2009 Afghan presidential election

Afghan presidential election, 2009

20 August 2009

File:Ramazan bashardost..JPG Nominee Hamid Karzai Abdullah Abdullah Ramazan Bashardost Party Independent United National Front Independent

The second presidential election in Afghanistan under the present constitution of Afghanistan was held on August 20, 2009. The previous election in 2004 was won by President Hamid Karzai, who is running for re-election. Elections for 420 provincial council seats were held at the same time.

NATO officials announced in May 2009 that 15.6 million voters had registered to vote, roughly half of the country's population; 35 to 38 percent of registered voters were women. These registration numbers have been disputed, however, by the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan and media reports, which suggest widespread fraudulent activity in the election process.

The Taliban, called for a boycott of the election, describing it as a "program of the crusaders" and "this American process".

Election date

Under the 2004 constitution, elections should have been held no later than 60 days before the end of President Karzai's term in July 2009. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) originally recommended that the poll be held at the same time as the 2010 parliamentary election to save costs. However, politicians in the country were unable to agree to the details. Concerns about accessibility to mountainous areas in spring 2009 and the ability of getting adequate people and materials in place by then led the IEC to announce the elections would be delayed to August 2009.

The opposition accused Karzai of attempting to extend his power past his term. In February 2009, President Hamid Karzai called on the Independent Election Committee to hold the election according to the country's constitution. thereby forcing the IEC to reiterate the August date, and silencing critics, who fear a leadership vacuum between May and August. Some potential Afghan opponents complained Karzai's move was an attempt to clear the field of challengers, most of whom would not be ready to campaign for the 2009 election. After the IEC and the international community rejected Karzai's decree, Karzai accepted the date of August 20, 2009. The Supreme Court of Afghanistan announced in March 2009 that Karzai's term would be extended until a new leader had been elected. His opponents called the decision unconstitutional and unacceptable, pointing out that it put Karzai in a position to exploit the office to secure his electoral victory.

The election date of August 20, 2009 falls one day after the Afghan anniversary of the formal end of Britain's third attempt to conquer Afghanistan ninety years ago in 1919.

Candidates

Forty-four candidates had registered for the presidential election, with the Independent Election Commmission of Afghanistan (IEC) announcing its official preliminary list of registered candidates on May 17, 2009. Three candidates withdrew from the race before the election took place, having thrown their support behind one of the top two contenders. Each presidential candidate ran with two vice-presidential candidates.

Karzai filed his candidacy on May 4, 2009; he retained incumbent second Vice President Karim Khalili, who is from the Hazara ethnic group but exchanged the first Vice President Ahmad Zia Massood for Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a Tajik former warlord blamed by human rights groups for mass civilian deaths during the Afghan Civil War.

The United National Front announced on April 16, 2009 that they would nominate former foreign minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah as their presidential candidate. Nasrullah Baryalai Arsalai dropped out of the race in favor of Abdullah, a move that disappointed many of his supporters.

Dr. Ramazan Bashardost registered for the presidential election on May 7, 2009, with vice-presidential candidates Mr. Mohammad Mosa Barekzai, a professor at the Kabul Agricultural Institute and Ms. Afifa Maroof, a member of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and with a dove, a symbol of peace and liberty, as their campaign symbol.

Dr. Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister, UN special advisor, and World Bank analyst, registered as a presidential candidate on May 7, 2009. At a time when many Afghans would prefer to lessen the appearance of ties to the U.S government, he had the distinction of hiring Clinton-campaign chief strategist James Carville as his campaign advisor. Ashraf Ghani has also been reported as the candidate most favoured by the U.S. for appointment to a "chief executive officer" position that the U.S. intends to insert regardless of the winner of the election.

Mirwais Yasini, the First Deputy Speaker of the Afghan House of the People joined the race in March 2009. Mirwais Yasini was born in 1962, in Kama district, Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. His father, Abdul Sattar Yasini, was a respected Islamic academic and attorney. He attended primary and high school in Nangarhar, and became fluent in Pashto, Dari, Arabic, English and Urdu.

