)
• Hezb-e Islami Afghanistan (Islamic Party of Afghanistan): 42 –– 37 men (Kabul; Kapisa, Parwan, Maidan-Wardak, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Laghman, Baghlan, Paktia, Khost, Kunar, Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz, Sar e Pul, Ghor, Zabul, Faryab, Badghis, Herat); 3 women (Maidan-Wardak, Nangarhar, Kunduz); 2 Kuchi
• Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-ye Mardom Afghanistan (Islamic Unity Party of the People of Afghanistan): 22 –– 16 men (Kabul, Bamian, Kunduz, Samangan, Balkh, Sar e Pul, Ghor, Herat, Daikundi); 5 women (Wardak, Samangan, Balkh, Sar e Pul, Daikundi); 1 Kuchi
• Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan (Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan): 17 ––16 men (Kabul, Wardak, Baghlan, Bamian, Samangan, Balkh, Sar-e Pul, Ghor, Daikundi, Herat); 1 woman (Kabul)
• De Afghanistan de Melli Wahdat Wolesi Tahrik Gond (National Unity Popular Movement Party of Afghanistan): 13 –– 11 men (Kabul, Nangarhar, Kunduz, Uruzgan, Kandahar, Herat); 2 women (Kabul, Uruzgan)
• Hezb-e Mutahed-e Melli Afghanistan (Afghanistan National United Party): 8 –– 6 men (Kabul, Kunduz); 2 women (Kandahar, Kabul)
• Hezb-e Jamiat e Islami (Islamic Society Party): 8 –– 7 men (Baghlan, Takhar, Faryab, Balkh); 1 woman (Balkh)
• Hezb-e Mahaz-e Melli-ye Islami Afghanistan (National Islamic Front Party of Afghanistan): 7 –– 5 men (Kunduz, Balkh, Kabul, Herat), 2 women (Kunduz, Balkh)
• Hezb-e Insaf-e Melli-ye Islami Afghanistan (Afghanistan Islamic Fairness Party): 4 –– 2 women (Kabul, Bamian); 2 men (Kunduz, Daikundi)
• Hezb-e Herasat-e Islami Afghanistan (Afghanistan Islamic Protection Party): 4 –– 4 men (Kabul, Sar-e Pul, Herat, Bamian)
• Hezb-e Dawat-e Islami Afghanistan (Islamic Mission Party of Afghanistan): 4 –– 4 men (Kabul, Wardak, Nangrahar)
• Rawand-e Hefazat az Arzeshha-ye Jehad wa Muqawamat (Movement for the Protection of the Values of Jehad and Resistance): 3 –- 3 men (Nangrahar, Kabul, Wardak)
• Hezb-e Afghan Mellat (Afghan Nation Party): 2 –– 2 men (Nangrahar, Herat)
• Hezb-e Harakat-e Inqelab-e Islami-ye Mardom-e Afghanistan (Afghanistan People’s Islamic Revolution Movement Party): 2 –– 2 men (Kabul, Nangrahar)
• Hezb-e Etedal Afghanistan (Afghanistan Equity Party): 2 –– 2 men (Herat, Kabul)
• Hezb-e Paiwand Milli (National Solidarity Party): 2 –– 2 men (Kabul)
• Hezb-e Eqtedar-e Islami Afghanistan (National Islamic Sovereignty Party): 2 –– 2 men (Kabul)
• De Afghanistan Wolesi Harakat Gund (Popular Movement Party of Afghanistan): 1 –– 1 man (Kandahar)
• De Afghanistan de Sole Melli Gund (Afghanistan National Peace Party): 1 –– 1 man (Balkh)
• Hezb-e Bedari-ye Mellat-e Afghanistan (Afghanistan Nation’s Awakening Party): 1 –- 1 man (Kabul)
• Hezb-e Harakat-e Islami Azad Afghanistan (Free Islamic Movement Party of Afghanistan): 1 –– 1 man (Balkh)
• Hezb-e Harakat-e Islami-ye Mellat-e Afghanistan (Afghanistan Nation’s Islamic Movement Party): 1 –– 1 man (Kabul)
• Hezb-e Musharekat-e Melli Afghanistan (Afghanistan National Participation Party): 1 –– 1 man (Kabul)
• Nohzat-e Melligerayi-ye Afghanistan (National Movement of Afghanistan): 1 –– 1 man (Kabul)
• Hezb-e Islami-ye Mutahed Afghanistan (United Islamic Party of Afghanistan): 1 –– 1 man (Kabul)
• Melli Bawar Gund (National Trust Party): 1 –– 1 man (Kabul)

(4) The electoral calendar for the 20 October parliamentary elections (see AAN dispatch here):

Based on the electoral law, the electoral calendar should be prepared and published by the IEC 120 days before election day. The IEC did publish this on time (see here and here), on 22 April 2018 (translated into English and added Gregorian dates by AAN, with important dates in bold):

Number  Activity  Start date End date Gregorian dates 1 Announcement of Election Day 11 Hamal  11 Hamal  31 March 2018 2 Voter Registration 25 Hamal 22 Jawza 14 April to 12 June 3 Filing of objections and complaints regarding voter registration and addressing them 25 Hamal 1 Saratan 14 April to 22 June 4 Publishing the voter list 23 Asad 23 Asad 14 August 5 Publishing the electoral calendar 2 Saur 2 Saur 22 April 6 Registration of candidates for the Wolesi Jirga and district councils 5 Jawza 22 Jawza 26 May to 12 June 7 Reviewing candidates’ registration information 6 Jawza 6 Saratan 27 May to 27 June 8 Publishing the preliminary candidate list 7 Saratan 7 Saratan 28  June 9 Filing challenges to the preliminary candidate list, as well as corrections 7 Saratan 9 Saratan 28 to 30 June 10 Addressing challenges to the preliminary candidate list 9 Saratan 11 Asad 30 June to  2 July 11 Final date for candidate withdrawal 8 Saratan 10 Asad 29 June to 1 August 12 Publishing final list of candidates 12 Asad 12 Asad 3 August 13 Finalising polling centre list in terms of security 2 Saratan 2 Saratan 23 June 14 Establishing a Media Commission 6 Saur 28 Hut 26 April 2018 to 19 March 2019 15 Campaign period for the Wolesi Jirga election 6 Mizan 25 Mizan 28 September to 17 October 16 Campaign period for district council election 11 Mizan 25 Mizan 3 to 17 October 17 ‘Silence period’ (no campaigning) 26 Mizan 27 Mizan 18 to 19 October 18 Filing complaints about the campaign period 6 Mizan 27 Mizan 28 September to 19 October 19 Voting day 28 Mizan 28 Mizan 20 October 20 Tabulation of the Wolesi Jirga 28 Mizan 19 Aqrab 21 Filing complaints about voting and the count and addressing them 28 Mizan 29 Aqrab 20 October to 20 November 22 Announcement of the preliminary results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 19 Aqrab 19 Aqrab 10 November 23 Filing complaints about the preliminary results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 20 Aqrab 21 Aqrab 11 to 12 November 24 Addressing complaints about the preliminary results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 21 Aqrab 14 Qaws 12 November to 5 December 25 Sending the final decision(s) of the ECC to the IEC 14 Qaws 21 Qaws 5 to 12 December 26 Announcing final results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 29 Qaws 29 Qaws 20 December 27 Tabulation of votes of the district council elections 20 Aqrab 17 Qaws 11 November to 8 December 28 Announcement of preliminary results of the district council elections 18 Aqrab 18 Aqrab 9 November 29 Filing complaints about the preliminary results of the district council elections 18 Qaws 20 Qaws 9 November to 11 December 30 Addressing complaints about the preliminary results of the district council elections 20 Qaws 22 Jaddi 11 December 2018 to 12 January 2019 31 Sending decision(s) of ECC to IEC 23 Jaddi 28 Jaddi 13 to 18 January 32 Announcing final results of the district council elections 4 Dalw 4 Dalw 24 January 2019 

 

 

The campaign by more than 2,600 candidates to secure votes in the Afghan parliamentary elections is in full swing, for over a week now. 35 would-be MPs, however, are not running. They have been barred from standing by the Electoral Complaints Commission, chiefly for ties to illegal armed groups. In this piece, AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili looks at the vetting provisions and procedures. He concludes that a fair and complete vetting of candidates in Afghanistan, plagued by conflict and awash with illegal weapons and armed men, would always be a high-wire act. However, the vetting ahead of this election has again prompted questions about the transparency and completeness of the process. It has left doubts as to why some candidates have been allowed to stand for parliament and these particular 35 have not been. (Both the vetting procedure and the lists of candidates who have been disqualified, ‘warned’ and ‘advised’ can be found in annexes to this dispatch.)

AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in the Election Conundrum series will be added to it.

The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) announced the disqualification of 35 parliamentary candidates, mainly for links with illegal armed groups on 11 August. (Other reasons for disqualification include having criminal records or not meeting various eligibility requirements.) Many of those excluded from standing disputed the decision and, together with their supporters, blocked and shut down the Independent Election Commission (IEC) headquarters in Kabul and nine provincial offices: Faizabad, Gardez, Kabul, Kunduz, Pul-e Alam, Charikar, Pul-e Khumri, Samangan and Taloqan. As the United Nations Secretary General’s report to the Security Council highlighted, the closure of the IEC headquarters “effectively halted the process of entering data in the voter registry and the retrieval of voter registration books from a number of provinces, among other electoral preparations.”

According to article 44 of the electoral law, people who are members or commanders of illegal armed groups cannot run as candidates and the responsibility to investigate their links to illegal armed groups rests with a Vetting Commission. The commission is constituted as part of the ECC. It is headed by the EEC chair, Abdul Aziz Ariayi, and includes representatives from the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Ministries of Interior and Defence and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG). These institutions are supposed to provide the ECC with the needed intelligence about candidates. A list of candidates found to have links to illegal armed groups is recommended to the ECC for disqualification, which then takes the final decisions.

The requirement to exclude candidates with links to armed groups had existed in earlier versions of the electoral law (34 and 36 candidates were disqualified in 2005 and 2010, respectively). It was removed in 2013 (see AAN’s previous reporting here) and then reintroduced in 2016 in the electoral law governing the current round of elections. Looking at this new law in 2017, AAN wrote:

The vetting of candidates with links to illegal armed groups has been a complicated affair in the past, as these links were often difficult to persuasively prove (at least, this could be argued). As a result, the most powerful commanders were usually unaffected by the process. In the 2005 parliamentary election, for example, out of 208 candidates put forward by election stakeholders for disqualification for having links to illegal armed groups, only 34 were finally barred from running.

Ahead of the 2010 parliamentary elections (see this AAN report), NDS offices had reportedly collected evidence against about 220 candidates, but only 36 candidates were finally disqualified. The question of which candidates would be disqualified and which not, based on that evidence, was more of a process of political bargaining and pressure, than of strictly applying the legal provisions.

In the run-up to the October 2018 elections, there seemed to be a demand from among the people for disqualifying candidates tied to illegal armed groups. For instance, on 31 July, Ariana News reported that people from different parts of the country had demanded the disqualification of ‘strongmen’. Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AHIRC), it reported, had said that dossiers of individuals accused of human rights violations had been sent to the relevant institutions. A source from the AIHRC clarified to AAN that it had not, itself, sent the dossiers, but had responded to enquiries about individual candidates. ECC secretary and spokesman Ali Reza Rohani told AAN on 29 August that the ECC had acted upon the provisions of the law to disqualify the candidates and that this was an obligation the ECC had to fulfil.

However, given the presence of many militias and strongmen in the country, the concern is that the legal provisions were, yet again, have been applied selectively and unevenly. The ECC’s Rohani told AAN that he personally believed the vetting of candidates with links to armed groups should not have been included in the electoral law. He said that if such a provision was to be enacted, it should have been limited to “extremely serious and specific cases and exact, objective and measurable indicators for identifying them should have been set in the law.” He said that when he had been summoned to brief the Wolesi Jirga on the vetting process, he told the parliamentarians the provision was a double-edged sword: on one hand, it was good that it could lead to candidates linked to illegal armed groups being excluded, but on the other hand, “if not applied properly, it could be exploited against certain factions.” Rohani dismissed the idea that it had actually been used against certain candidates affiliated with certain factions, perhaps in order to steer clear of getting into detailed discussion about why certain individuals had been excluded. (1)

The legal framework

There are two main articles in the electoral law which serve as a basis for vetting candidates.

Article 39 says that anyone standing in an election must have been born an Afghan citizen or obtained Afghan citizenship at least ten years before nomination day; they should not have been convicted of crimes against humanity or felonies or have been deprived of their civil rights by a court and; they should be 25 years old. (2)

Article 44 of the same law says that commanders and members of an illegal group cannot stand in elections and imposes certain other restrictions, for example, sitting judges, governors or security forces officers cannot stand unless they resign from their posts. (3) It also authorises the setting up of the Vetting Commission. Any objections to the commissions decisions are then to be adjudicated by the ECC, whose decisions are final.

The electoral law provides no procedures or criteria for disqualification. This was remedied by the Vetting Commission on 21 June when it approved a procedure aimed at implementing the objectives of article 44. (The procedure is available on the ECC website in Dari here and an English translation can be found in Annex Two at the end of this piece.)

The procedure defines an illegal armed group as “a group of people which has a physical armed presence and is involved in the spread of insecurity, perpetration of organised crimes, smuggling of drugs, usurpation of public and private properties, cooperation with the enemy, violation of human rights and other illegal instances.” It defines a commander as “a person… directly or indirectly heading an illegal armed group” and “using that group” for the above-mentioned crimes, and a member as someone who “actively participates” in or “directly benefits” from the activities of an illegal armed group. Funders of illegal armed groups are considered members. While armed groups are mainly defined by their activities, commanders and members are defined by a person’s connections to the group.

The procedure also sets out the duties of the Vetting Commission: collect and compile corroborating evidence against accused candidates; scrutinise any complaints received by the ECC and referred to the commission; establish whether candidates do belong to or command illegal armed groups, based on the documents and evidence collected and; provide the required information to the ECC.

People can file an objection to a particular candidate running with either the ECC centrally or the Provincial Electoral Complaints Commissions (PECCs). These temporary bodies have to be set up a month ahead of candidate nomination (article 31). (4) Each PECC comprises three members: a man and a woman appointed by the ECC centrally and a third member appointed by the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan and approved by the president.

Nominations to stand for parliament began on 26 May. This means the PECCs should have been established by 26 April. However, it was only on 27 July, more than three months after the legal deadline, that the president finally appointed the PECCS’ 102 commissioners. The ECC spokesman told AAN this was the fault of the government, not of the ECC, as it had submitted the list of candidates well before the legal deadline.This late appointment seriously hindered the ECC’s ability to address complaints related to candidate nomination. The UN Secretary General’s report to the Security Council criticised the time lost: “As a result of the delayed appointment of commissioners, out of 680 complaints received, only 240 had been adjudicated, as of 20 August.”

The EEC’s Rohani told AAN there were two types of adjudications: two-phased, when complaints are first reviewed by a PECC or by the Vetting Commission and then reviewed and adjudicated by the ECC, and one-phased complaints which are filed directly with ECC headquarters and addressed only by it. According to the complaints procedure (available in Dari here) approved by the ECC in April, the PECC is the primary authority for addressing electoral complaints and the ECC should serve in that role only in exceptional cases. (If the political and security context at the provincial level is not appropriate for addressing them; if objections and complaints are widespread and there is a conflict of authorities; if there is a proven conflict of interest of one of the parties with a provincial commissioner; if the PECCs are not operational and; other instances decided by the ECC in consultation with the PECC.) The procedures also says that the ECC is the final authority for the adjudication of complaints and that it is authorised to “confirm, amend, correct or overturn” the PECCs’ decisions.

