Elections May Obstruct Afghan Peace
By Jonathan Steele
09 October, 2004
The Guardian
The
ballot or the bullet - that's the choice. This simple maxim has become
one of the favourite soundbites of our nation-building times. It is
being trotted out again as Afghans prepare to vote in presidential elections
today, and is already much in use in official circles as the countdown
starts for polls in Iraq.
On the one side are the insurgents, terrorists, men of violence, or
whatever the current label is, who fear democracy and will do all they
can to stop it. On the other is a people who have never had a chance
to choose their leaders and want nothing more than to exercise it at
last.
The contrast is
comforting, but rarely conforms to reality in any but the remotest way.
Elections can be manipulated and misused. They are only one part of
a long process of enabling people to speak, organise and hold their
rulers to account.
If they take place
too early, they can be counterproductive and delay a society's transition
to a culture of genuine debate and competition. That was the lesson
of the Balkans in the 1990s, in particular in Bosnia, where the rush
to vote (pressed mainly by the Clinton administration) entrenched hardline
nationalists in power. Last week's local elections in Bosnia confirmed
how hard it is to loosen the grip they acquired then.
In Afghanistan and
Iraq, the issue is whether elections that are meant to offer an alternative
to violence are actually promoting it. That certainly seems to be the
case in Afghanistan. With its requirement to have polling stations and
registrars around the country, the election process becomes the softest
of targets.
In
recent weeks, attacks by a resurgent Taliban have increased. The United
Nations has urged staff not involved in running the elections to go
on leave. Aid agencies are imposing curfews and telling staff to restrict
their movements or go abroad.
Some aid workers
query the huge amount of money allocated for what they say is mainly
a propaganda exercise, and say it would have been better spent on education
and health. They point to the fact that high insecurity has deterred
independent monitors, thereby raising the risk of fraud.
It is not just anti-government
forces who are behind the violence. Local and regional warlords may
not be rocketing polling stations or ambushing registrars, but they
are making threats to opposition candidates and their supporters. Women
voters are particular targets.
Several of the 18
presidential candidates are thought to have entered the race merely
to strengthen their bargaining power in the closed-door meetings which
have already got underway among Afghanistan's strongmen to discuss ministerial
portfolios and the post-polling pace of reform. What was meant as an
expression of democracy becomes a device to resist, rather than promote,
change.
In Iraq, the black
and white image of a government that wants elections, and insurgents
who are ready to use violence to stop it, is even less accurate. The
greatest risk of pre-election violence in today's Iraq comes from the
United States, not from the various groups of insurgents.
In the name of recapturing
Iraqi cities so that polling can take place, US forces have already
started - and are planning to widen - a campaign of air strikes which
will probably cause more civilian casualties than last year's invasion.
Iraq's health ministry
recently compiled a chilling set of statistics, which were obtained
and exclusively published by the American news organisation, Knight-Ridder.
The ministry took reports from hospitals in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces.
It did not have data from the three Kurdish provinces where political
violence is minimal.
The death tolls
may include some Iraqi police and national guardsmen, but mainly count
civilians. They are unlikely to include insurgents, since their families
usually fear taking seriously wounded resistance fighters to government
hospitals. They bury their dead without registration at the morgue.
The findings were
that out of 3,487 Iraqi deaths since April 5, two-thirds were killed
by US and multinational forces or Iraqi police. In other words, the
footage of car-bombs and suicide attacks set off by insurgents, which
TV cameras are able to film in central Baghdad and which we see on our
screens, may give the false impression that anti-government forces are
the biggest killers.
In fact, a greater
toll is mounting up, unfilmed, in Sadr City, Falluja, Samarra and other
cities where the US uses airstrikes. According to the health ministry,
two Iraqis are being killed by the government side for each one killed
by insurgents.
As for giving Iraqis
a choice in the upcoming elections which will pick a constituent assembly
and government, the danger that they will be disappointed is coming
from backroom deals similar to the Afghan ones. A recent poll by the
Iraqi Centre for Research and Strategic Studies shows that 61% believe
suitable candidates will be prevented from campaigning.
One reason for scepticism
is that Prime minister Ayad Allawi, supported by Washington, is trying
to put together a "consensus list" of himself and the formerly
exiled parties in the current government, including Kurds, Shias and
Sunnis. Voters would be presented with a take-it-or-leave-it offer.
For Allawi, who has little chance of retaining power if his party stands
alone, the combined list is the only hope. For the Kurds who want to
enshrine their right to autonomy in the constitution which will be drafted
next year, it also makes sense to do a pre-election deal with the largest
Shia parties.
The jokers in the
pack are Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the respected Shia leader who
has already criticised the concept of a government list, and Moqtada
al Sadr, the radical cleric.
If al Sadr decided
to take part in the poll and create his own "national patriotic
list", with the central demand that foreign forces leave Iraq immediately,
Allawi and his allies would be in serious trouble. It is not inconceivable
that al Sadr could entice the leading Sunni organisation, the Council
of Islamic Scholars, and the Iraqi Islamic party to his list. The grand
ayatollah might even endorse it. Given the occupation's unpopularity,
this would make the "patriotic list" unstoppable.
Although peace talks
for Falluja and Sadr city are sputtering on, some Iraqis fear the looming
US air offensive has unacknowledged aims. One is to provoke such resistance
in the nationalist Sunni and al Sadr strongholds that elections can
be cancelled in those areas. Another is to make it impossible for al
Sadr to disband his militia and join the election without seeming to
have been defeated on the battlefield.
It is a high-stakes
game in which the US is working hard to prevent a government emerging
that would ask it to go home. One early result is to expose how phoney
the bombs-or-ballots alternative really is. Iraqis are going to get
a lot of the former, whatever happens with the latter.