Shahla Atta, a liberal female MP and war widow has also been mentioned, pledging to revive the modernizing policies of 1973-1978 president Mohammad Daoud Khan.

Other presidential contenders included the leader of the Justice and Development Party of Afghanistan Zabihullah Ghazi Nuristani; former attorney general Abdul Jabbar Sabit; former defence minister Shah Nawaz Tanai; Uzbek leader Akbar Bai; economy expert and current senior minister Hedayat Arsala; economist Mohammad Hashem Taufiqui; Sarwar Ahmedzai, a former member of the 2002 Afghan Loya Jirga who authored a 2009 country report for U.S. officials formulating a new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan; and others.

Along with the presidential candidates, were 3197 candidates for 420 provincial council positions. A Provincial Council in each of Afghanistan's 34 provinces advises and works with the provincial administration headed by a Governor that is appointed by the President.

Prominent involvement of warlords

According to human rights groups, at least 70 candidates with links to "illegal armed groups" were on the ballot list in the election.

While the electoral law disallowed candidates with links to "illegal armed groups", and the Karzai-appointed Independent Election Commission had barred 56 other candidates that it identified as being commanders or members of illegal militias, many of the bigger warlords, including current parliamentarians and provincial council members, simply bypassed this by registering their militias as private security companies or by having the right political connections.

Both of Hamid Karzai's vice-presidential candidates and many of his key allies in the election are alleged to have committed widespread human rights violations and war crimes. Human Rights Watch has called for Vice President Karim Khalili and key ally, former army chief of staff General Abdul Rashid Dostum, to face trial before a special court for alleged war crimes. Khalili is alleged to have been responsible in the killing of thousands of innocent people.

Karzai's other vice-presidential candidate and former senior security advisor Mohammad Qasim Fahim, along with Karzai backer and former energy minister Ismail Khan, have also been listed by the human rights group as among the "worst perpetrators." Better known as Marshal Fahim, the vice-presidential candidate is accused of murdering prisoners of war during the 1990s, running private armed militias, and involvement in kidnapping and other crimes after 2001. Fahim, a key U.S. ally in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, had also previously served as Karzai's First Vice President and Minister of Defense, appointed to those positions in the interim and transitional governments installed after the 2001 invasion. Karzai is also being advised by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf who is said to have first invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and has lobbied for an amnesty for warlords.

Most prominently covered has been the dramatic return, three days before the election, of General Abdul Rashid Dostum from exile in Turkey as part of a deal to help bring President Karzai to victory. After allegedly kidnapping and beating up a political rival, he was removed as Karzai's army chief of staff in late 2008 and disappeared into exile in Turkey. A key U.S. ally during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, General Dostum is arguably the most notorious of Afghanistan's warlords, accused of massive human rights abuses, including the Dasht-i-Leili massacre of up to 2,000 Taliban who were suffocated in cargo containers in late 2001. He is also alleged to have crushed one of his own soldiers to death by tying him to the tracks of a tank.

Analysts have suggested that part of Karzai's strategy was to make deals with warlord allies to deliver large blocs of votes in return for key positions and influence in his new government or other signficant promises.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, analysts and diplomats suggested that Karzai's alliances with strongmen like General Dostum had paid off, delivering him large numbers of votes in the north.

Campaign

File:Afghan presidential election, 2009 poster 4.jpg

Election billboard for Karzai in Kandahar

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), said insecurity had "severely limited freedom of movement and constrained freedom of expression for candidates". Security concerns prevented presidential candidates from campaigning in most of the provinces, and candidates running for provincial councils were under constant threat wherever they went.

A UN election monitoring report said in early August that there was mounting evidence that the government was using state resources to favour Karzai.

Issues at the forefront in the election campaign were the insurgency and lack of security, corruption, and poverty.

Mr. Karzai announced that he would invite the Taliban to a Loya jirga (a grand tribal council) to try and restart stalled peace talks.