The chief executive of Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), Yusuf Rashid, has criticised what he called the double standard in complaints. Only the ‘two-phased’ complaints had involved the chance to appeal – and on this basis, 11 had been re-instated. Other potential candidates, whose complaints were only reviewed by the ECC because of the late appointments of the provincial ECC officials, had had no chance to appeal.

Timeline for complaints

The section of the electoral calendar dealing with complaints lays out the following timeline:

• 26 May to 12 June: Candidate nomination
• 28 June: Publication of preliminary list of candidates. Actually published on 30 June
• 28 to 30 June: Filing challenges and corrections
• 30 June to 2 July: Addressing challenges to the preliminary list
• 29 June to 1 August: Period for candidate withdrawal (when candidates can withdraw their nomination without losing their deposit)
• 3 August: Publication of the final list of candidates. Actually published in the form of a report by the EEC on 11 August

The IEC’s preliminary list of 2,691 candidates (2256 male, 404 female, 22 male Kuchis, 8 female Kuchis and one Sikh) excluded 141 nominees from 25 of the 33 provinces holding elections (Ghazni’s election is delayed (see AAN’s reporting here and here). Kabul had the highest number of candidates (more than 800) and, with 73, the most exclusions. These particular disqualifications were for procedural problems. According to the candidate nomination procedure (a Dari version is available here) approved by the IEC on 14 May, to nominate themselves, people had to submit, among other documents, copies of 1,000 supporters’ tazkeras labelled with voter registration stickers. Some of the excluded candidates had submitted duplicate voter ID cards or cards from outside the constituency (ie, those running from Kabul had submitted cards from another province, for example), so were not allowed to stand.

AAN’s conversation with Rohani of the ECC, as well as the ECC report, show there were two categories of complaints about the preliminary list.

First were the complaints and objections against the IEC by 134 of the 141 disqualified candidates. They lodged these with the EEC. After reviewing these complaints, the EEC said it had re-included 102 of the candidates and affirmed the disqualifications of the remaining 31 (this number should be 32).

Second were complaints made by the public against some of the candidates on the preliminary list. These were addressed in two steps: first, these complaints were filed with the ECC which then referred them to the Vetting Commission or they were directly filed with the Vetting Commission. It announced its findings on 2 August when it recommended 25 people for disqualification. It also gave 27 people a ‘warning’ and nine people a ‘serious warning’ (Rohani said this meant there was evidence, but not enough to exclude someone, although if the ECC “completed the documents,” it could still disqualify a candidate). Seven other people received ‘advice’ (Rohani said this meant they did not have evidence against them, but warned them to be cautious anyway). The ECC rejected the rest of the complaints.

On the same day as the Vetting Commission announced its findings, the ECC issued a press release saying that the ‘excluded’, ‘warned’ and ‘advised’ candidates could lodge appeals at the ECC headquarters on 3 and 4 August. It later said that 34 candidates had lodged objections to their exclusions. A number of people who had complained to the Vetting Commission against candidates and were unhappy with its decisions also filed complaints about these decisions with the ECC.

In a second step, the ECC reviewed all the objections and complaints, as well as the preliminary decisions by the provincial ECCs and other cases to do with the preliminary list. It then communicated its legal decisions to the IEC on 11 August and announced them in a press conference and on the ECC website.

Out of 25 candidates who had emerged from these various processes as recommended for disqualification by the Vetting Commission, the EEC approved 14. It allowed the remaining 11 candidates to stand. The Vetting Commission has not published the names of these 25 people. Nor does the EEC’s report name who was subsequently allowed to stand. Yusuf Rashid, chief executive of Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), told AAN on 22 September that the reasons behind the EEC’s final decisions were unknown. Of two candidates running from Kabul, for example, Allah Gul Mujahed was disqualified by the Vetting Commission, but the ECC downgraded this to a warning, while Mullah Tarakhel had received a warning from the Vetting Commission, but the ECC disqualified him. The reasoning behind these decisions is completely unclear.

The ECC’s report also announced that 21 other candidates had been disqualified “based on [new] legal reasons and evidence.” They had been on the Vetting Commission’s list for scrutiny, but had not been disqualified by it. Or their cases had been addressed first by the PECCs or by the ECC, centrally. The EEC report gives few details about this list but does indicate that more than 25 candidates had been under the direct scrutiny of the Vetting Commission.

We do not know how many candidates, in total, came under the scrutiny of the EEC, PEECs or Vetting Commission. However, as a result of all the various procedures, a total of 35 potential candidates were excluded from running in the election:

– 20 excluded for links to illegal armed groups (article 44 of the electoral law)

– Two excluded for failing to meet the criteria, eg because they were too young or had problems with citizenship or a criminal record (article 39)

– Four excluded because they had not provided the correct documentation (article 92). (5)

The ECC report has not specified the reasons for the exclusion of the remaining nine candidates.

A total of 45 candidates were given advice (six), warnings (31) or serious warnings (eight).

FEFA’s Rashid said that giving a warning to candidates accusing of having links with illegal armed groups made no sense because, he said, if links were proven, they should just have been disqualified. If not, they should have been included in the list, he added.

Why were only 35 candidates disqualified?

Many observers had expected many more candidates to be disqualified. Indeed, the media had reported the existence of a much longer list. For example, Pajhwok news agency said on 13 July that the government and Attorney General’s Office (AGO) had prepared dossiers detailing the crimes committed by 61 incumbent MPs who sought re-election. Their alleged crimes included “misuse of authority, land-grabbing, kidnapping, embezzlement and corruption during their recent tenure.” Pajhwok also reported a “reliable government source” saying that similar dossiers had been prepared for another 400 candidates. There was no public confirmation or rejection of these reports by either the AGO or the ECC.

In the end, only 35 candidates were disqualified and only ten of them were sitting MPs. Rohani of the ECC told AAN this was because they only had evidence against these individuals. Yet, Naim Ayubzada, head of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA), told AAN on 23 September that “hundreds of other candidates” could have been disqualified “had the government cooperated in providing the required documents and evidence” and had the ECC not acted “conservatively” or if it had taken its job “seriously.” He said, for example, that Allah Gul Mujahed should have been excluded. Others have said that the 35 disqualified candidates did not represent the most egregious cases. Muhammad Hassan Serdash, a journalist and candidate from Faryab, for example, told AAN that of the various commanders in Faryab standing for parliament, only Sakhi Nawid, (from Gurziwan district who is affiliated with Jamiat-e Islami), had been disqualified. “Other commanders are on a par with Nawid,” Serdash told AAN, suggesting Nawid was by no means the worst of them.

ECC chairman Ariayi (who also headed the Vetting Commission) seemed to go along with all the above evaluations when he told  Ariana News he believed there were other candidates linked to illegal armed groups who had not been debarred from standing in the elections, but, he said, the ECC did not have sufficient evidence against them. He complained that the government did not provide the necessary documents and that, he said, constituted a “gap in the process.”

Muhammad Aref Hafez, deputy head of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution (ICOIC), told the Wolesi Jirga that the ECC had not provided it with “convincing reasons” or given evidence for disqualifying the 35 candidates who had been disqualified. The ICOIC does not have any direct role in the process, but is required to monitor the performance of the institutions for their consistency with the constitution. Abdullah Shafayi, a member of the ICOIC, confirmed to AAN on 22 September that the ICOIC was still trying to see the documents and evidence before issuing its legal opinion on whether the process had been constitutional. He said they were looking, in particular, at whether or not the rights of the disqualified persons to stand in the election had been violated; whether or not the law (article 44) had been observed and; whether or not the disqualification had contributed to a transparent election and prevented those people tied to illegal armed groups or involved in drug trafficking from being elected. He said they would try not to undermine the electoral process, as their priority was to make sure the elections are held on schedule. He said it was a question for them why only 35 – and, indeed, why only these particular 35 – candidates had been disqualified.

Allegations of bribery against the ECC chairman

Muddying the waters yet further have been accusations of corruption against the chair of the Electoral Complaints Commission, who was also chair of the Vetting Commission Abdul Aziz Ariayi. On 26 August 2018, Kabul daily Etilaat Roz reported that it had obtained a video showing a person named Saifuddin Akbari, who identified himself as representative of ECC chair Ariayi, going to the home of the commander, Bashir Qanet, a candidate in Takhar, asking him to pay 150,000 dollars in return for removing him from the disqualified candidates’ list. In the video, the paper said, Qanet said he could not afford the amount and was only prepared to pay 60,000 dollars, but Akbari insisted on the original amount and told Qanet he had only two days to pay the amount (the appeals by the excluded candidates started on the day the video was recorded).

According to the newspaper report, Qanet told the AGO about the alleged attempted bribe and then managed to document it in coordination with the AGO. 25,000 dollars was prepared by Qanet and another 25,000 dollars by the AGO (with the serial numbers of the banknotes noted). This was paid to Akbari on a specific day. After taking the money, Akbari was arrested by police and officials from the AGO close to Qanet’s house in Takhar. He claimed he had sold his car to Qanet and that the money – 50,000 US dollars – was payment for it. Ariayi denied any involvement at all, calling on judicial agencies to probe the case “seriously” as someone had “misuse[d] my name.” (Tolonews reported that Akbari is from Badakhshan, the same province Ariayi comes from. And Ariayi himself told Ariana that they are from the same district and were “slightly acquainted.”)

The AGO confirmed on 27 August that two people had been arrested for obtaining 50,000 US dollars from a disqualified candidate. According to the Tolonews report cited above, one is the head of the Takhar police’s criminal investigation department. AGO spokesman Jamshed Rasuli confirmed to Etilaat Roz that the arrest had been made in cooperation with the disqualified candidate. He also said the detainees had admitted to having connections with people inside the ECC. The EEC chair remains in post. Rasuli said the AGO was investigating the case and that whoever had been accused, whether from inside the ECC or outside, would be interrogated and, if there was enough evidence, prosecuted by the judicial agencies. The ECC spokesman also said “Nothing can be ruled before any investigations,” but emphasised that, if true, it should not be generalised to the entire ECC. Neither spokesman, then, denied a possible ECC link to the alleged bribery. Given that the AGO has not announced its findings yet, AAN is not in a position to take the allegation to be true or an attempt by a disqualified candidate to take revenge. Nor if the attempted bribery did happen, whether the case was an isolated incident or indicative of a more widespread pattern is not known.

Closure of IEC offices

After the ECC announcement, some of the disqualified candidates and their followers organised blockades of the IEC headquarters in Kabul and nine provincial offices, in Badakhshan, Paktia, Kabul, Kunduz, Logar, Parwan, Baghlan, Samangan and Takhar, effectively stopping them working. IEC chair Gula Jan Badi Sayyad said, on 13 August, that the disqualified candidates were demanding that the IEC postpone both the announcement of the final list and the draw which determines the order of the candidates’ names on the ballot papers. He urged the disgruntled candidates to take up the matter with the ECC. The IEC chair also said that his commission would not be responsible for any delays caused by the protests. On 22 August, Habibullah Shinwari, spokesman for the Election and Transparency Watch Organisation of Afghanistan (ETWA), raised concerns about further delays at such a crucial time when the IEC had to be in full swing. (6)

The disgruntled candidates argued that the reasons for their disqualifications had either not been communicated to them or were not convincing. For example, Masuma Khawari from Samangan said she had heard about the accusation – “commanding an [illegal] armed group” – and her disqualification through the media.

Zia ul-Haq Amarkhel, another disqualified candidate and former head of the IEC secretariat who resigned (see AAN’s report here) amid controversies over the 2014 presidential election, told  the online media platform Khabarnama on 29 August that the ECC had told him, “You assisted a specific candidate in the last presidential election of Afghanistan and despite [an attempt by] the police to prevent this, you transported ballot papers to a specific area.” Amarkhel argued that, “If this is the reason for my exclusion, then the legitimacy of the president is also under question,” and with it “the legitimacy of the cabinet of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and of both electoral commissions the members of which have been appointed by the president.” On 26 September, President Ghani via a decree created a new post of “senior adviser to the president for public and political affairs” and appointed Amarkhel to it.

Badakhshi MP Fauzia Kufi, who along with her sister, Maryam, a sitting MP from Takhar, was disqualified for links to illegal armed groups told Khabarnama, on 3 September:

I was told I am supporting three local commanders – whose names I heard for the first time [from the EEC]. Moreover, the law mentions membership or command of, not the word ‘support’ for an armed group. [The law does mention funding.]

ECC spokesman Rohani defended all the disqualifications, saying they were “carried out within the framework of the law and regulations, and according to the authority of the ECC.” (7) He told AAN that the ECC had sent notices to the disqualified candidates in which it had explained the reason for their disqualification. He said the ECC could not publish the documents and evidence against them because this might harm the complainants and could further expose the disqualified candidates. He also said the commission was also not legally obliged to do so.

Conclusion: vetting is a high-wire act during conflict

Out of more than 2,600 potential candidates for the 20 October parliamentary elections, the ECC disqualified 35 candidates, primarily for their links to illegal armed groups. It has not published the reasons why these particular candidates were rejected, something the public might feel they have the right to know.

Its ability to address complaints against candidates was certainly hampered by the three-month delay in establishing its provincial offices. The president’s failure to make those appointments on time is indicative, at best, of the government’s lackadaisical attitude towards the elections. At worst, it shows its disregard of the laws as well as of crucial deadlines for the preparation of such a significant national event.

It should also be stressed that the provision for disqualifying candidates with links to illegal armed groups is difficult to enforce, given the number of armed groups and strong men in the country, the weakness of government institutions and the conflict. AAN is not able to judge the final 35-strong list of disqualified candidates. (According to officials of the government-run Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) quoted by the Pajhwok News Agency in January 2018, there are around 500 illegal armed groups officials in the northern region, one of seven regions countrywide, alone.)

However, comparing the twenty named on that list as being members or commanders of illegal armed groups with those who only received warnings or ‘advice’ and with many other candidates, both sitting MPs and first-time nominees, it is clear that some egregious offenders have been allowed to run, well-known strongmen with links to armed groups. It is also clear that there are apparently ‘clean’ candidates – clients or relatives of powerful individuals – who will not be independent MPs, but represent the wishes of their client only. (Many state officials could also credibly be investigated for their links to illegal armed groups.)

The list of those excluded for their links to illegal armed groups has a degree of randomness about it when it comes to which candidates were disqualified, which were scrutinised but allowed to stand, and those who were never added to any list. This apparent randomness, coupled with a lack of transparency about the vetting process, has created doubts in the minds of both candidates and voters as to the actual basis of ECC and IEC decisions. This has further undermined faith in the fairness of the whole elections process.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig and Kate Clark

 

(1) Rohani also said that, if you looked at the list of the disqualified candidates, “you can find candidates affiliated with political groups which are perceived to be allied with the ruling faction, and candidates affiliated with the opposition.” Two known Hezb-e Islami commanders, Zardad Faryadi and Bashir Qanet who had nominated themselves respectively for the Kuchi constituency in Kabul and from Takhar have been disqualified, despite, Rohani said, Hezb-e Islami perceived to be allied with the presidential palace. (Zardad is a convicted war criminal (read AAN’s reporting here) living in Kabul, while Qanet is a commander in Takhar.)

(2) Article 39 of the electoral law sets out the following requirements and qualifications for candidates for both houses of parliament:

• Shall be an Afghan citizen or have obtained citizenship of the State of Afghanistan at least ten years before the day of candidacy (Wolesi Jirga) or appointment (Meshrano Jirga)
• Shall not have been convicted of crimes against humanity or felonies or been deprived of their civil rights by a court
• Shall be 25 and 35 years old on the day of their candidacy or appointment for the Wolesi Jirga and the Meshrano Jirga, respectively

The article also stipulates that MPs and senators should also meet the legal requirements established for voters, but they largely duplicate what they would have to fulfil as senators or MPs, anyway.