Abdul Salam Rocketi, a former Mujahideen "freedom fighter" - whose name came from using rocket-propelled grenades to shoot down Soviet helicopters - and former Taliban commander, said he would announce an amnesty for all the insurgents if he won the election.

The Election Commission accredited 160,000 observers for the election. The Afghan Free and Fair Elections Foundation, the largest local monitoring group, said that it would have observers at 70 per cent of polling stations but couldn't observe the remainder because of security concerns.

Debates

File:2009 Afghan presidential debate.png

August 16 debate on RTA TV.

Two candidate debates took place before the August 20 election. The first debate was held on July 23 and was broadcast on Tolo TV. It was supposed to feature Karzai, Abdullah, and Ghani, though Karzai later declined to take part, with his campaign blaming Tolo TV for being biased against him. A second debate took place on August 16 on RTA TV (the state broadcaster) and Radio Free Afghanistan involving Karzai, Ghani, and Bashardost, with Abdullah not participating.

Pre-election polls

The pre-election polls, funded by the U.S. government and conducted by Washington D.C.-based organizations, found Hamid Karzai leading his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, by a wide margin, but suggested that he would not have the 50% support required to win the August 20 election outright, raising the prospect of a run off election in October.

First round

Poll Source	Date administered	Karzai	Abdullah	Bashardost	Ghani	Other candidate	undecided/don't know/refused
IRI (likely voters)	May 3-16	31%	7%	3%	3%	15%	9%
Glevum Associates (registered voters)	July 8-17	36%	20%	7%	3%	13%	20%
IRI (likely voters)	July 16-26	44%	26%	10%	6%	11%	3%

Second round scenarios

Karzai - Abdullah

Poll Source	Date administered	Karzai	Abdullah	Not voting	don't know/refused
IRI	July 16-26	50%	39%	8%	3%

Karzai - Ghani

Poll Source	Date administered	Karzai	Ghani	Not voting	don't know/refused
IRI	July 16-26	60%	22%	14%	4%

The administering of public opinion polls for the 2009 presidential election was beset by numerous difficulties because of the lack of security, harsh geography, and lack of accurate demographic data, but analysts hoped that with improved sampling techniques the pre-election polls would be more predictive of the outcome than they were in 2004.

Lack of security

Despite the surge of 30 thousand additional foreign military troops into Afghanistan in the three to four months leading up to the elections, and major military operations in the weeks and days ahead of the election, 12 out of Afghanistan's 34 provinces remained classified as "high risk" by the Afghan Ministry of Interior - meaning limited or no government presence - casting into doubt the ability of over one-third of the country to participate in the elections.

A week and a half before the election, the Afghan government announced that it had hired 10,000 tribesmen to provide additional security for the election in almost two-thirds of Afghanistan's provinces. The men were being paid $160 a month, would be non-uniformed, and would use their own guns to secure polling stations in 21 out of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

ISAF officials stated two days before the election that the 60,000-troop ISAF military force in Afghanistan would halt all offensive operations on polling day in order to help Afghan forces maintain security for the presidential election. The order to halt operations and divert forces to help security followed a similar order issued to Afghan forces by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Because of the lack of security, the full list of polling centers was only being announced on the actual polling day.

A day before the election, hundreds of polling stations were ordered closed in parts of the country where military and police forces fear to go and would not be able to provide protection for election monitors. It had previously been estimated that as many as 700 out of 7,000 polling stations across the country would not open due to the widespread insecurity. On election day, the Afghan election commission reported that only 6,200 polling stations had operated.

In Kandahar province, the mayor of Kandahar city, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, said that he would not go vote. "For the last three years the security is getting worse, day by day," Hamidi stated. "Even a child understands that the election day is not safe." His daughter, Rangina Hamidi, a prominent women's advocate, said that it was not worth the risk and that she would not vote either:

"My message to the women of Kandahar is this: don't go vote and put yourselves at risk for nothing."

Attacks ahead of the vote

An ISAF spokesperson stated two days before the election that insurgent attacks had averaged 32 per day in the last 10 days, but had spiked up to 48 attacks per day within the last four days. Among the major attacks reported:

• On August 15, 2009, five days before the election, a suicide car bomb struck NATO's headquarters at the core of Kabul's most fortified district, in the equivalent of Baghdad's Green Zone. The massive blast that shook the city left seven people dead and 91 wounded, including several foreign soldiers, four Afghan soldiers, and a member of parliament. The attack, inside several rings of security around the fortified embassies and government buildings by the presidential palace, was confirmed by a Taliban spokesperson to have had as targets the NATO military headquarters (HQ ISAF) and the U.S. embassy less than 150 meters away, and to have been part of a campaign to disrupt the elections.
• On August 18, 2009, two days before the vote, rocket attacks or mortar rounds struck near the presidential palace in Kabul, and a suicide car bomb attack on a NATO convoy heading to a British military base killed nine people and wounded around 50. One NATO soldier was killed and two others wounded. Two UN staff members were killed, and a third was wounded. About 12 vehicles were destroyed and several surrounding buildings were damaged by the blast. A suicide bomb attack at the gates of an Afghan army base in the province of Uruzgan also killed three Afghan soldiers and two civilians.
• On August 19, 2009, gunmen seized control of a bank in downtown Kabul one day before the Afghan election. The bold raid was the third major attack in Kabul in five days, shattering the capital city's relative calm since the last major attacks there in February. Police reported that three fighters and three policemen were killed in the four-hour-long siege.

Media blackout imposed

In decrees issued two days before the presidential election, the Afghan government imposed censorship for election day, barring news organizations from reporting any information about violence between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. out of concern that reports of violence could reduce voter turnout and damage chances of staging a successful election. Low turnout could undermine the credibility of the election - and could also hurt Karzai's results in the election if not enough ethnic Pashtun people, who form his base of support, turned out for the vote in the insurgent-dominated south of Afghanistan.

On the eve of the election, police at the Kabul bank beat journalists and bystanders with rifle butts to keep them away from the scene where the bloody siege had taken place.

The head of the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association (AIJA) said that the government censorship decrees would not stop Afghan and foreign journalists from providing information to the public during the critical election period: "It shows the weakness of the government and we condemn such moves to deprive people from accessing news."

Human Rights Watch also criticized the news censorship, stating: "An attempt to censor the reporting of violence is an unreasonable violation of press freedoms."

The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan called the Afghan government's limitation of media freedom on election day "a violation of democratic principles".

Election day violence

"This was one of the most violent days witnessed in Afghanistan in the last eight years."

— Rachel Reid, researcher for Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan

Afghan government officials reported that 73 incidents of violence had taken place in 15 provinces throughout the country during voting. That number of attacks represented a 50% spike over NATO figures for the previous four days of violence leading up to the poll.

The Afghan government also reported that at least 26 people were killed in the election day violence, including eight Afghan soldiers, nine police officers and nine civilians.

The government figures were impossible to verify, however, because of the government-imposed ban against reporting any information on violence. Anectdotal evidence suggested that the number of election day attacks could actually be much higher than the government reports.

Another report since has placed the number of attacks on election day in Afghanistan at more than 130.

In one of the worst reported attacks, militants stormed the town of Baghlan in northern Afghanistan, forcing all polling stations there to be closed down, with fighting lasting for most of the day. The district police chief was among those killed.

Rocket attack, gun battles, and bomb blasts occurred across much of the country, closing scores of polling stations. The province of Kandahar alone was hit by 122 insurgent rockets. Rockets and mortars were launched into Kandahar, the second largest city in the country, Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, Tirin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan, as well as other cities.

In Kandahar, militants reportedly hanged two people because their index fingers were marked with indelible ink, showing that they had participated in the election that militants consider a tool of foreign occupation.

In the capital city Kabul, militants took over a building before being killed after a two-hour shootout. The capital was also reported to have been hit by at least five bomb blasts.