(3) Article 44 of the electoral law imposes the following restrictions:

• The following persons cannot nominate themselves for the elected seats mentioned in this law election before resigning from their positions: chief justice, members of the Supreme Court and other judges; Attorney General, prosecutors and professional members of the Attorney General’s Office; ministers, advisor minister, advisors to the president, deputy ministers, heads of agencies and their deputies, chairpersons and members of the independent commissions, provincial governors and their deputies, district governors, ambassadors and the staff of the country’s political missions abroad; military personnel of the Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Interior Affairs and General Directorate of National Security and other ministries and bodies with military set-up; civil servants; temporary or permanent staff of the IEC; instructors of the governmental institutes of higher education and members of the academic cadre of the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan. If the above-mentioned persons do not win, they may be re-appointed in accordance with the provisions of the law.
• Persons who are commanders or members of illegal armed groups cannot participate in elections as a candidate. Their command or membership of illegal armed groups is vetted by a separate commission comprising representatives of the Ministries of National Defense and Interior Affairs, National Directorate of Security and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance and being chaired by the ECC chairperson. This Vetting Commission takes the necessary decisions. Any complaint in this regard is adjudicated by the ECC; its decisions are final.
• If a member of elected bodies intends to nominate themselves for another elected seat, they should resign from their current seat. Members of the provincial and district councils who nominate themselves for the membership of the Meshrano Jirga or members of the Meshrano Jirga who nominate themselves for the membership of provincial or district council are an exception to this provision.
• If an appointed member of the Meshrano Jirga intends to nominate themselves for an elected seat, they should resign from their current seat.
• No one can nominate themselves in more than one electoral constituency or for more than one elected seat at the same time.

(4) Article 31 says that the PECCs shall be established one month before candidate registration for the purpose of addressing objections and complaints arising from negligence, violations andcrimes related to elections. The PECCs comprise three members: a man and a woman appointed by the CECC and a third appointed by the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan upon therecommendation of the Central Complaints Commission and with the approval of the president. The members should meet the following conditions: have citizenship of Afghanistan; have at least a bachelor’s degree in the field of law or jurisprudence; be competent, have a good reputation and at least five years of work experience in government or non-governmental organizations; be at least 30 years old; shall not have been convicted of crimes against humanity or felonies; shall not be a member of any political party during their incumbency in this post. The PECCs are obliged to address the objections and complaints arising from negligence, violation and identification of crimes related to elections in their relevant constituencies within a period of two weeks and report on their executions to the PECC. [emphasis added]

The ECC is obliged to report, through the mass media, to the public regarding its adjudication of the objections and complaints arising from negligence, violation and identificationof crimes related to elections.

The PECCs shallcomplete their work within one month of the announcement of the final election results and following their dissolution, their authorities are transferred to the ECC.

Article 30 of the law specifies the authorities of the ECC and PECCs as below:

• Address objections to the list of candidates and voters, as well as to the requirements and qualifications of the candidates;
• Address complaints arising from electoral violations, provided the complaint is filed inaccordance with the provisions of this law within the due period;
• Issue advice, warnings and orders of corrective action to the person or organization that has committed the violation;
• Impose cash fines, depending on the case, inaccordance with the provisions of this law;
• Issue an order to recount votes in specific polling centres prior to the announcement of the election results;
• Invalidate ballot papers not fulfilling the necessary requirements;
• The ECC or PECC can remove a candidate from the final list of candidates if it is proved, based on credible evidence, that he or she was not eligible to nominate themselves according to the provisions of this law.

(5) Article 92 of the electoral law says that the ECC or PECC can remove the name of a candidate from the final list whenever it is proved by credible evidence that he or she had not been eligible in accordance with the provisions of the law.

(6) In a further development, supporters of Assadullah Sharifi, a disqualified candidate from Balkh, blocked a key highway linking Kabul to the northern Balkh province in protest against the ECC’s decision to disqualify him on 14 August. Sharifi described the decision by the IECC as politically motivated and warned that he would continue civil protest unless he is reinstated as a candidate. His protest is no longer going on.

(7) On 20 August, media reported Rohani claiming that there were “some efforts” aimed at bringing changes to the legal decisions made by the ECC or to change the law “because the decisions are not reversible, but all decisions taken are legal and all of us are obliged to abide by them.” He did not specify who was making the efforts. President Ashraf Ghani’s spokesman, Harun Chakhansuri, however, told the media on the same day that the president had made it clear that the IEC and ECC were authorised to take all decisions regarding the elections and that the government would not meddle in the process.

 

Appendix One

List of those excluded from the final list of 2018 Wolesi Jirga candidates

Number Name Constituency Decision 1 Muhebullah Uruzgan Excluded 2 Ahmad Shah Shams Uruzgan Excluded 3 Amanullah Hotaqi Uruzgan Excluded 4 Abdul Rahman Shahidani Bamyan Excluded 5 Fowzia Kufi Badakhshan Excluded 6 Muhammad Nabi Bayan Badakhshan Excluded 7 Abdul Samad Abdul Hamid Badakhshan Excluded 8 Mariam Kufi Badakhshan Excluded 9 Sayyed Jafar Naderi Baghlan Excluded 10 Asadullah Islamzoi Baghlan Excluded 11 Hayatullah Wafa Baghlan Excluded 12 Asadullah Sharifi Balkh Excluded 13 Ghulam Haidar Jilani Parwan Excluded 14 Nur Ahmad Sekandar Parwan Excluded 15 Allah Mir Paktia Excluded 16 Nawid Ibrahimkhel Kabul Excluded 17 Bashir Qanet Takhar Excluded 18 Asadullah Ayub Takhar Excluded 19 Liaqatullah Babakarkhel Khost Excluded 20 Jabar Jabarkhel Excluded 21 Masuma Khawari Samangan Excluded 22 Muhammad Asef Azemi Samangan Excluded 23 Rais Khairullah Samangan Excluded 24 Sakhi Nawid Faryab Excluded 25 Qais Hassan Kabul Excluded 26 Al Hajj Mawlawi Tarakhel Muhammadi Kabul Excluded 27 Sayyed Daud Naderi Kabul Excluded 28 Sedaqat Zahed Kabul Excluded 29 Ziaul Haq Amarkhel Kabul Excluded 30 Ehsanullah Atef Kabul Excluded 31 Sher Ali Ahmadzai Kabul (Kuchi) Excluded 32 Zardad Faryadi Kabul (Kuchi) Excluded 33 Shayesta Baz Naseri Kunduz Excluded 34 Akbar Stanekzai Logar Excluded 35 Jawid Zaman Nangarhar Excluded

Approval: the individuals included in the above table were not recognised eligible in accordance with the electoral law and thus be excluded from the final list of candidates.

The list and approval was undersigned by all five ECC members (see AAN’s reporting on their appointment and short profile here).

List of candidates who received a ‘serious warning’, a ‘warning’ or ‘advice’

Number Name Constituency Decision 1 Mir Dad Nejrabi Kapisa Serious warning 2 Abdul Baqi Takhar Serious warning 3 Ahmad Shah Ramazan Balkh Serious warning 4 Humayun Humayun Khost Serious warning 5 Muhammad Anwar Oryakhel Kabul Serious warning 6 Zakria Suda Badakhshan Serious warning 7 Mullah Ezatullah Atef Kabul Serious warning 8 Safiullah Muslim Badakhshan Serious warning 9 Fazlul Azim Zalmai Mujaddedi Badakhshan Warning 10 Abdul Wali Niazi Badakhshan Warning 11 Dr Ibrahim Malekzada Ghor Warning 12 Keramuddin Rezazada Ghor Warning 13 Khair Muhammad Timur Takhar Warning 14 Abdul Wahed Faqirzada Takhar Warning 15 Ewaz Ali Bikoghli Samangan Warning 16 Muhammad Sulaimankhel Paktika Warning 17 Qudratullah Zaki Takhar Warning 18 Bashir Ahmad Ziayi Takhar Warning 19 Sher Ahmad Akhundzada Helmand Warning 20 Alam Khan Azadi Balkh Warning 21 Muhammad Hussain Sar-e Pul Warning 22 Sayyed Ekramuddin Masumi Takhar Warning 23 Muhammad Mehdi Rasekh Maidan Wardak Warning 24 Haji Zaher Qadir Nangarhar Warning 25 Haji Hazrat Ali Nangarhar Warning 26 Muhammad Naem Lalai Hamidzai Kandahar Warning 27 Sayyed Zaher Masrur Balkh Warning 28 Abdul Hadi Jamshidi Herat Warning 29 Atta Muhammad Dehqanpur Ghor Warning 30 Allah Gul Mujahed Kabul Warning 31 Abdul Rahim Ayubi Kandahar Warning 32 Gul Murad Arab Nangahar Warning 33 Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi Kunduz Warning 34 Ahmad Behzad Kabul Warning 35 Haji Muhammad Wali Alizai Helmand Warning 36 Muhammad Ali Mohaqeq Balkh Warning 37 Baz Muhammad Almas Samangan Warning 38 Faizullah Bik Takhar Warning 39 Abbas Ibrahimzada Balkh Warning 40 Mawlawi Abdul Basit Sarem Ghor Advice 41 Qumandan Lutfullah Kabul Advice 42 Nasim Siah Khan Herat Advice 43 Qari Omid Kapisa Advice 44 Sarwar Sadeqi Daikundi Advice 45 Hamidullah Tokhi Zabul Advice

Approval: In accordance with article 30 of the electoral law, serious warning, warning and advice were issued by the Electoral Complaints Commission to the individuals included in the above table for their future improvement. If the ECC gets access to more information about them, a decision about their exclusion will be taken.

The list also includes 102 candidates who had been eliminated from the preliminary list for failing to fulfil procedural requirements, but it was concluded that they should be allowed to stand.

Appendix Two

Procedure for Vetting Candidates’ Command or Membership of  Illegal Armed Groups 

(The original Dari is available here)

Article One: Goal

This procedure is enacted for the purpose of better implementation of the provisions of paragraph two of article 44 of the electoral law.

Article Two: Scope of Application

This procedure shall be applicable to all the elected seats envisaged in the constitution.

Article Three: Abbreviations

1. Electoral Complaints Commission:The Electoral Complaints Commission shall hereinafter in this procedure be referred to as the “Complaints Commission.”
2. Commission for Vetting Individuals Having Membership or Command of Illegal Armed Groups: The Commission for Vetting Individuals Having Membership or Command of Illegal Armed Groups shall hereinafter in this procedure be referred to as the “Vetting Commission.”

Article Four: terminologies

The following terminologies shall have the following meanings in this procedure:

1. Illegal Armed Groups:

Is a group of people who have an illegal armed physical presence and are involved in the spread of insecurity, perpetration of organised crimes, smuggling of drugs, usurpation of public and private properties, cooperation with the enemy, violation of human rights and other illegal instances.

2. Command

Is a person’s act of directly or indirectly heading an illegal armed group and using that group for the crimes mentioned in paragraph one of this article.

3. Membership

is the active inclusion of a person in an illegal armed group or directly benefitting from the activity of an illegal armed group. Funders of illegal armed groups are also considered members of these groups.

4. Corroborating evidence

Comprises the authentic documents, evidence and information provided by credible national and international organisations, natural or legal persons, or the testimonies of individuals from the society, which are collected by the government agencies regarding a person’s membership or command of illegal armed groups and provided to the Vetting Commission.

Article Five: Structure of the Vetting Commission

1. The Vetting Commission is comprised of the competent representatives of the Ministries of Defense, Interior Affairs, National Directorate of Security and Directorate of Local Governance, which performs the assigned tasks under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Complaints Commission. And considering the importance of the function of this commission, its members shall not be replaced without any justified reason as long as they are working in their government positions.
2. The Office of the Chief of Staff of the Complaints Commission has the responsibility for being the secretariat of the Vetting Commission.

Article six: Meetings of the Vetting Commission

The Vetting Commission shall hold its ordinary and extraordinary meetings in the following manner:

1. Ordinary meetings, once a week.
2. Extraordinary meetings may be held on the request of the chairman of the commission or on the request of two members of the Vetting Commission.
3. The final decision shall be taken based on a majority of votes in the commission’s meetings.

Article seven: Code of Conduct of the Members of the Vetting Commission

Members of the Vetting Commission shall be obliged to observe the following principles:

1. Be punctual to the Commission’s meetings.
2. Keep documents presented and the discussions made in the meetings of the Vetting Commission confidential.
3. Perform their assigned duties in a timely manner.

Article eight: Duties of the Vetting Commission:

The Vetting Commission has the following duties:

1. Collect and compile corroborating evidence against the candidates that have command or membership of illegal armed groups.
2. Establish the membership of candidates in illegal armed groups, in view of the documents and evidence collected.
3. Provide the required information to the Complaints Commission.
4. Scrutinise any complaints received from the Complaints Commission.

Article nine: Documents, Evidence, Information and Place for their Safekeeping

Documents, evidence and information provided to the commission shall meet the following criteria:

1. The documents, evidence and information provided should prove the direct or indirect involvement of a candidate in the relevant crimes;
2. Documents, evidence and information should be complete and should not require further technical investigation and review before they are presented to the Vetting Commission by one of the bodies that are members of the Vetting Commission;
3. The documents, evidence and information presented to the Vetting Commission shall be the property of the Electoral Complaints Commission, but, due to the high level of their confidentiality and their importance, shall be kept, based on NDS’ [strict] confidentiality] rules for maintaining peace and stability in the country.

Article ten: Venue of Meetings

The venue for holding the official meetings of the Vetting Commission shall be the Complaints Commission headquarters. However, based on the discretion of the members of the Vetting Commission, these meetings can be held in any other proper place as well.

Article 11: Approval of the procedure

This procedure is developed on 21 June 2018 and is approved and enforced by the Vetting Commission.

End

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), set up in 2002 as part of the Bonn Agreement, is to get a new set of commissioners. How to choose them has proved difficult. Before, the president just appointed whom he wanted. Now, a new procedure aimed at greater transparency has ended up being slow and clumsy. The AIHRC is an important institution, says AAN’s Ehsan Qaane, with a mandate to hold the executive and others to account for human rights, but it is unclear that the new selection procedures will deliver commissioners with the necessary qualifications.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has remained Afghanistan’s foremost human rights institution for almost two decades. Its role is to promote and protect human rights. It does this through human rights training, advocacy, monitoring and reporting. Since its establishment, the commission has pushed forward on several important human rights issues. Six days after its establishment, the AIHRC monitored the Emergency Loya Jirga’s sessions from 10 to 19 June 2002 – the first time a national human rights institution had monitored an important national event in Afghanistan. The AIHRC has also prepared one of the only official reports on war crimes and violations of human rights (1978-2001). The report remains unpublished, but was shared with then President Hamed Karzai to inform future policies on transitional justice (read AAN analysis about the report here). Besides UNAMA, the AIHRC is the only organisation that systematically has documented and reported on torture in the Afghan detention centres and jails and on civilian casualties in the Afghan conflict. The AIHRC’s reports on torture and civilian casualties have influenced the Commission’s draft law on compensation for victims of terrorist acts (still a draft), as well as the drafting of the anti-torture law, endorsed by a presidential decree on 5 March 2017 (AAN’s report on the decree). This presidential decree established an anti-torture committee with the AIHRC Chairwoman as Chair.

The AIHRC agenda is set by nine commissioners who provide strategic guidance and management to the commission that today consists of a head office in Kabul and 13 sub-offices. The appointment of the commissioners for their five-year terms is of crucially important for the independence of the commission so that it can promote and defend human rights in Afghanistan. President Karzai appointed the commissioners in 2002, 2006 (after a by-law of the AIHRC was adopted in May 2005) and 2013. President Ghani revised this procedure in a decree adopted on 9 July 2018 so that, while the president will still appoint the commissioners, he will do so based on a shortlist prepared by a specially appointed Civil Society Working Group (CSWG) and the Selection Committee.

The current commissioners’ five-year work terms ended in June 2018. Just five are still in office and are now working as acting commissioners. Meanwhile, the Civil Society Working Group (CSWG) and Selection Committee have been sifting through 390 applications to compile a longlist

Conflict between current commissioners

New commissioners were last appointed in 2013 by President Hamed Karzai. The nine commissioners appointed were: Dr. Sima Samar, Muhammad Farid Hamidi, Ahmad Zia Langari, Surya Subhrang (these were all AIHRC commissioners in the previous term, too), Wahiduddin Arghun, Hawa Alam Nuristani, General Ayub Asil Mangal, Qadria Yazdanparast and Mawlawi Abdul Rahman Hotak  (read more about these appointments and the commissioners’ bios in AAN’s previous report). From the above nine commissioners, four have since resigned due to other engagements: Farid Hamidi became the Attorney General, and Wahiddudin Arghun his deputy, joined the Attorney General’s Office in February 2018 (AAN’s report about Hamidi’s appointment as the Attorney General). Surya Subhrang and Hawa Alam Nuristani are both standing for the upcoming parliamentary election (AAN’s report about the upcoming parliamentary election).

Although it was President Karzai’s right to appoint the commissioners, he had reportedly promised the AIHRC Chairwoman, Sima Samar, that he would consult her first on the appointments. Although Samar was consulted about some of the 2013 batch, two candidates: Yazdanparast and Hotak were introduced without her consent and were appointed against her wishes. Yazdanparast had previously worked with the political party/mujahedin faction, Jamiat-e Islami and Mawlawi Abdul Rahman Hotak had worked with the Taleban government in 1996-97.

According to Fahim Hakim, who served AIHRC as a commissioner from 2002 to 2011, civil society had also taken an active role in the appointments in 2013. Civil society had provided President Karzai with a list of possible candidates, but this list was not taken into account.

Considerable tensions exist between some of the five remaining commissioners, in particular between Samar and Yazdanparast. The author of this dispatch was present in several meetings where Samar criticised Yazdanparast for not doing her work and creating problems for other commissioners. Yazdanparast has in turn accused Samar and the colleagues who served with her prior to 2013 of marginalising her and some of the other 2013-appointed commissioners. She also voiced these allegations in public, for example in an interview with Tolonews in May 2018 when she claimed the AIHRC has been monopolised and was not doing its duties. A source in AIHRC, who asked to remain anonymous, told AAN on 3 September 2018 that Hotak and Yazdanparast had challenged the leadership of AIHRC, including the other commissioners and the executive director of AIHRC. While he would not admit that this had any negative impact on AIHRC’s activities, he did say that “working under these circumstances has not been an easy job.” Whatever the reason behind the conflict between the commissioners, it demonstrates the importance of appointing commissioners trusted by the head of the commission and committed to human rights.

The new appointment procedure

The current appointment procedure was revised by two presidential decrees passed on 5 May and 9 July 2018.

In the first decree, the Civil Society Working Group (CSWG), comprised of seven elected civil society activist and human rights defenders, were tasked with collecting applications and give them to a Selection Committee consisting of three state officials: the chief of justice, the attorney general and the head of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution, or the chairperson of AIHRC, if s/he is not a candidate again for AIHRC. The Selection Committee is in charge of drawing up a shortlist of 27 applicants to give to the president for him to select nine commissioners from. The AIHRC and United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights are mentioned as observers in the appointment process.

The Civil Society Joint Working Group (representing a countrywide network of more than five hundred organisations) criticised some parts of the first decree. It wanted more authority for their representatives or representation on the Selection Committee (the secretary of the group Abdullah Ahamdi, told AAN on 29 August 2018 that at their 10 June meeting, they decided to pass their concerns to the president through Sima Samar (AAN also obtained a hard copy of their minutes). Sima Samar also had concerns. All the members of the Selection Committee, she said, were men and all were from the ‘president’s team’. She wanted to have representation from the chief executive’s side and at least one woman on the committee. As she told AAN on 13 August, she discussed this issue with the president and got his agreement to revise the decree.

In the second decree, the CSWG was given the authority not only to collect the applications, but also to make the first shortlist of the 81 most qualified applicants through a lengthy process (as discussed later). The composition of the Selection Committee was also changed. Two more members from the chief executive’s team, the minister of justice and the minister of women’s affairs (one being a woman) have been added to the committee. So far, there is no sign of disagreement among the leadership of the National Unity Government, or between the president and his deputies about this mechanism. However, the situation may well change before the end of process. In the second decree, the AIHRC and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights are no longer included as observers in the appointment process.

Both Fahim Hakim and Sima Samar confirmed to AAN that the idea for the new mechanism had originated with the AIHRC, “We didn’t want the commissioners to be only appointed by one person [the president],” Samar told AAN. “That’s against the Paris Principles.” (Paris Principles are internationally recognised principles for national human rights institutions, adopted in 1993 by the UN General Assembly.) She added that they had consulted Nader Nadery on this, who is the current head of the Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission and former AIHRC commissioner because they wanted the selection to be transparent and inclusive. (Both of the presidential decrees also clarify that their purpose is to appoint new commissioners based on AIHRC’s law and the contents of the Paris Principles.)

Although the new mechanism has positive elements, it makes the appointment process muddled and long-winded. Article 5 of the decree tasked the AIHRC with drafting the procedures for the CSWG and the Selection Committee and gave authority to the Selection Committee to finalise and approve the procedures. This they did, but many changes to the draft made the process messy. For instance, the Selection Committee tasked the CSWG with interviewing all applicants twice before shortlisting the 81 most qualified applicants. This was not in the draft, prepared by the AIHRC. Interviewing 390 applicants twice took a great deal of time. Then, the Selection Committee also has to interview the 81 applicants who had made it onto the CSWG’s longlist. Even though they had suggested the new mechanism, Dr Samar said, “unfortunately, it turned out to be long and complicated.”

The Selection Committee had reproduced the procedures drawn up for the Selection Committee for the Electoral Commissions (AAN report about selection of commissioners of the electoral bodies), while also adding an additional round of interviews. The Selection Committee for the Electoral Commissions took 32 days to interview 117 applicants in a first round and 72 others in a second round, to eventually shortlist 36 applicants

The first step: the Civil Society Working Group

According to the presidential degree, the CSWG should consist of seven well-known civil society and human rights activists, three of whom should be women. They are elected by the Secretariat of the Civil Society Joint Working Group. On 11 August, these seven members were elected. A few days later they were introduced to the AIHRC as the procedure provides for them to have an office in the AIHRC compound. The members are: Leya Jawad, chairwoman of Feminine Solidarity for Justice Organisation; Sakina Sakhi, chairwoman of the Support Vulnerable Persons Organisation; Nawida Kakar, chairwoman of the Women’s Association; Abdul Wadud Pedram, chairman of the Human Rights and Education about Violence Organisation; Abdul Jabar Paikan, chairman of the Afghanistan Countrywide Teachers Union; Dr Abdul Basir Turyalai, Chairman of the Afghan Amputee Cyclists for Rehabilitation and Recreation and; Hassan Hakimi, chairman of the Afghanistan Youth National Development and Social Organisation. (1)

Shortly after its establishment, on 15 August 2018, the CSWG made a call for applications for the nine commissioner positions. Applicants were asked to complete an application form and also submit a CV and copies of their tazkera and degree. An member of the CSWG, who asked to remain anonymous, told AAN they had 390 applications by the 9 September 2018 deadline.

While there is no official overview of the 390 applicants, the CSWG source informed AAN they included current commissioners Sima Samar, Qadria Yazdanparast and Mawlawi Abdul Rahman Hotak.  The others are from different backgrounds, mostly from academia and civil society.

The main job of the CSWG was then to shortlist 81 applicants in a five-step process. This starts with a review of the merits of the applicants according to their decrees and fields of study (2) and is followed by the two interviews. The CSWG source told AAN on 25 September 2018 that the CSWG would start interviews with 162 applicants in the first week of October 2018 and in the second round interview 100. It is unclear when the process will end.

The inclusion of civil society in the selection process should place a responsibility on them to respect the final selection of the president – if he follows the mechanism. This should also make civil society cooperate more with the AIHRC in the future. However, this is only possible if CSWG members work well and professionally. There is some doubt, however, about the CSWG’s interviewing ability or how good they are at assessing applicants’ analytical and linguistic skills, especially given that some of the candidates are more experienced than the interviewers. Two applicants told AAN the CSWG had neither the expertise nor the capacity to assess applicants holding PhDs or those who have many years of professional experience in well-known national or international institutions. Sima Samar and Fahim Hakim shared this same concern with AAN. This uncertainty about the CSWG’s ability could jeopardise the legitimacy of its decisions.

The second step: The Selection Committee

When the CSWG has finalised its longlist, the Selection Committee will draw up a shortlist of 27 candidates to be presented to the president. The Selection Committee consists of Sayed Yusuf Halim, the chief of justice (chair), Muhammad Farid Hamidi, the attorney general, Abdul Basir Anwar, the minister of justice, Dilbar Nazari, the minister of women affairs, and Muhammad Qasim Hashemzai, the chairperson of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution (ICOIC). Three members of the committee are from the president’s team (the chief of justice, head of the ICOIC and attorney general) and two from the chief executive’s team (the ministers of justice and women’s affairs). Dr Samar told AAN on 13 August 2018 that, although there was no sign of disagreement between the president and the chief executive about the AIHRC, bringing members of Dr Abdullah’s team in providing against any possible disputes about the composition of the AIHRC in the future.

The tasks of the Selection Committee, according to the presidential decree, are: to approve its own and CSWG procedures; review the longlist prepared by the CSWG; interview the 81 applicants; make a shortlist of the 27 most qualified applicants, who must include 12 women and; send the list to the president for the final decision.

Unlike the CSWG procedure, the Selection Committee procedure does not define the method of assessing the applicants. It is also unclear which questions they would ask in the interviews. As with the CSWG, there is no deadline set for when the Selection Committee has to finalise the shortlist.

The final step is for President Ghani to select nine commissioners comprising at least four women and at least five lawyers.

Conclusion

AIHRC is the main state institution mandated with promoting and protecting human rights values in Afghanistan. Setting it up as an independent body was one of the major achievements of the Afghanistan state after the Bonn Conference in 2001. Afghan officials occasionally remind their international partners about AIHRC as their accomplishment, for example, Dr Abdullah in his speech in the 37th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, in February 2018. Protecting this achievement is crucial for the country, which makes the selection of hardworking and committed commissioners essential. It is important that the president no longer alone appoints the commissioners, but that others, including civil society, have an input. However, there are questions about the capacity of the CSWG to properly assess the candidates. Moreover, the new selection process is cumbersome and exceptionally slow-paced. For instance, since its establishment on 15 August 2018, CSWG was only able to start the first round of interviews on 30 September 2018, and it still needs to interview more than 100 applicants, twice. This has to happen before the Selection Committee can carry out their round of interviews and prepare the shortlist for the president to select the final nine candidates.

The working term for the current five remaining – now acting – AIHRC commissioners ended in June 2018 and they have a history of difficult working relations. Yet, it is unlikely that the new commissioners will be appointed before the end of the year. Afghans urgently need a strong human rights commission, but this selection process will not deliver this any time soon.

 

Edited by: Sari Kouvo and Kate Clark

 

(1)  On 5 August 2018, the Secretariat of the CSWG introduced another team to AIHRC, but due to the presence of only one woman, Leya Jawad, in its composition, the AIHRC rejected it. This team was elected on 3 July 2018 before the approval of the procedure for CSWG, in which the presence of at least three women was mentioned.

(2) During the first review stage, CSWG should review the submitted documents and mark applicants on their level and field of university studies, as well as their professional experience. In the second review stage, CSWG should mark applicants on their professional experience related to human rights, their foreign language (English) skills, their research experience and their age. For instance, applicants are categorised in four groups based on their age: group one is applicants between 25 to 35 years old (40 marks), group two is applicants between 36 to 50 years old (30 marks), group three is applicants between 51 to 60 years old (20 marks) and group four is above 61 years (10 marks). Then CSWG should interview applicants with the highest marks once or twice – the number of applicants to be interviewed is not mentioned in the procedure. The first interview has 20 marks in total and involves general questions about the constitution, AIHRC’s law and applicant’s language skills. The second interview has 100 marks and involves specific questions about human rights, international human rights law and the legal analytical skills of the applicants. In the final stage, CSWG calculate the total marks an applicant received in all four steps according to the following formula: (marks of first step) + (marks of second step*2) + (marks of third step*3) + (marks of fourth step*4). The list of the 81 most qualified applicants – including 36 women – should be released via public media and, at the same time, it should be sent to the Selection Committee.

 

It has emerged that, without any announcement or formal decision taken, district council elections and Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni will not be taking place as planned on 20 October. A special committee of senior government officials had been tasked in early August to rule on an IEC proposal to delay both elections. It has not done so. Meanwhile, the IEC has simply excluded both elections from its preparations. As AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili reports, the disregard for legal procedures obscures the ‘electoral landscape’, fostering an environment where anything, it seems, can be dropped or added at anytime.

2018 was to be the first time Afghanistan had district council elections, despite their being stipulated by the constitution. Voters were ‘informed’ that they were not happening in a casual comment made by Wasima Badghisi, the deputy chair of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) for operations in a media interview. She told Kabul-based daily Hasht-e Sobh on 23 September that the district council elections had not been on the IEC agenda for “a long time”. Although the committee tasked with deciding on the delay had not yet announced “its [final] opinion [decision],” Badghis revealed that district council elections had long “been excluded from election planning and this means they are delayed.”

That district elections had been quietly dropped from preparations for the 20 October poll – district and parliamentary elections were due to be held together on the same day – was confirmed to AAN by IEC spokesman Hafizullah Hashemi on 25 September. He also confirmed that Ghazni’s residents would not have a chance to vote for new MPs this year. Again, this was made without a formal decision or any announcement.

According toarticle 104 of the electoral law, if “security situations, natural disasters, and other similar conditions make impossible the principle of general and fair representation,” elections can be postponed for a period of four months; the IEC needs to propose the delay and a specially designated committee needs to approve it. The committee is comprised of the head and members of the National Security Council, the speakers of the two houses of parliament, the chief justice and the chairperson of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution. If the situation on the ground does not improve within the four month period, the committee can postpone the election for a further four months. (1)

The IEC formally submitted a proposal to delay district council elections to the committee on 29 July (see also this UN Secretary General report here). The IEC said that in only 40 out of Afghanistan’s 387 districts had enough male and female candidates put themselves forward to hold a credible election. In the other 347 districts, there were not enough male or female candidates (see AAN’s reporting for detail here. (2)

Elections in Ghazni

Ghazni had experienced a very particular set of problems in trying to prepare for parliamentary elections. Difficulties started on 26 April, just 13 days into the first phase of voter registration (in provincial capitals), when protestors (mainly Pashtuns, but also Tajiks and Sayyeds from various parts of the province) shut down the IEC provincial office in Ghazni city by pitching a tent at its gate and starting a sit-in. They demanded that the province be divided into smaller electoral constituencies in order to ensure balanced ethnic representation. Their demand originated from the disputed 2010 parliamentary election when all 11 Ghazni seats were won by Hazaras, leaving other ethnic groups, especially the Pashtuns without representation. (See AAN’s previous, detailed analysis of the elections issue in Ghazni here)

On 25 June, the IEC decided to “exceptionally” split the province into three separate electoral constituencies for the upcoming parliamentary elections. This was after the IEC had, on 20 May, decided to continue using the country’s 34 provinces as unitary, multi-seat constituencies for the parliamentary poll, despite toying with the idea of having smaller constituencies. The IEC’s 25 June decision, therefore, represented a volte-face, made despite IEC fears that it could create a precedent in any other province which ‘went wrong’ in terms of the results not being ethnically representative of the population.