Two British soldiers and one U.S. soldier were also killed in separate roadside bomb blasts in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan on election day.

Ichal Supriadi, an election observation supervisor with the Asian Network for Free Elections, reported that security fears had grounded many international observers, and that their election observation center had received many reports from their ground observers of people being discouraged from going out to vote.

Possible ethnic imbalance

The lack of security and its effects on voter registration, polling station accessibility, and voter turnout - mainly in regions populated by Afghanistan's Pashtun tribes, which make up 55% of the country's population - have raised serious concerns about an ethnic imbalance in the Afghan election.

"There are districts that I am 100 percent sure no government worker can go to - But you are telling me that still so many people registered? I don't believe it."

— Roshanak Wardak, Afghan member of parliament from Wardak Province

According to leaders and residents of Pashtun districts, many voter registration centers in their districts never opened during the registration period and few people even left their homes, let alone registered. Provincial officials have also said that election registration teams rarely, if ever, dared to venture outside of the district capitals.

In the province of Wardak, with six of the province's eight districts controlled by insurgents, this resulted in the two Hazara-dominated districts of the province forming the bulk of the new voters registered. Independent Election Commision (IEC) Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Zekra Barakzai stated that "the registration numbers in Pashtun districts are very low."

According to Habibullah Rafeh, a policy analyst with the Afghan Academy of Sciences, there could be an ethnic imbalance if the same problem was reproduced in other Pashtun regions of Afghanistan.

In Helmand province, where 92% of the population is Pashtun and where U.S. Marines conducted major offensives, only 75 people were found to have been registered in one town of 2,000 residents.

For those that did register to vote, the absence of polling stations due to lack of security may have been the next obstacle. In Helmand province, Haji Mohammad, from Marja district, said that he sold all his family’s voting cards because there were no polling stations in their area.

On the day before the election, Afghan election officials ordered 443 polling stations within insurgent territory in the Pashtun-dominated provinces of Paktika, Paktia, Khost, Zabul, Helmand and Kandahar to stay closed due to the lack of security. While the Afghan election commission had until recently presented a figure of 7,000 polling stations, on election day it reported that only 6,200 polling stations had actually operated.

Compounded with its effects on voter registration and polling station accessibility, the lack of security also seems to have been a major factor in the much lower voter turnout in the Pashtun-dominated south of the country, where turnout was as low as 5-10%, effectively disenfranchising the region.

On election day, Abdul Hamid, a tribal elder from Paghman District - a mostly Pashtun district bordering Wardak province - was reported as insisting that 40 to 50% of eligible Paghman voters had not received voting cards, and therefore could not cast a ballot.

Election fraud

Starting in December 2008, journalist Anand Gopal and others have reported extensively on the widespread instances of fraud in the voter registration process, with the registration rolls including "phantom voters" and multiple registration cards issued to a single registrant, amongst numerous other problems.

Two days before the election, an investigation by the BBC also found and reported evidence of widespread fraud and corruption in the Afghan presidential election.

Voting cards being sold

After being informed that voting cards were being sold in the capital, Kabul, an Afghan working for the BBC posed as a potential buyer and was offered one thousand voting cards on the spot, for $10 (£6) per card. Samples provided were all authentic with the name, photo and home details of the voter on them.

Other parties also offered to sell the BBC investigators thousands of votes, and some sellers have even been arrested by the authorities.

A flourishing black market in voter registration cards has also sprung up across the south of Afghanistan where they were being sold for £6 to £18 each.

The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), an independent election monitoring organisation, had also collected evidence of election fraud, particularly in the voter registration process.

The monitoring group found that in many places people were being issued multiple voting cards, that voting cards were often issued for children, and that stacks of voting cards were given to men who falsely claimed that they were for women in their households.

Long lists of imaginary female relatives were found to have been concocted during an attempt to update the electoral roll. In Kandahar, "Britney Jamilia Spears" appeared among the names registered.

FEFA found that multiple registrations of a single person were taking place in at least 40% of all centers in one phase of the registration drive, and in one case, investigators found that about 500 voting registration cards were given to just one individual in Badghis province.

The independent election observers also reported that as many as 1 in 5 registrations were for people under the voting age - in many cases as young as 12 years old.

According to a pre-election report by the Afghanistan Analyst Network, a Kabul-based group of foreign experts, as many as three million voters on the register were feared to not exist. The huge numbers of vote cards issued for phantom voters have raised concerns about massive electoral fraud.

Shahrzad Akbar, a senior analyst with FEFA, stated that because the monitoring body was only able to investigate a few parts of the country, the election irregularities and abuses could be even more widespread:

"We couldn't observe how it went in every single district or village. I am sure that there are cases of multiple card distribution that we don't know about. But those incidents that we do know about caused us enough concern to contact the Independent Election Commission and say, 'please prevent this!'"

Bribes being offered

There has also been evidence that people working for candidates have deliberately tried to influence the outcome of the election by offering bribes to buy large numbers of votes.

In Baghlan province, a tribal elder and former military commander described how the voter fraud scheme worked. Within the hierarchical structure of Afghanistan, key local leaders like him have the ability to persuade large numbers of people to vote for one candidate or another. He reported that he and other local leaders had been approached by teams from the two leading contenders of the presidential election with monetary bribes:

"If one candidate gives $10,000, then the other gives $20,000 and a third one offers even more. It has become such a lucrative and competitive business. I don't know where they get their money from."

According to a U.S. government-funded poll released the week before the poll, the two leading contenders in the election were Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun incumbent, and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister with strong ties to the former Northern Alliance.

In Helmand province, tribal leaders and local people also described a systematic attempt by Karzai supporters to collect or buy voter registration cards from people in an electoral fraud scheme allegedly orchestrated by Karzai's half-brother and campaign manager for the south, Ahmed Wali Karzai.

Armed coercion

Along with bribes, cases of threats by warlords have also been reported. In Herat province, a village elder said he had been threatened with "very unpleasant consequences" by a local commander if the residents of his village failed to vote for Karzai.

Other instances of coercion in the electoral process - ranging from threatening phone calls to beatings and killings - by government agents (particularly security forces and armed factions aligned with certain candidates) have been extensively documented.

The hiring of 10,000 tribesmen by the Karzai government to secure polling stations in 21 out of 34 provinces, without uniforms and using their own guns, has also raised the question of voter intimidation.

Hundreds of polling stations shut down

The day before the election, Afghan election officials ordered more than 440 polling stations to stay closed during the vote out of fears of election fraud. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said Hamid Karzai's supporters were trying to keep open polling stations deep within insurgent-held regions where the army and police fear going and where voting could not be properly monitored by observers.

An international observer monitoring the election proceedings said that the IEC had come under "a lot of pressure" from the Karzai administration to open more polling stations in the provinces of Paktika, Paktia, Khost, Zabul, Helmand and Kandahar where the government has little control beyond major urban centers.

Registration figures suggested that concerted preparations for vote-rigging had taken place in Khost and Paktia. Records suspiciously showed that twice as many women as men had registered to vote, while a thriving black market in voting cards has appeared with cards being bought and sold by the thousands for £6 to £18 each.

Systemic conflicts of interest

Government workers, required to be impartial in the election, were found by election observers to have actively and illegally campaigned for candidates. Investigators have also found members of political parties occupying positions as election officials.

The most problematic conflict of interest may be the fact that the country's Independent Elections Commission (IEC) that oversees the whole election is not "independent" of the Karzai administration at all. All seven of its members were appointed to the commission by Hamid Karzai, and its chairman has reportedly made no secret of his partisan support for the incumbent president.

In the days following the election, Karzai's main challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, denounced the chairman of the IEC as working for Mr. Karzai. Foreign election observers have also criticized the Independent Election Commission as being full of Karzai appointees.

The BBC has reported that the Independent Election Commission has been accused of not doing enough to prevent abuses that have been brought to its attention.