On 27 June – after 63 days – the protestors removed their tents and allowed the IEC office to reopen. However, they insisted that they were not happy with the proposed division of the province and, instead, wanted it to be split differently. (See AAN’s previous report on how the IEC wanted to split the province here).

The election difficulties in Ghazni were further compounded two days after the IEC office reopened when a number of Hazara residents waged a counter-protest and sit-in near to the IEC office. They called the IEC’s decision to split the province “totally illegal” and demanded that the commission revoke it. They made their next move on 1 July when they shut down the IEC office in Ghazni city

Both of these protests and counter-protests, which involved lengthy closures of the IEC office in Ghazni city, hampered electoral operations. This forced the IEC to propose in late July that elections in the province be postponed. It argued that due to “serious security situation and other problems” in the province, fair and inclusive representation from the entire province could not be ensured (see media report here).  Ghazni province is suffering from insecurity, but no more than many other provinces. Rather, as well as the hampering of preparations, no political solution had been found to the competing demands of the rival protestors.

Not taking a decision

On 7 August, as the president’s office reported, the National Security Council, with, the IEC spokesman told AAN, the IEC chairman attending, had held a comprehensive and detailed discussion on 7 August on how to hold district council elections and elections in Ghazni in view of the IEC proposal to delay both. The meeting concluded that “more technical and practical studies and consultations were required in this regard.” It asked the IEC to present specific and practical alternatives to a decision could be taken (see media reporting here). Nothing more was heard on the matter until this week.

On 25 September, IEC spokesman Hafizullah Hashemi confirmed to AAN that both the district council elections and parliamentary elections in Ghazni had been written off from the IEC’s election planning. He did not specify at what stage of the preparations the IEC gave up the effort to hold these elections, but said it had not considered them in various steps in preparations, including sending out ballot papers for printing. The IEC sent more than nine million ballot papers for printing to Dubai in late August.

When AAN called deputy presidential spokesman Shah Hussain Murtazawi on 25 September, he first asked us to call back so he could ask others about the postponed elections. When AAN called him again, he told us to contact the IEC and special committee members to find out why the committee had not taken any decision. AAN informed him that the committee also included the president.

Conclusion: disregarding legal procedures

Both the district council elections and parliamentary elections in Ghazni have, in practice, long been written off for this year. However, procedurally, any delay is actually still pending a final decision by the committee authorised by electoral law. The fact that this committee has not taken any decision on the IEC’s proposals in two months shows that the government leadership apparently does not want to make this decision or at least make it public. Rather, they appear to shift the blame to the IEC. Neither government leaders or the IEC have heeded the legal procedures which exist to resolve such a situation at all.

This failure to observe the legal procedures obscures the rules of the game for all stakeholders because it shows that anything can be dropped or added at anytime without the least attention to the rules spelled out in the law. This undermines the credibility of the election management bodies and the electoral process.

The delay undermines the principle that countrywide elections should be held on one day. Very likely, they will also further clog the electoral calendar. Although there is, as yet, no clarity on when the two postponed sets of elections might be held, in practice, the only option is together with the presidential and provincial elections, planned for 20 April 2019. (It can be surely assumed that a third election within six months – ie four months after 20 October, ie 20 January 2019 – is completely unimaginable, particularly during the winter when many areas are inaccessible.) If three countrywide elections plus an additional one in Ghazni are to be held on one day, this will further complicate preparations and procedures on election day. International donors, in particular, have repeatedly argued that Afghan voters, many of them illiterate, are likely be overburdened by multiple ballot papers.

It is important to highlight that the reasons that led to dropping the district council elections and elections in Ghazni remain unresolved. No efforts have yet been made to find a solution.

 

 

(1) Article 104 of the electoral law sets out following provisions and procedures about postponement and suspension of elections:

• When security situations, natural disasters and other similar conditions make impossible the principle of general and fair representation and undermine the credibility of the electoral process if elections are, the elections should be postponed from the specific date for a period of up to four months. The postponement or suspension is proposed by the IEC and approved by a committee, which should comprise head and members of the National Security Council, speakers of the two houses of the parliament, chief justice, and chair of the Independent Commission of Oversight of Implementation of the Constitution of Afghanistan
• If the situation mentioned above which led to postponement or suspension of the elections does not improve within the period of four months, the committee may extend the postponement or suspension of elections for a period of another four months.
• The committee takes its decision by majority of votes of its members.
• If the situation mentioned above is limited to one or more electoral constituencies, the committee may postpone holding elections in those particular electoral constituencies till improvement of the situation.
• If elections in an electoral constituency are proved as defective, the IEC may order conducting new elections in that particular electoral constituency.
• If elections are postponed or suspended, members of the elected bodies (for instance the Wolesi Jirga) should continue to serve in their positions until holding of a new elections and announcement of its results. (This does not apply to the delay in district council elections as they have not been elected before, but does apply to the current Ghazni MPs who, according to this provision, should continue to serve in the Wolesi Jirga if the Wolesi Jirga elections are postponed in that province.)

(2) One positive outcome of election preparations had been – finally – clarity on the much-disputed issue of the number of districts in the country (see AAN reporting here).

 

Ten years (and a few weeks) ago, in August 2008, a process started that would later become known as enteqal (transition), namely of security responsibility from NATO to the Afghan forces. (*) This process was supposed to be finalised by the end of 2014. Full troop withdrawal was never fully achieved, though. NATO troops’ “watchful eye from the side lines”, as cited in the text, and their quick response in situations of security crises are still indispensable  Here is an article (translated from its original German) written for a Berlin-based daily newspaper by AAN co-director Thomas Ruttig less than a year before AAN was formally founded. The article provides a déjà vu– many of the issues described remained unresolved for over a decade now.

From Thursday [28 August 2008] onwards, the Afghan National Army (ANA) will progressively take over responsibility for the security in the Afghan capital Kabul from the NATO-led ISAF mission. The Kabulis will not notice much, though – perhaps only that there will be more ANA patrols in the streets than before. Even the originally planned handover ceremony will not be held. One can also presume that NATO troops will remain present, with a watchful eye from the side lines.

The reason is that security provided by the Afghan security forces has shown a lot of gaps over the past months. They were neither able to prevent the devastating attack at the Indian Embassy in Kabul on 7 July (1) nor an attempt to kill President Hamed Karzai at a military parade on 27 April when the shots fired by a commando of insurgents only just missed him. (2) During the subsequent investigations into the latter incident it turned out that high officers at the Ministry of the Interior had supported the attackers. This cast serious doubts over the ANA and the police’s abilities to assume their newly acquired security responsibilities. “God alone knows what will happen after that,” a Kabuli woman working for an international organisation commented, sceptically.

The transfer of security responsibility was brought up for the first time by President Hamed Karzai at the NATO 2008 spring conference in Bucharest and approved at the Afghanistan conference in Paris in June that year. According to Kabul’s Ministry of Defence, only NATO trainers for the ANA and ANP as well as NATO command centres and logistic bases would remain (…).

Handover to the Afghan forces was supposed to demonstrate abroad that the Karzai government was increasingly able to operate on its own and that the strategy of the US and its western allies to build up effective Afghan forces was working. The fact that the handover will now be implemented without any public event turns the whole affair into a vote of no-confidence on the Afghan forces’ abilities and into an admission that western plans to build them up are way behind schedule. Former Kabul chief of police General Babajan’s recent boasting in Kabul Weekly newspaper, where he claimed the transfer showed that “the Western style of guaranteeing security in Kabul was ineffective” also highlighted that the Afghans dangerously overestimate their own forces’ capabilities.

Starting with the weekend before the now-cancelled handover ceremony, the tone between the Karzai government and the US became sharper. By the end of the previous week, a total of 130 civilians had been killed in two more US airstrikes, one in the western province of Herat and one in eastern Laghman. US representatives vehemently denied that any civilians had been killed in those attacks, but the United Nations confirmed the Afghan government’s reports. (3)

Following these developments, the Afghan cabinet decided to open negotiations with “representatives of the international community” so that, according to Karzai’s spokesman Homayun Hamidzada (contemporary media reports here and here), “air strikes against civilian targets, uncoordinated house searches and illegal arrests of Afghan civilians” by western troops would stop. He said that earlier demands for “moderation” had been “ignored.” Hamidzada further announced that the government wanted to bring all foreign troops “under Afghan law.” Draft legislation would be brought into parliament where emotions about the US attacks have been boiling for several weeks already. One female deputy led a protest of several hundred tribal elders from Logar last week, a province that has also seen a US airstrike. (4)

Hamidzada added that the government was not asking the West to withdraw its troops, though: “This is neither our nor the people’s demand, as we need to strengthen our army before we are able to defend our country [independently].” NATO has responded dryly so far, saying that it has not been notified about any wish for new negotiations.

In contrast to European NATO member states, Washington has so far shown no interest in concluding a status-of-forces agreement with Kabul, which is the international norm and which would define the US troops’ mandate in Afghanistan. In contrast, the deployment of US troops under Operation Enduring Freedom – which does not fall under ISAF’s command – is based on a bilateral “Strategic Partnership Agreement” from May 2005 that largely gives the Americans a free hand to operate at will. Washington also points to the UN Security Council that has mandated the presence of its troops after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. So far, only the Afghan political opposition had demanded to newly regulate the presence of the US troops. Now, it seems, Karzai has joined their bandwagon.

This is mainly related to the presidential elections in 2009. (5) Karzai’s reputation in the country is declining, the insurgent Taleban are portraying him as an “American puppet.” A recent poll by the Kabul office of the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation, asking 1,050 inhabitants in Kabul province, found that only 17 per cent would vote for him again. (6) In the 2004 election, he officially won 54 per cent of the vote countrywide. The security handover of Kabul was meant to be NATO’s campaign support for Karzai. But this has not really worked out well.

The original German article under the title “Unter afghanisches Gesetz” can be found here, at the Berlin daily Tageszeitung’s website (27 August 2008).

Read AAN’s August 2013 dossier, entitled “Looking back at transition“ here.

 

(*) NATO made “transition” its official strategy for Afghanistanat its Lisbon summit in November 2010 (see here), setting mid-2013 as the time when responsibility for security throughout all of Afghanistan should have been handed over – or “transitioned” – from NATO to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in a process of five phases (see AAN analysis here). On the Afghan side, transition was handled by Ashraf Ghani, the country’s president since 2014 and then in the role of what had been dubbed the ‘transition czar’ (see media report here).

(1) At that point, this attack was the bloodiest that had ever occurred in Kabul, with 58 people dead, including two Indian diplomats (one the military attaché), and 141 injured, according to UN figures (a media report here).

(2) The attack occurred on 27 April, the mujahedin’s victory day over the regime of Dr Najibullah. Three people – among them one member of parliament, Fazl Rahman Tsamkanai, a Shia community leader and a 10-year old boy – were killed and eleven wounded (media reports here and here).

(3) The airstrike in Herat province was carried out by the US Air Force on 22 August 2008 in the village of Azizabad in Shindand district, in pursuit of a local Taleban commander, according to the US military. It killed an estimated 92 civilians, 62 of them children, according to UN investigations (see report here). After a separate investigation, the US insisted only seven civilians were killed. The airstrike in Garloch village, Laghman, also in August, killed more than a dozen civilians, according to provincial officials, while the US claimed 30 Taleban dead in the strike and “no knowledge of non-combatant deaths” (media reports here and here; exact date and district not reported). According to a later investigation by Anand Gopal, the attack had hit a wedding.

Previous to those attacks, there had been two similar air strikes with 64 civilians killed in total in the provinces of Nuristan and Nangrahar, according to the UN. In both, wedding processions were hit again. In the Nuristan case on 4 July 2008, US troops again claimed they had been fired at and that they had no knowledge of “injured non-combatants.” Provincial governor Tamim Nuristani, however, reported the US attack was in retaliation for insurgent rockets fired at a US base the night before. The Afghan Ministry of Health said that three of its medical personnel and four other government employees were among those killed (media report here). The Nangrahar case happened on 6 July 2008 in Dehbala district (aka Haska Mena) (media report here).

These incidents led to an increase of US-Afghan tensions, as a contemporary BBC report reflected.

(4) In an airstrike on 15 August in Kharwar district, three children were killed (media report here).

(5) This election was held on 20 August 2009, four months after the constitutional deadline. Karzai had stated that he did not want to stay in office “even one day” after his mandate ended in May 2009, but neither the constitution nor the electoral law included any transitional measures for such a case. The oppositional National Front originally demanded that a Loya Jirga be held to solve the problem. But when Karzai adopted this demand, fears arose that he might manipulate the composition and the outcome of the jirga in his favour. The NF then suggested installing an all-party transitional government. None of this came to fruition.

(6) This was a non-representative poll.

This year, the ten-day commemoration of Muharram by Afghanistan’s Shia Muslims follows a wave of bloody attacks directed against them, most claimed by the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP). In 2017, the government armed and paid guards at some mosques and other religious buildings in an attempt to thwart attacks. Those guards have stayed in place throughout the year and have now been boosted in some places by volunteer guards, chosen by the mosques, in coordination with the local police. Still, as Kate Clark, Ehsan Qaane, Ali Yawar Adili, Rohullah Surosh, Said Reza Kazemi and Fazal Muzhary have been finding out, the new self-defence measures have not been enough to allay people’s fears or the threats enough to stop many Afghans commemorating the martyrs of Karbala.

Black, green and red banners can be seen erected in many Shia Muslim majority neighbourhoods and cities in Afghanistan. They commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and many of his small band of companions in the battle of Karbala in the year 680 (61 AH of the Islamic calendar). Volunteers are cooking simple food like shola (a sweet rice dish) and rice and korma and, in Herat a sort of stew called glur in huge cauldrons at the side of the road in ‘camps’ giving out food and water in memory of the suffering of the Imam Hussain and his companions 1,300 years ago; they had no food and water for three days before the battle. Crowds have been gathering in mosques and mourning halls (takia khana), (1) listening to religious songs recalling the events of Muharram. Some men beat their chests in ritual mourning (sina zani) or self-flagellate (zanjir zani). This year, in Afghanistan’s capital, you can also see armed guards and volunteers, blocked roads and checkposts, an increased police presence and, around some mosques, fortifications. One of the authors described the scene around his neighbourhood mosque:

There is a barricade built of metal scaffolding surrounding it, more than a hundred metres distant from the mosque. It blocks all the streets except one entry point to the mosque where there is just a narrow, pedestrian-only gap which delays people getting in, so that they can be searched. Mourners go through three layers of searching before they can get into the mosque. Sandbags have also been stacked at several points around the mosque, including at the inside door. The guards and other auxiliary protection forces take their positions behind these sandbags.

Muharram ceremonies are clearly vulnerable to attack if anyone wants to. Unfortunately, that intention, to hurt Afghanistan’s Shia Muslims, has very much been in evidence, especially over the last year. Kabul, in particular, has seen a wave of sectarian attacks aimed at causing mass casualties, including those specifically targeting children and young people. They have included attacks on a wrestling gym (5 September), an education centre (15 August) and a voter registration centre (22 April). All were in the Hazara-majority neighbourhood of Dasht-e Barchi in west Kabul and claimed by ISKP. Each attack killed and injured between one and two hundred people. (2)

Shia mosques in Afghanistan’s main city in the west, Herat, have also suffered attacks, at least seven since 2016. The magnitude of these attacks has generally been less than those suffered in Kabul, with far fewer casualties (the exception being the August 2017 attack on the Jawadiya Mosque) but still, Shias there have also wanted and been given extra protection. (3) Shias in other places have also suffered attacks and atrocities, including the massacre of at least 38 men and boys during Friday prayers in a mosque in Khwaja Hassan village outside Gardez in Paktia province on 3 August (AAN reporting here).

In the face of this heightened threat to Shias, the authorities have taken various measures.