FEFA, the country's largest independent election monitoring organization, has also raised questions about the impartiality of Independent Election Commission (IEC) local officials, and noted that questions about IEC impartiality constituted "a trend that has persisted throughout the electoral process". Throughout election day, numerous reports were received of local IEC officials improperly interfering in the voting process.

Voting irregularities

Election day news included reports of widespread electoral fraud throughout the day.

As early as 8 a.m., only one hour after the polls had opened, officials at the U.S. embassy in Kabul were receiving complaints of fraud.

Ashraf Ghani, one of the presidential candidates and also reported as the candidate favoured by the U.S. for a chief executive position, e-mailed U.S. officials with reports of his opponents stuffing election ballot boxes. Other candidates also lodged similar complaints with U.S. officials - who referred them instead to the national election body.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the main opponent to Hamid Karzai in the presidential election, said that his supporters were lodging complaints of election fraud, in particular from Kandahar province. Hours after the polls closed, his deputy campaign manager, Saleh Mohammad Registani, alleged that "very large scale" fraud had taken place in at least three of the country's 34 provinces, including ballot box stuffing.

Presidential candidate Mirwais Yasini, the deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, lodged 31 complaints with Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC), telling the BBC that both main camps had engaged in widespread electoral fraud.

Election monitor group FEFA reported receiving cases throughout the voting day of "improper interference" by local Independent Election Commission (IEC) staff in the voting process, raising continued concerns about the impartiality of IEC election officials. Their post-election provisional report also detailed cases of election officials being ejected from polling stations by representatives of candidates.

Photojournalist Peter Nicholls of The Times photographically documented an apparent case of ballot box stuffing amid low voter turnout in Pul-e-Charkhi, in Kabul province.

In a further irregularity, the supposedly indelible ink used to mark the index finger of voters to prevent voting more than once was found to be easily removable in many instances - a repeat of a problem that had also occurred in the 2004 and 2005 elections. According to Havana Marking, director of a documentary on the elections, by 9 a.m. people were bleaching their fingers and casting ballots twice. The documentary makers filmed "a cafe full of young men laughing and deciding who to vote for the second time".

Complaints about the ink were made by the camps of all three of the main challengers in the presidential race. Aides to Dr. Abdullah Abdullah reported that at the polling station where he had cast his ballot, voters had been able to clean the ink from their fingertips within minutes. Dr. Ashraf Ghani's team had reports of inferior ink that was easily removed being used in the western city of Herat. Presidential candidate and former planning minister Dr. Ramazan Bashardost charged that the indelible ink could be washed off easily, and lodged an official complaint endorsed by a member of the Election Complaints Comission. The former minister, who had been running third in the pre-election polls, said: "This is not an election. This is a comedy."

Flawed election

Western officials conceded the election would be flawed, admitting that there had been election corruption, that there was apathy, that the lack of security would stop some from voting, and that precautions designed to prevent fraud would be ineffective in many parts of the country where election monitors cannot go.

The international community accepted that fraud would be inevitable in the presidential election, but hoped that it could be minimised to an "acceptable level where it will not alter the final result".

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald E. Neumann put the odds of an election that would appear "good enough" at "50-50".

Low voter turnout

While UN, American and Afghan officials quickly hailed the election as a success, evidence from observers on the ground and from journalists suggested that the Taliban had succeeded in deterring many Afghans from voting.

At the end of the voting day, top election official Zekria Barakzai estimated the voter turnout across the country at around 40-50%. A New York Times article reported that overall turnout is expected to be about 40%.

Independent election observers in the country almost all agreed that voter turnout was far lower than in the previous presidential election in 2004.

The turnout was uneven across the country with low turnout in the south and east of Afghanistan, suppressed by lack of security and disenchantment, while vote participation was somewhat higher in the more stable north and west of the country, including some reports of long lines of voters seen outside polling stations.

Voter turnout in the eastern city of Jalalabad was low at no more than 20-30%, according to election observer Tom Fairbank: "A lot of people have told us they were afraid to vote, and afraid to have their fingers dipped in ink because of the Taleban's threats." The government, on the other hand, was expected to claim that it was more like 60% in the area.