Protecting Muharram ceremonies: Kabul

Last year, after several sectarian attacks in Kabul, the government authorised the recruitment of five armed guards for the bigger Shia mosques and takia khanas during Muharram (see AAN reporting here). These guards have stayed in place since.

This year, there were calls for an expansion of the guard scheme or permission to arm volunteers. In response, President Ashraf Ghani met Shia leaders and spoke publicly about a temporary weapons distribution plan for Muharram, for example, at a meeting in west Kabul on 8 September with community representatives (also attended by new National Security Advisor Hamdullah Muheb and two senior Shia officials, Second Vice President Sarwar Danesh and former deputy minister of interior for security affairs and now head of the Kabul Garrison, General Murad Ali Murad (reported here). No distribution of arms by the government has taken place, but volunteer guards, some armed, including with Kalashnikov rifles, others not, have been stood up.  This is with Ministry of Interior permission. All of the interviewees we spoke to in Kabul – and in Herat – said this the recruitment had been done by the mosques in coordination with the police and other authorities and local communities, as part of coordinated efforts to ensure security. They also said the self-defence force would only guard mosques and takia khanas during Muharram and then would disband.

Unlike the authorised guards who wear military uniform, only some of the volunteer guards are wearing special clothing; some have uniforms provide by their mosque and others wear black or green shalwar kamis to identify them. Some are in normal clothes. The volunteer guards have established checkpoints controlling access to the roads leading to mosques and shrines, in coordination with the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Azemi, the manager of the Madrasa-ye Zainabia, the large mosque and madrassa in Karte-ye Chahr, said there were definite advantages to having the voluntary self-defence force:

They are locals living in the neighbourhoods of mosques, recruited by the management of the mosques. Right now, the volunteer guards help both the five armed men for keeping security inside the buildings [of the Zainabia complex] and also the ANSF for taking the security outside. Because the volunteer guards are local, they know the people coming. This helps the ANSF.

Special ID (front) of Anwar Abbas, a voluntary guard at the Imam Muhammad Baqer Mosque, stamped by the mosque, the council of ulema for east Kabul and the security commission for the East Kabul zone. (Photo:
Kate Clark September 2018)

Special ID (back) of Anwar Abbas, a voluntary guard at the Imam Muhammad Baqer Mosque, stamped by the mosque, the council of ulema for east Kabul and the security commission for the East Kabul zone. (Photo:
Kate Clark September 2018)

Security measures vary between the many mosques and takia khanas marking Muharram.

• Madrasa-ye Zainabia, the large mosque and madrassa in Karte-ye Chahr is being guarded by Afghan National Police (ANP), NDS forces, the five registered armed guards and between 50 and 70 volunteer guards, some armed, according to its manager, Azemi. He said all the weapons were registered with the government, either by civilians or by members of the ANSF who were off-duty but allowed to use their weapons while protecting the Zainabia.
• The Nabi Akram Mosque in Shahrak-e Omid Sabz, Police District 6, also has five registered guards and about 45 volunteer guards. The mullah imam of the mosque, Ali Ahmad Naseri, said they had been chosen by the board of trustees and were from the neighbourhood. One of the five authorised guards described the volunteers as “a diverse group of people” carrying a mix of weapons “shotguns, M4 carbines, pistols and AK-47s.”
• Madrasa Madinat ul-Elm, Police District 6, has 17 guards (last year it was 10), five authorised and 12 volunteers. Muhammad Sajjad Yasa local people collected money and bought weapons for using inside the mosque only. They cannot be taken outside, he stressed. “We plan to register the new weapons so that the government knows about them and they become legal.” He said the police were also patrolling the area all the time, he said, protecting the mosque and the mourners.
• Imam Muhammad Baqer Mosque, Pul-e Khushk, in Dasht-e Barchi has no authorised armed guards, one of as many as fifty per cent of mosques and takia khana which do not. A member of the congregation said the government had “prioritised the mosques that were under high threats and left out [the others].” He said that at his mosque, local people had chosen the volunteers and armed them with tufang-e charayi (a kind of simple gun which he said did not need registering). They also had some Kalashnikovs legally registered to government officials or MPs. This effort had been coordinated with the local police. The police, he told us, were also “putting in an appearance” and helping secure the mosque.

Some of the mosques have taken other security measures unilaterally restricting the mourning. At the Zainabia, ceremonies finish around ten pm; previously, they used to carry on until early morning on some of the nights. At the Nabi Akram Mosque in Shahrak-e Omid Sabz, they only started the ceremonies on the sixth day of Muharram. (Communities had already, mostly in 2015 and fully in 2016, voluntarily stopped processions between mosques on the night of seventh Muharram on security grounds and also so as not to ‘bother the neighbours’.) In an unusual measure, the Zainabia has put a complete ban on women attending ceremonies. This is for the second year running. Manager Azemi explained their reasoning:

It is difficult to check women and the terrorists could exploit this, launching an attack wearing women’s clothes… Also, if an attack happened like the one on the Imam Zaman mosque in Khair Khana… it would be a dishonour to see the bodies of female victims. Also, it is not good for a non-related man [na-mahram] to touch body of a wounded woman when helping her.

Bekrabad Square in Herat city, close to the Jawadiya Mosque, decorated with flags and banners (Photo: Said Reza Kazemi, 2018)

Herat

The government has been paying for armed guards for what one interviewee thought were 300 mosques and takia khanasin the province. In Herat, there generally seems to be four per mosque. The mosque authorities have also been organising armed volunteers to boost security during Muharram. This has been done in coordination with the local elders and police. In one shahrak (informal settlement) on the outskirts of Herat city, which is homogenous in terms of being largely populated by Hazaras and Shia Sayyeds, the armed volunteers have a wider remit, patrolling the whole settlement, day and night.

Several sources told AAN that the city authorities in recent months have told Shia leaders that they have the freedom to put in place what security they need to protect themselves over and above the guards paid for and armed by the state. As in Kabul, there is some variety in the security measures:

• The main Shia mosque in Herat city, the Sadeqiya Mosque, has about 30 people guarding congregational prayers and other ceremonies such as during Muharram. They are a mix of the authorised guards, paid and armed by the government, body guards of influential people, including mosque officials, and volunteers paid for by the mosque. These have been guarding the mosque since Muharram last year. An official described how they are on the roof and in and around the mosque so that worshippers can pray inside and safely approach the mosque.
• Kazemiya Mosque, another major mosque inside Herat city, has four authorised guards, along with several volunteer guards and the three bodyguards of the mullah imam, when he is present. Our Herat researcher described the scene:

One of the four guards, who have been registered by the provincial government and provided with Kalashnikovs, told AAN he was on duty from eight in the morning to about 11 at night and could go to home when all the Muharram ceremonies had been fully completed. He sits in a sentry-box located above the entrance to the backyard of the mosque. His Kalashnikov is handy and he constantly monitors the alley leading to the mosque from a small window, keeping a watchful eye on who comes in and who goes out. There are sandbags inside the checkpoint and especially around the small window through which he keeps an eye on the alley.

• A mosque in a village in Guzara district, some 15 kilometres south of Herat city, in a shahrak, has four armed guards. They were introduced by elders, including members of the Community Development Council (CDC) and have received eight to ten weeks of training by the security department of the district administration on military and police affairs (how to use firearms and police duties and conduct). They have been biometrically registered and provided with Kalashnikovs. They stand in and around the mosque when there are congregational prayers and ceremonies such as during Muharram. At other times, they can work elsewhere. There are also dozens of armed volunteers patrolling in the vicinity of the mosque, day and night, checking people moving through the neighbourhood. They are chosen by the community and the board of the mosque and are armed, either by local elders who have Kalashnikovs (some reportedly unregistered) or the young men themselves, influential and well-connected among their peers, have bought simple shotguns from the market in the city. Some are also equipped with walkie-talkies. Unlike the registered guards who wear uniforms, the volunteers are in plain clothes.

Ghazni

On 18 September, provincial government and security officials including the provincial police chief and NDS director met Shia ulema and officials for the third time this Muharram to discuss security measures, the governor’s spokesman, Aref Nuri, told AAN. “There are around 150 mosques and takia khanas in Ghazni city. We have agreed with the Shia representatives that we will support and arm two to five guards for each.” The guards have been selected by the communities, he said, and, as last year, the weapons would be collected again after two months. (In Kabul and Herat, those armed guards have stayed in place.) Nuri said the guards were part of wider security measures:

The Shia communities have identified the people to work in the first protective cordon, those immediately around the mosques who are checking the people coming to the ceremonies. They get salaries for the days they are working. The second protective circle is made up of government security forces and they take care of the surrounding areas, also checking all bridges and roads used by mourners going between mosques.

Nuri said the Shia representatives were themselves restricting movements for the first seven days of Muharram. They were aware that, since the massive Taleban attack on Ghazni in August, many members of the ANSF were busy conducting military operations and there were not enough security forces for inside the city. On the eighth, ninth and tenth days of Muharram, however, crowds of Shia would be going from takia khana to takia khana and from mosque to mosque.

The Shia representatives have also identified three mosques where the provincial authorities will pay special protection guards who will keep their weapons permanently.

Other cities

In Kandahar, Shia worshippers are relying on the regular police to guard them. One local journalist said it appeared that either police who were Shia or who were very trustworthy had been put on this duty. People had also been asked to hold ceremonies inside and not hold processions.

In Mazar-e Sharif, the security of the Blue Mosque is provided by the ANP from inside the precinct, while Shia mosques and other religious buildings are being guarded by armed members of the community. The numbers of guards will differ from mosque to mosque.

Unlike Kabul, one local observer told AAN, “The government, either national or provincial, did not communicate openly that they have armed local volunteers from the community to provide security for Muharram. “What seems to have happened here is that influential and rich members of the Hazara community provided their armed bodyguards to guard mosques and have additionally provided weapons to community members for their defence.”

People’s responses to the threats

In Herat, the numbers of those participating in Muharram appear to be as high as normal. In the shahrak, there are more ‘camps’ than last year, more ceremonies and a great deal of social mobilisation – not just to ensure security, but also raising money for the ceremonies.

One major religious leader, for example, has gone house to house and shop to shop carrying a big sack, asking people to throw in their contributions, anything from tens to thousands of Afghanis. It is also noticeable that, despite the high emotion and sorrow, for many of the youth, Muharram is also somehow fun. It is an opportunity to gather and socialise in the in the ‘camps’, not only during the day but also throughout the night. For the young men chosen as armed volunteer guards, this is also a mark that they are becoming important, well-regarded people in their neighbourhoods.

Herat, however, has not suffered attacks to the extent Kabul has, which may explain why the numbers of mourners are still high. The series of atrocities in the capital has, most of our interviewees thought, meant some mourners staying away this year. Muhammad Sajjad Yasa at Madrasa Madinat ul-Elm thought there had been a ten per cent drop in numbers, especially for those coming for sina zani. Nezari from the Nabi Akram Mosque in Shahrak-e Omid Sabz also said numbers of mourners were already down last year, but, this year, “had decreased even more significantly.”

As Muharram reaches its climax with Ashura (on Thursday, 20 September) Kabuli Shias gave a variety of responses when asked about the risk of marking Muharram in 2018:

Myself and all my family members have been going to the Muhammadiya Mosque in Qala-ye Musa from the second day of Muharram onwards. The mosque allows both men and women to attend the commemoration during the evening and there is also a women-only commemoration from 9 am to 12 noon. Security measures have been tight this year. Women are searched twice when entering the mosque by searchers, trained, I heard, to use pistols. I recite the kalima (declaration of faith) before setting out.

Cook (un-named)

I always come to this madrassa not only in Muharram, but also for Friday prayers. I am not worried about any attack. All my family members, including my mother, wife and children all attend the Muharram commemoration too. If we are supposed to die, it would happen at home too.

Muhammad Amin, worshipper at Madrasa Madinat ul-Elm

 I and the other eight members of his family aren’t going outside for Muharram this year. I have turned my home into a mosque. I have collected a lot of rowza [recital of the tragedies of Karbala] recorded on cassettes and flash disks and given them to my family to listen to at home. [Despite my orders though,] my three sons have crept out to the mosque furtively. I will also go to the commemorations on Tasa’a and Ashura [the ninth and tenth days of Muharram] because Ashura should be kept alive as it is part of our religious creed. If we do not mark Muharram, I fear we might go back to the past, when Muharram was commemorated underground.” (4)

Muhammad Zaman Sufizada, a driver, Dasht-e Barchi

Muharram is very, very dangerous this year. I first marked Muharram as a small boy, taken by my mother to Chandewal, the only place having the ceremonies during Zahir Shah’s time. I have never experienced it so bad in my lifetime. My son is at a camp on the roadside and a volunteer guard. I pray these last few days pass quickly.

Mourner in Taimani, a Kabuli resident since the days of Zaher Shah

 

(1) Takia khanas are Shia religious buildings used specially for Muharram mourning ceremonies, but also throughout the rest of the year for other gatherings.

(2) In its mid-year report on civilian casualties (see AAN analysis here), UNAMA recorded 366 civilian casualties (115 deaths and 251 injured) in attacks aimed at Shia Muslims, mainly Hazaras, nearly all suicide and complex attacks claimed by ISKP.

(3) The mosque attacks are:

22 November 2016: A bomb exploded during evening prayers in Rezaiya Mosque, in Ghor Darwaz area in the north of Herat city. Four people including the mullah imam were injured.

1 January 2017: An explosion near the Imam Muhammad Baqer Mosque, in Pul-e Bagh-e Zubaida in the Darb-e Iraq area of Herat city. Five people were wounded and one killed.

19 January 2017: A bomb in Abul Fazl Mosque, in the Jebraeel area in the Police District 13 of Herat city, destroyed much of the mosque. No deaths or injuries

11 April 2017: An explosion near the Saheb-ul-Zaman Mosque, in the Police District 7 of Herat city. One person killed and two injured.

6 June 2017: A blast during a funeral near the northern gate of the Great Mosque, Herat’s ancient mosque situated near the Office of the Provincial Police Chief in the city centre. At least seven people killed and 16 injured including several influential Shia clerics.

1 August 2017: So far the worst attack in Herat. Two suicide bombers stormed a fully-packed Jawadiya Mosque, in the Bekrabad neighbourhood of Herat city, during evening prayer. At least 34 people were killed and dozens injured.

5 March 2018: Two suicide bombers attacked Nabi Akram Mosque, in the Bazar-e Lelami area in downtown Herat. One person killed and eight others injured.

(4) Speaking to older Shia Kabulis, they recalled Muharram being commemorated inside during Zahir Shah and Daoud Khan’s time. One remembered Zahir Shah attending a ceremony in Chandewal. At that time, one said, there were relatively few Hazaras in Kabul and they tended to be among the poorest of the city’s residents so ceremonies were limited. During the PDPA, one interviewee remembered commemorations being held openly and also some processions.

After the civil war broke out in 1992, one resident said it depended where you lived. In the west of the city, in areas controlled by Hezb-e Wahdat if they were also relatively safe from rocket attack, such as Dasht-e Barchi, the ceremonies were big and public. Elsewhere, either the fear of rocket attack or the fact that Shias were living in areas controlled by other factions meant ceremonies were difficult to hold.

Under the Taleban, indoor mourning ceremonies were allowed and some Taleban officals attended (as Zahir Shah had done) (see reporting here). In 2000, bans on flagellation and chest-beating were lifted, with permission to carry out them out given by Mullah Omar (delivered in Kabul, at least, in a letter given to Sufi Gardezi, a Shia commander with the Taleban).

The camps, banners and very public commemorations are a post-2001 phenomenon.

For a longer, historical view on sectarianism – or the lack of it – in Afghanistan, see this AAN dispatch, written in the wake of the 6 December 2011 Ashura attacks, what we called “a new type of violence” in Afghanistan.

 

President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has made a withering attack on the International Criminal Court (ICC), threatening prosecutions against personnel and retaliation against any country cooperating with the Court if it ‘goes after’ America. Bolton’s intervention comes as the judges of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber weigh up whether or not to authorise a full investigation into war crimes committed in Afghanistan. The alleged perpetrators include not only the Taleban and Afghan government forces, but also the United States military and CIA over their use of torture. If an investigation is authorised, says AAN Co-Director Kate Clark (with input from Sari Kouvo and Ehsan Qaane), the Afghan government would be put in an impossible position, legally obliged to cooperate with the Court and now threatened by its main financial and military backer if it does so.

John Bolton’s speech (read the full text here) on 10 September 2018 – what he called“a major announcement on US policy toward the International Criminal Court” – was excoriating. He singled out the Court’s possible investigations into United States and Israel, (1) castigating it as a “supranational tribunal” that trampled national sovereignty, a “free-wheeling global organization claiming jurisdiction over individuals without their consent.” Individuals, of course, are not able to choose a jurisdiction when it comes to criminal law and, in this case, Afghanistan is one of the 123 countries that has ratified the Rome Statute. The Court does, therefore, have jurisdiction in Afghanistan. It also has jurisdiction over anyone of any nationality committing war crimes on Afghan soil, including nationals of non-state parties, such as Americans. Washington has always vehemently disagreed with this stance (more on which later).

Bolton called the Court’s claim to hold perpetrators of the most egregious atrocities to account theoretical only:

In practice… the court has been ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous. Moreover, the largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States. The objective was not limited to targeting individual US service members, but rather America’s senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure.

Bolton’s tirade comes as the judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber are weighing up whether or not to launch a full investigation into the war crimes allegedly perpetrated in Afghanistan since May 2003 when the Rome Statute setting up the Court came into force in Afghanistan. It is almost one year (November 2017) since ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requested that full investigation (see AAN reporting here). Her preliminary examination had indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity had taken place, were grave enough and of a scale to merit the Court’s attention, and that domestic courts were either unwilling or unable to take action. In February 2018, victims of war crimes who were asked for their views and experiences, “overwhelmingly” backed an investigation (read AAN reporting here). The court received 1.7 million victim’s representations on a range of crimes:

[M]urder; attempted murder; imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty; torture; rape; sexual violence; persecution; enforced disappearance of persons; other inhumane acts; attack against civilian population; attack against protected objects; destruction of property; pillage; forced displacement; outrages upon personal dignity; and denying a fair trial

Since February, everyone has been waiting for the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision, to authorise an investigation or not. The decision was expected in the spring but was delayed after a new panel of judges took over in April. The new panel had to consider the case from scratch. However, as Bolton has said, “any day now,” it should announce their decision.

If the Pre-Court Chamber does authorise an investigation, the main task of the team of investigators will be to collect victim and witness statements and other evidence to build cases against specific individuals that could lead to their prosecution. This is necessary as the ICC can only prosecute individuals; it cannot prosecute governments or institutions.

The ICC has been robustly defended by the President of the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC, the oversight and legislative body of the Court, South Korean Judge O-Gon Kwon. Without referring to Bolton’s remarks directly, Kwon described the ICC as independent and impartial, “crucial for ensuring accountability for the gravest crimes under international law” and mandated to “put an end to impunity for the most serious crimes.” He stressed that the Court was only complementary to domestic jurisdictions. “The Court is encouraged,” he said, “by the strong support and cooperation, not only of the 123 States Parties to the Rome Statute, but also by the support it has received from other States and international organizations and civil society in carrying out its mandate.”

Elsewhere, France has said the ICC “must be able to act and exercise its prerogatives without hindrance, in an independent and impartial manner, within the legal framework defined by the Rome Statute.” The German Foreign Ministry tweeted: “We are committed to the work of the ICC – in particular when it comes under fire.” Backing has also been voiced by Liechtenstein, Austria and the United Nations.

The allegations against US personnel

In November 2017, the Office of the Prosecutor decided that, along with credible evidence against the Taleban, other insurgent groups and Afghan government forces,(2)there was also a “reasonable basis” to believe that, during interrogations of security detainees and in conduct supporting those interrogations, members of the US armed forces and the CIA:

… resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape… Specifically:

Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan between 1 May 2003 and 31 December 2014. The majority of the abuses are alleged to have occurred in 2003-2004.

Members of the CIA appear to have subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape on the territory of Afghanistan and other States Parties to the Statute (namely Poland, Romania and Lithuania) between December 2002 and March 2008. The majority of the abuses are alleged to have occurred in 2003-2004.

Crucially, the Office of the Prosecutor found that these “alleged crimes were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals” but rather were part of a policy:

The Office considers that there is a reasonable basis to believe these alleged crimes were committed in furtherance of a policy or policies aimed at eliciting information through the use of interrogation techniques involving cruel or violent methods which would support US objectives in the conflict in Afghanistan.

National Security Advisor Bolton has accused Bensouda of making an unfair and biased attack on America. A full ICC investigation, he said, would be

… against these American patriots, who voluntarily went into harm’s way to protect our nation, our homes, and our families in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The ICC prosecutor has requested to investigate these Americans for alleged detainee abuse, and perhaps more – an utterly unfounded, unjustifiable investigation.

Yet, the publically available evidence of the deliberate and systematic use of torture by the CIA and US military and the rendition of individuals to and from Afghanistan during the early years of the ‘war on terror’ is abundant. What the US administration euphemistically called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ included waterboarding, where a person is strapped head downwards on a sloping board with their mouth and nose covered and large quantities of water are poured over their face; this subjects the person to the experience of drowning.The techniques used also included being forced to stand for many hours, being put in painful stress positions, suspending people again in painful positions, making threats to family members, preventing individuals from sleeping for as long as a week and ‘rectal feeding’ where officers gave detainees nutrients through a tube into the anus. A December 2014 US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report said officers considered this practice “a means of behavior control.”

There has been a wealth of investigations into this authorised use of torture by the media, human rights groups and lawyers, as well as official reports by the US government (3) including the US Senate report (read the report here and AAN analysis here). The CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee found, built its own facilities so that it could evade visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross which it thought likely to happen if detainees were housed on military bases; the report described conditions at one facility in Afghanistan (probably the one known as the Salt Pit) as follows:

CIA detainees at the COBALT detention facility were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste. Lack of heat at the facility likely contributed to the death of a detainee. The chief of interrogations described COBALT as a “dungeon.”  Another senior CIA officer stated that COBALT was itself an enhanced interrogation technique. At times, the detainees at COBALT were walked around naked or were shackled with their hands above their heads for extended periods of time. Other times, the detainees at COBALT were subjected to what was described as a “rough takedown,” in which approximately five CIA officers would scream at a detainee, drag him outside of his cell, cut his clothes off, and secure him with Mylar tape. The detainee would then be hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.

Crimes not prosecuted

Part of Bolton’s attack is based on his claim that the ICC is an unfair ‘supranational’ institution. He accuses it of denying the authority of the US courts and government and ignoring the ‘complementarity principle’ whereby it should only act where domestic courts are unwilling or unable to.

The International Criminal Court is superfluous, given that domestic US judicial systems already hold American citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards. US service members in the field must operate fully in accordance with the law of armed conflict. When violations of law do occur, the United States takes appropriate and swift action to hold perpetrators accountable. We are a democratic nation with the most robust system of investigation, accountability, and transparency in the world. We believe in the rule of law, and we uphold it. We don’t need the ICC to tell us our duty or second-guess our decisions.

…

If the ICC prosecutor were to take the complementarity principle seriously, the court would never pursue an investigation against American citizens, because we know that the US judicial system is more vigorous, more fair, and more effective than the ICC.The ICC prosecutor’s November 2017 request, of course, proves that this notion, and thus the principle of complementarity is completely farcical. The ICC prosecutor will pursue what investigations it chooses to pursue, based upon its own political motives, and without any serious application of the complementarity principle.

However, Bensouda requested a full investigation precisely because US administrations and courts have repeatedly chosen not to prosecute alleged torturers. President George W Bush himself authorised the methods used and although President Obama banned torture as soon as he took office in 2009, his administration decided not to prosecute. “We tortured some folks,” said Obama (quoted here). “You know, it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

Individuals have tried to use US courts to seek redress,(4) but almost all have failed when judges dismissed their lawsuits in the initial stages after the US government argued that prosecutions would reveal state secrets. The one exception was a private claim brought by two survivors of CIA torture and the family of a third man, the Afghan Rahmat Gul who was killed in CIA custody in 2002, against the two psychologists who designed the agency’s torture programme. The Department of Justice did not try to derail this lawsuit and it was settled out of court in August 2017 (read details here). (5)

Very few individual American citizens have been held to account for torture, even through disciplinary measures, and those that have faced sanctions have tended to be of the lowest rank, rather than people in positions of authority or those making policy – as AAN commented in a major report on transitional justice and reconciliation in Afghanistan:

The US military seldom publicizes the results of investigations into specific abuses, including torture, deaths in detention and indiscriminate or disproportionate use of force during ground operations. In the majority of cases, there is little indication that anyone has been held accountable for these abuses.

In recommending a full investigation, Bensouda considered the US choice not to prosecute its own nationals for war crimes and crimes against humanity and the lack of any recourse to justice in US courts for victims. For example, she said the Department of Justice’s preliminary review (August 2009 to June 2011) of allegations of CIA abuse of detainees “appears to have been limited to investigating whether any unauthorised interrogation techniques were used by CIA interrogators, and if so, whether such conduct could constitute violations of any applicable criminal statutes.” (emphasis added). She pointed to the lack of criminal investigation into the use of authorised torture techniques, quoting the US Attorney General:

“…the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.” (6)

Bolton’s threats

The US has always vigorously disagreed with the Court having jurisdiction over its nationals when they are on the territory of a state party to the Rome Statute.(7) In response to the ‘ICC threat’, President Bush signed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act in 2002 (read the text here). Colloquially known as the ‘Hague Invasion Law’, it authorises the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a US-allied country being held by the Court in The Hague and bans the US even from voluntarily cooperating with the ICC to prosecute US military personnel or elected and appointed officials. It is in this context that Bolton’s threats against Court personnel and states cooperating with the Court were made:

If the court comes after us, Israel or other US allies, we will not sit quietly. We will take the following steps, among others, in accordance with the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act and our other legal authorities: 

• We will negotiate even more binding, bilateral agreements to prohibit nations from surrendering US persons to the ICC. And we will ensure that those we have already entered are honoured by our counterpart governments.
• We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by US law. We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the US financial system, and we will prosecute them in the US criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.
• We will take note if any countries cooperate with ICC investigations of the United States and its allies, and we will remember that cooperation when setting US foreign assistance, military assistance, and intelligence sharing levels. 
• We will consider taking steps in the UN Security Council to constrain the court’s sweeping powers, including ensuring that the ICC does not exercise jurisdiction over Americans and the nationals of our allies that have not ratified the Rome Statute.

Looking in detail at those four threats, Indiana University Associate Professor David Bosco writing on the US website Lawfare, which deals with legal and national security issues, commented that Bolton had chosen to “engage publically with the court” in a way “that was maximally offensive to the court, often inaccurate, but also hollow at its core.” Bolton’s threat to sign “even more binding, bilateral agreements,” says Bosco, is unlikely to yield much: “those countries that have not signed immunity agreements to this point, including European Union states, are highly unlikely to do so with the Trump administration.” As for prosecutions of ICC officials, that would need a change in US law. It is “extremely unlikely,” he writes, that Britain and France (or the requisite number of non-permanent members) on the UN Security Council “will support general anti-ICC resolutions.” He concedes the Security Council could vote for a year-long delay in the investigation under Article 16 of the Rome Statute, “[b]ut that also seems like a longshot in terms of Security Council politics.” He also dismisses the linking of aid to non-cooperation with the ICC: “It’s a tactic beloved by conservatives working in the U.N. system. But it’s also a threat much easier to make than to put into practice. Anti-ICC animus will contend with many other national security priorities when actual foreign aid choices are made.”

Although questioning the practical implications of Bolton’s speech, Bosco does recognise its possible “second-order effects”, for example, that states already sceptical or lukewarm about the Court may be encouraged to withdraw their support. He also thinks Bolton’s remarks “could actually boost the court’s legitimacy as it tangles with a wildly unpopular American administration.” Nevertheless, for Afghanistan, at least, Bolton’s threats feels much more serious and much more real.

If an investigation is authorised, those Rome Treaty member states most likely to be asked to cooperate would be Afghanistan, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. The three European countries were part of the network of black sites to and from which the CIA rendered detainees and tortured them; the Officer of the Prosecutor believes that war crimes allegedly committed there could be investigated because there was a ‘nexus’ between them and the Afghan conflict. Out of all four countries, however, Afghanistan is the most vulnerable to pressure.

Without US military and financial support, the Afghan state would struggle to survive. Most of its civilian budget and almost all of its military spending comes from external funds, primarily American. US support on the battlefield is also crucial for holding ground against the Taleban. Both the Karzai and Ghani administrations signed Status of Forces Agreements with the US in 2002, 2003 and 2014, which ban it from surrendering US personnel to any international tribunal or to a third state. (3) (See analysis here and here). Even so, Afghanistan is obliged under the Rome Statute to “fully cooperate” with the Court (article 86). The Statute details possible action as ranging from adopting national legislation for cooperation with the Court to actual cooperation on collecting evidence, protecting victims and witnesses and when the investigation is done arresting suspects. If the Office of the Prosecutor were to conduct investigations in Afghanistan, it would rely on the Afghan government to facilitate its mission and ensure security.

The Afghan government has stressed that it will cooperate with the Court, but at the same time has underlined that its primary concern – also when seeking justice – is national stability.(8) In practice, it has been slow and reluctant to cooperate; it only really started to communicate with the ICC in the final stages of the Preliminary Examination, and then mainly to ask the Court to delay its decision on whether to investigate or not. However, even the mere show of cooperation undertaken to fulfil Kabul’s legal duties under the Rome Statute would be enough – if Bolton’s speech is anything to go by –­ to enrage Washington. Given that the Afghan state is utterly reliant on American largesse, the Kabul government would be in an impossible position.

Moreover, already Bolton’s remarks have had other repercussions. They appear to have emboldened those in the Afghan government who deny the existence of torturers in their own ranks. President Ashraf Ghani’s deputy spokesman, Shah Hussain Murtazawi, for example, speaking to the Associated Press, dismissed ICC allegations that the Afghan National Police and NDS routinely use torture and said “government forces are always trying to save the people. It is the insurgents who are the killers of civilians.” Prosecutions or even disciplinary measures of torturers are also rare in the Afghan system, although the government has tried to argue that it does take this issue seriously – and therefore the ICC should not investigate (see, for example, its statements to the committee of experts meeting under the auspices of the Convention Against Torture in April 2018). Yet, UNAMA, in its latest monitoring of security detainees found that 39 per cent gave “credible and reliable accounts” of having been tortured. That proportion rose to 45 per cent of juvenile security detainees. UNAMA described a “pervasive culture of impunity.”

Conclusion: what about the victims’ voices?

Bolton’s attempt to browbeat the court and state parties to the Rome Statute has sharpened the significance of the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision to investigate or not. An investigation would bring the ICC into conflict with the pre-eminent power in the world and a potentially dangerous enemy. Practically speaking, if the judges do authorise an investigation, they would be committing ICC personnel to operating in an extremely difficult and dangerous working environment where state cooperation would be vital for any hope of success. Bolton’s speech will not have made that task any easier. If the judges decide not to authorise, they will open the Court up to fresh criticism that it bows to big state pressure and only investigates Africans.