In the Pashtun-dominated southern provinces, turnout was as low as 5-10%, according to one Western official. In some parts of the country almost no women voted.

In Khan Neshin, Helmand province, in the south of Afghanistan, election officials estimated that only 250 to 300 people - out of an estimated population of 35,000 to 50,000 in a region larger than Connecticut - showed up to vote at the single polling station available for the area. Not a single woman voted, according to the district governor, Massoud Ahmad Rassouli Balouch.

In another Helmand province district of 70,000 people, barely 500 people voted, while in one town of 2,000 residents, only 50 people voted.

Voter turnout in Kandahar city, Afghanistan's second largest city, was estimated to be down 40% from the previous election in 2004. Noor Ahmad, a resident of Zerai District, said: "The turnout is very low, perhaps less than 5 percent."

In the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent in Kandahar, Dawa Khan Meenapal, said that people voted heavily but overall turnout was lower than in past elections, and that participation by women was very low.

In Lashkargah, the provincial capital of Helmand, Mohammad Aliyas Daee, a Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent in Helmand, similarly reported that "the overall participation of women was negligible." Voter turnout, by one estimate, was at below 20% in the city, considered to be more secure than the rest of the province.

In the southeastern Uruzgan province, the deputy police chief, Mohammad Nabi, estimated the province-wide turnout to be less than 40%, saying that "people had no interest".

Voting in the capital city Kabul also appeared to have been depressed, with one estimate placing turnout at only 30%. Officials, witnesses, and journalists at several polling stations reported low participation numbers. Afghan journalist and research analyst, Abdulhadi Hairan, observed that the low voter turnout in Kabul resulted in reporters and cameramen having to wait nearly to midday before having enough voter interviews to send back to their news organizations. (Photojournalist Peter Nicholls of The Times provided a similar first-person account of low voter turnout in Pul-e-Charkhi, outside Kabul.) Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main opponent in the presidential election, called the low voter turnout in Kabul "unsatisfactory."

"The early information is that the turnout was very low in some provinces and at best was fair in others."

— Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research & Policy Studies

The polls in Afghanistan, originally scheduled to close at 4 p.m. after nine hours of voting, had been held open an hour longer in a last-minute decision by the Independent Election Commission.

Post-election vote count and investigations

Ballot counting began immediately after the polls closed on August 20, with official preliminary results to be declared two weeks later on September 3, official final results to be declared two weeks after that on September 17, and a run-off, if required, to be held within two weeks after that.

Within a day into the vote counting, however, both the Karzai and Abdullah camps were making claims of leading far enough in the count to obtain a majority of over 50%, and that a run-off vote would not be needed.

Three days into the vote counting, reports suggested that Hamid Karzai had been re-elected by a landslide, with early figures giving Karzai 72% of the vote and his closest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, at 23%.

If confirmed, the scale of the win is expected to provoke accusations of vote-rigging, with the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) having already received 225 complaints within three days - some containing multiple allegations - and reports still arriving from remote areas.

Thirty-five of the complaints received so far were deemed by the ECC to have been on a scale large enough to have altered the outcome of the poll, with the most common complaint among them being ballot box tampering. Other charges included intimidation of voters, failures of the "indelible ink", and interference in polling.

See also

• Elections in Afghanistan
• Afghan presidential election, 2004
• Afghan parliamentary election, 2005
• War in Afghanistan (2001-present)
• Afghan Transitional Administration
• List of Afghan Transitional Administration personnel
• Iranian presidential election, 2009
• International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan

External links

• Islamic Republic of Afghanistan - Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) website
• IEC (Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan) website
• FEFA (Free & Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan) website
• United Nations Development Programme - UNDP/ELECT webite
• Afghan Elections Dossier, August 2009, Radio France Internationale coverage
• Afghanistan's Elections coverage from The Washington Post
• Afghan polling station gave clear image of nothing but a box of tricks