As for Afghans, the untold number of people who suffered war crimes and crimes against humanity in the years between 1978 and 2003 would find an ICC investigation bringing no hope of redress; the Court can only investigate crimes which happened after Afghanistan became a state party to the Rome Statue. Indeed, some of the alleged war criminals from this period are in power and at least through the ICC process are untouchable – unless they can be held responsible for war crimes since 2003. However, for the many who have suffered since 2003 from a variety of armed actors, an ICC investigation would bring the hope of justice, or at least some truth-telling. In this context, the chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Simar Samar, told the Associated Press, Bolton’s remarks were unfortunate. Victims need more than human rights defenders, she said. They need a court which can prosecute. “My concern,” Samar said, “is that to deny justice is to deny a basic human right and human dignity.”

 

 

(1) In the same speech, Bolton announced that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation office in Washington DC would be closed because it had called for an ICC inquiry into alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

(2) The Office of the Prosecutor found evidence that torture had been committed by government forces and a wider range of war crimes by the Taleban and other insurgent groups, including murder and intentionally attacking civilians (see AAN’s analysis about the alleged groups here).

(3) See US government reports up to 2008 listed here by the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Research Brief: Selected examples of Defence, Intelligence and Justice Investigative Reports into detention and interrogation practices, 2 November 2008. They include the United States Senate Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, Committee on Armed Services, 20 November 2008.

Other non-governmental reports include: Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition, Open Society Foundations, February 2013; Enduring Freedom Abuses by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch, March 2004; Scott A Allen, M D, The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, Josiah D Rich, MD, MPH, Robert C Bux, MD, Bassina Farbenblum, Matthew Berns, Physicians for Human Rights, and Leonard Rubenstein, Physicians for Human Rights, “Deaths of Detainees in the Custody of US Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan From 2002 to 2005” 5 December 2006, Medscape General Medicine2006 8(4): 46; Hina Shamsi and Deborah Pearlstein (Ed) “Command’s Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan”, February 2006, human rights First.

Accounts looking specifically at the torture of Afghans include: Kate Clark “Kafka in Cuba The Afghan Experience in Guantánamo”, AAN, November 2016; Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: American, the Taliban and the War through Afghan Eyes, New York, Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company; Abdul Salaam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban, London, Hurst 2011, Craig Pyes and Kevin Sack, ‘Two Deaths Were a “Clue That Something’s Wrong”’, The Los Angeles Times, 25 September 2006 and, ‘U.S. Probing Alleged Abuse of Afghans’; The Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2004; Adam Goldman and Kathy Gannon ‘Death Shed Light on CIA Salt Pit near Kabul’ The Associated Press, 28 March 2010.

(4) In May 2006, a US court turned down a claim against the former director of the CIA, George Tenet, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a German-Lebanese man, Khaled El-Masri. He was kidnapped in Macedonia in December 2003 and rendered to Afghanistan. He was drugged, beaten, stripped and given “putrid water” to drink (read here). El-Masri was held for five months even after his innocence became clear and then, said the ACLU, “deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania,” without apology or the means to get home. Nevertheless, the court accepted a US government intervention in the case which argued that allowing it to proceed would jeopardise state secrets.

A second case was also dismissed, in February 2008. This was against a subsidiary of Boeing, Jeppesen DataPlan, Inc, which had been used by the CIA to render detainees. The ACLU which filed the lawsuit argued on behalf of five detainees that “Jeppesen knowingly participated in these renditions by providing critical flight planning and logistical support services to aircraft and crews used by the CIA to forcibly disappear these five men to torture, detention and interrogation.” Three of the five plaintiffs were flown to Afghanistan where they were tortured (see details in footnote 1). Again, the court accepted a government intervention asserting “state secrets privilege” and claiming that further litigation would undermine national security interests.

(5) Some victims of the CIA have sought other avenues to get justice. Two men still held in Guantanamo Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubayda sued Poland at the European Court of Human Rights. It ruled on 24 July 2014 that Poland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights when it co-operated with the CIA in their renditions, allowing the unlawful detention and torture of the two men on its territory in 2002–2003. The court ordered the Polish government to pay each of the men 100,000 Euros (118 USD) in damages (read here and here).

On 13 December 2012, the same court found in favour of Khaled El-Masri against the government of Macedonia which had aided the CIA in his rendition (see here and here). German authorities, though, terminated their inquest against 13 CIA staff accused of involvement in the case in April 2017. On 20 September 2012, the highest court in Italy upheld convictions against 23 CIA agents and a US air force officer, in absentia, over the abduction in February 2003 of an Egyptian imam, Abu Omar. Two Italians were also earlier convicted. Abu Omar was held in Egypt where he was tortured, including with the use of electric shocks, and held until February 2007 when he was released without charge.

Some countries have themselves compensated victims. They include the UK which chose to give the nine British nationals and six British residents released from Guantanamo around one and a half million dollars each, settling civil damages claims rather than, reported AFP, “contest in court allegations that Britain’s security services were complicit in what happened.”  One of the child prisoners at Guantanamo, Canadian Omar Khadr, was given damages by his government amounting to an equivalent of eight million US dollars.

(6) Bush ruled that ‘war on terror’ detainees should be treated not as criminal suspects to be put on trial, or as prisoners of war under Geneva Conventions rules, or to be awarded the minimum protections prescribed in common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Among other things, it bans torture, “degrading and humiliating treatment” and the passing of sentences unless “by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.” (See Presidential Memorandum ‘Humane Treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban detainees’, signed 7 February 2002) He also accepted legal advice that various practices, including waterboarding, did not amount to torture. See detail of the secret memorandums published here.

(7) The US representative at the ICC Assembly of States Parties (uploaded on the ICC’s website) said, on 8 December 2017, that “[T]he United States is not a party to the Rome Statute and has not consented to any assertion of ICC jurisdiction […].” The statement noted. “It is a fundamental principle of international law that a treaty is binding only on its parties and that it does not create obligations for non-parties without their consent. The Rome Statute cannot be interpreted as disposing of rights of the United States as a non-Party without U.S. consent.” The representative also made clear that the US would not cooperate, saying, “We will regard as illegitimate any attempt by the Court to assert the ICC’s jurisdiction over American citizens.”

(8) In late 2017, for example, the Afghan ambassador to the United Nations, Mahmud Saikal, in a speech to the Sixteenth Assembly of States Parties of the ICC observed that Afghanistan“stand[s] fully committed to the noble goals on which the ICC was established” and would continue its communication with the Office of the Prosecutor “on relevant issues, including on the investigation of acts that are perpetrated by terrorist groups, whose leadership are sheltered in the region.” Note that Saikal made no mention of allegations against Afghan or US forces of war crimes. The ambassador also noted that any approach which aimed at securing justice should “preserve the political stability which is fundamentally important in any post-conflict setting.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the defeat of a self-proclaimed ISKP group in Jawzjan in July 2018, focus has shifted to neighbouring Sar-e Pul. Russian media in particular have alleged that there are more pro-ISKP groups active in this province. AAN’s Obaid Ali (with inputs from Thomas Ruttig) has looked into Sar-e Pul’s insurgency landscape and found no indication of any group associated with the IS or its Afghan franchise, ISKP. There is, however, a small number of Central Asian fighters who operate alongside the Taleban movement under the label ‘Islamic Jihad Union (IJU)’.

There is no evidence in Sar-e Pul province of the presence of any group affiliated to the Islamic State (IS, locally called “Daesh”) or its recognised branch in Afghanistan, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). These findings are the conclusion of a short AAN survey of security sources, local officials and civil society activists, both in Sar-e Pul and Kabul, to check claims of recent media reports, mainly emanating from Russia, that such groups are present in this province. These reports also quickly spread on the internet (see one of the reports here).

Mawlawi Naqebullah, head of the provincial High Peace Council and who knows the insurgency’s dynamics in Sar-e Pul well, told AAN that there was no evidence of ISKP’s presence in the province. Masuma Ramazan, a provincial council member in Sar-e Pul, said there were some foreign fighters in remote Kohistanat district. Their nationality, affiliation and number, she said, are unclear. According to her, certain locals refer to this group as having links with ISKP but others just call its members “Uzbekistani”, ie originating from Uzbekistan. One civil society activist from the province, Haji Payenda, told AAN that some social media activists talk about ISKP in the province. But, he said, “It is fake news.”

After the defeat of a self-proclaimed ISKP group in Jawzjan in late July 2018 (AAN analysis here), some locals spread reports that these self-proclaimed ISKP fighters had fled to Sar-e Pul province. In fact, all the Afghan fighters among the group surrendered to the Afghan government, while the foreign fighters, mostly Central Asians, surrendered to the Taleban. According to various sources close to the Taleban in northern Afghanistan, 19 foreign fighters including 14 Central Asians surrendered to them. The Taleban claim they moved them to Faryab province and that they were still in their custody.

Confusion surrounding black flags, again

The apparent cause for the confusion is a small number of around 25 Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) fighters and 15 family members, mentioned by Mahsuma Ramazan, who have been operating alongside the local Taleban in Sar-e Pul since 2015.These fighters entered Afghanistan after the Pakistani army’s military operation, named Operation Zarb-e Azb, in northern Waziristan in 2014. Several local sources told AAN that the majority of these fighters were of Uzbek ethnicity and from Uzbekistan. Their exact number is unclear.

Nur Agha Nuri, a provincial council members representating Kohistanat district, told AAN that the Taleban’s shadow provincial governor Mawlawi Ataullah provided shelter for them in Sufak, a remote village in the south of that district. Kohistanat, a remote district itself, fell into the Taleban’s hands in June 2015.

These IJU fighters are part of an independent front named ‘Imom Buxoriy Katiba’ (Imam Bukhari’s Battalion) that the IJU has established in northern Afghanistan. The Imam Bukhari Battalion (in the transcription that would be used in Afghanistan) also operates in some parts of Badakhshan and Takhar provinces in the northeast of the country. It is named after a famous Central Asian second Islamic/ninth Christian century religious scholar who authored one of the most important hadith collections, called Sahih al-Bukhari.

Sar-e Pul, a remote province in the northwest, is highly contested by the Taleban. They control half of the province, largely its western and southern parts and some areas of the southeast: apart from Kohistanat parts of Sayyad, Balkhab and Sancharak districts. Most of the Taleban posts in those areas are run by local Afghan Uzbeks and Tajiks (read our previous analysis here).

IJU, a global jihadist group and an ally of the Taleban, displays a black flag similar to that of ISKP’s, but with a different logo. The IJU flag has the sentence, “There is no God except Allah and Muhammad is his messenger,” the profession of faith for every Muslim, with a sword at the bottom. The ISKP’s black flag has the first part of this sentence in the top-half of the flag and the second half of the sentence in the lower half inside a white circle. Confusing both flags, some locals see the IJU as an ISKP-affiliated group (see AAN’s reporting on similar confusions of small insurgent groups with IS/ISKP from 2014 here).

Who is IJU?

IJU was founded by Islamic fundamentalists from Central Asia. Until 2002, the group operated within the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an umbrella militant group for Central Asian fighters that joined the Taleban’s Emirate in the 1990s. Regarding its affiliations in Waziristan, the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) wrote in a 2009 research paper that the group “appears closely connected [and] to cooperate closely with a group of Arab fighters which was led, until his death [in 2008], by the al-Qaida-affiliated Abu Laith Al-Libi,” one of Bin Laden’s most important field commanders, and with the Haqqani network. In June 2015, IJU was added to the United Nations Security Council Sanctions List as as being associated with al-Qaeda and the Taleban. The US Department of State designated it a “global terrorist group earlier, in 2005” (read more here).

Between 2007 and 2009 while still in Waziristan, the group allegedly accommodated European, particularly German, jihadist fighters, and was accused of having planned terrorist attacks in Germany (media reports here: and here, in German). 

The IJU online

The main sources for IJU activities and reports are social media where the group frequently releases statements and videos. IJU produces high quality propaganda videos featuring both the Taleban’s and the Central Asian fighters’ activities in the north. AAN has been tracking militant groups in northern Afghanistan over the past few years. IJU seemed to be the most active foreign militant group in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taleban and with its active presence on social media.

According to these social media sources, IJU has frequently taken part in military operations with the Taleban, fighting against Afghan security forces. According to the Kavkaz Centre, a pro-jihadi website based in Chechnya, Haroun Abu Muhammad, introduced there as one of the group’s military leaders, stated “When we plan for a joint operation sometimes the Emirate provides us with ammunition, shelter and food” (read the interview here). In December 2015, IJU released a video showing its fighters attacking an Afghan security forces’ convoy in Badakhshan province. It also showed “Muhammad,” an IJU commander, instructing fighters how to target the Afghan forces.

IJU’s main social media channels are Badr al-Tawhid and al-Sadeqin (or al-Sodiqlar in Uzbek, meaning ‘The Truthful’). Both channels are run by IJU but for different purposes. Badr al-Tawhid releases videos featuring both the Taleban and IJU on the battleground, while al-Sadeqin focuses on religious scholars’ speeches on jihad. It is unclear whether the IJU’s social media channels are run from Afghanistan or from abroad. The group’s Facebook page, which has a lot of followers in Afghanistan, is sometimes blocked but then quickly reactivated. The group also regularly uses other social media channels, such as Telegram.

IJU occasionally podcasts Taleban videos, from ‘Voice of Jihad’, the Taleban’s official website, as well as speeches by religious scholars with Russian transcripts.

What does the Sar-e Pul IJU group do?

The IJU group in Sar-e Pul largely offers military training for the newly recruited local Taleban in the province. It offers basic military training such as shooting rifles and how to target Afghan forces’ check points. IJU’s limited number of fighters in the province as well as the fact that they are in a remote area makes it difficult for them to take an active role in the fighting in this province.

Some members of the group, according to sources close to Taleban, have longstanding military experience. They also bring their own interpretation of religious values from Northern Waziristan, mostly focusing on global jihad. This is an issue infrequently raised by the local Taleban. “Taleban and locals called them Ustad (teacher),” said sources close to Taleban.

More recently, in October 2017, Badr al-Tawhid, released a video featured training exercises allegedly carried out in northern Afghanistan. The video contained physical training in a compound and shooting rifles. The fighters are also seen practising how to storm buildings, clear rooms and take hostages.

Another IJU video collection released by al-Sadeqin apparently filmed in Sar-e Pul province is named ‘Voice of the People’ (‘Sada-ye Mardon’ in Dari) and features the Taleban’s takeover of Kohistanat in 2015. In this collection the group interviewed a number of locals in the district. One interviewee is filmed saying that “men, women and children” in the province support the Taleban. Another interviewee, a Taleban fighter, points to a military vehicle and weapons seized from the Afghan security forces.

Conclusion: the IJU is a staunch Taleban ally

IJU’s presence alongside the Taleban in some parts of the North, including Sar-e Pul, as well as the group’s circulation of Taleban or pro-Taleban videos on the internet show that both organisations maintain a strong connection.

Looking at IJU’s activities and its small number of fighters, the group does not represent a serious threat to Central Asian states so long as it remains in its alliance with the Taleban. By far the smaller of the two groups in this alliance, it cannot go against Taleban policy and practice, which is notto operate in neighbouring states but concentrate on regaining control in Afghanistan. Even if the Taleban are involved in smuggling activities across the Tajik border, which can lead to cross-border violence (see a report about an incident in Darqad district in Takhar province in late August, here), this is part of the war economy and therefore substantially different from the kind of threat IS tries to project against regimes in the region.

The Taleban’s larger presence and their strong resolve to prevent ISKP’s infiltration into northern Afghanistan leaves limited potential space for the ISKP to establish a foothold in Sar-e Pul. IJU’s pro-jihad campaign on social media as well as its efforts for global jihad, however, might attract newcomers from abroad. But IJU would not be able to host them or facilitate fighters of militant groups hostile to the Taleban in northern Afghanistan. Therefore, Sar-e Pul remains a province free of ISKP fighters. IJU is a Taleban – and not an IS/ISKP – ally.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig