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New York Times - Afghanistan Election Draws Low Turnout Amid Taliban Threats

By Mujib Mashal, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi

September 28, 2019

KABUL, Afghanistan — Braving an all-out Taliban threat and the fatigue of repeated flawed elections, Afghans on Saturday voted to choose a president for a country suffering through one of the most violent periods in its recent history.

At a time when there is fighting in nearly two dozen of the country’s 34 provinces on any given day, it was feared the election would be marred by widespread bloodshed. While there were dozens of smaller attacks on Saturday, the security forces appeared to have prevented any mass-casualty assaults.

Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said about 68 attacks had been carried out on election targets, resulting in the deaths of three police officers and the wounding of 37 civilians and two army soldiers.

But tallies arrived at by The New York Times, from conversations with local officials across the country, determined that at least 30 security personnel and 10 civilians were killed on Saturday, and at least 40 security forces and 150 civilians wounded — much higher than the official reports, but in line with the average daily toll of the country’s long-running war, now in its 18th year.

The Taliban aren’t the only danger posed by this election: There are worries that, as the vote tallying begins, the results could paralyze the government, lead to a prolonged political crisis and complicate efforts to reach a peace deal to end the war. Results are not expected for weeks, and a runoff is likely.

The vote has turned into a battle between two bitter rivals, the incumbent president, Ashraf Ghani, and his government’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah. A dispute between the two men during the fraud-ridden 2014 elections nearly split the country, resulting in an American-brokered unity government.

Saturday’s voting took place at about 4,500 polling sites, about 2,500 fewer than during the 2014 election, as violence has spread.

The national election commission in Kabul struggled to calculate exact figures from hundreds of polling sites, as insurgents launched attacks, blocked highways or blew up communication towers that affected phone signals in large parts of the country.

While the flow of information was slowed by attacks on the communication system, the commission’s initial figures showed that turnout might be around two million, a historical low.

In parts of the country, including Kabul, complaints trickled in about technical problems. One frequent complaint was that voters could not find their names at the polling stations where they had registered to vote. Such registrations were introduced to curb mass fraud.

The voting also took place amid eroded trust in the country’s election bodies, with consecutive elections marked by confusion and fraud — and election officials often implicated. All 12 commissioners who oversaw last fall’s parliamentary election, which resulted in an extended, and sometimes violent, disagreement about who should lead Parliament, were fired, and nine were sent to prison.

Afghanistan’s new election commission had promised measures to ensure a cleaner vote, including a mandatory biometric verification process that required a voter’s fingerprints and a photo to prevent large-scale ballot stuffing.

But the continuing lack of trust leaves room for a contested result, with Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah, as well as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a militant leader only recently reconciled with the government, all signaling that they see themselves as winning the contest and that any other outcome would indicate fraud.

As polls closed late Saturday, the country’s election chief, Hawa Alam Nuristani, seemed confident that her team had managed a less-tainted vote.

“Despite all the challenges, we witnessed the responsible and committed presence of Afghan citizens in voting centers,” Ms. Nuristani said. “We witnessed a better election compared to other elections.”

Across Afghanistan, it was clear that security was at the top of voters’ minds. At a time when wedding halls and educational centers have been hit with deadly bombings, many feared voting queues could be easily targeted by the Taliban, which had vowed to stop the election.

“The turnout is low because of threats,” said Najib Jabarkhel, a voter at a heavily guarded polling center in Kabul, the capital. “The Taliban have threatened that if you go to vote, bring your shroud with you.”

Protecting the balloting has added to the load of security forces already stretched thin by the daily routine of the war. More than 70,000 soldiers and police officers had been given additional duties of protecting the electoral process, and the country’s commando forces carried out dozens of special operations in the days leading up to the vote.

While it appeared that those measures had exceeded expectations in preventing Taliban attacks, an extended political standoff, if it occurs, could threaten the cohesion of the national security forces, which have endured years of conflict and been sustained only with tens of billions of dollars in aid from the United States and its allies.

Reflecting such fears, when they formed a coalition government in 2014, Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah divided the security ministries, with Mr. Abdullah leading the police and Mr. Ghani leading the army.

Western and Afghan officials, however, say the risk that the security forces will be dragged into a political dispute has been reduced in recent years: A younger generation of leaders has made progress in professionalizing the forces, these officials say, and the new leaders are less partisan than their predecessors.

“Our No. 1 priority is securing the day, and making sure Taliban threats are minimized,” said Massoud Andarabi, Afghanistan’s acting interior minister. He has worked to keep provincial police leaders and others out of politics, he said, “so that we have legitimacy in a difficult time.”

Mr. Andarabi said both Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah had made clear to him they wanted the security forces to stay clear of their political rivalry.

“Elections will go, institutions will remain,” he said.

A total of 18 candidates — from a former intelligence chief to a former militant leader to a university lecturer and a surgeon — registered to challenge Mr. Ghani. But campaigning was slow in the initial weeks, as the United States appeared to be nearing a deal with the Taliban that cast doubt on whether these elections would proceed at all amid efforts to reach a wider political settlement with the insurgency.

When President Trump called off the peace talks, the elections became certain again and campaigning intensified.

Both Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani built large coalitions in their bids to win the contest. Many experts and officials suggest a repeat of 2014 is likely, with neither candidate getting the required 50 percent in the first round, forcing a runoff.

Preliminary results are not likely to be determined until Oct. 17 at the earliest, and final results not until Nov. 7 or later.

Mr. Ghani, 70, is an American-educated anthropologist who formerly worked at the World Bank. The first time he ran for office, in 2009, he got about 3 percent of the vote. He became president in 2014 in a disputed election, and has now casts himself as the “state builder,” asking for a second term to build strong institutions for Afghanistan.

Mr. Abdullah, 59, is an ophthalmologist who rose through the ranks of the anti-Soviet fighters and then became foreign minister after the Taliban were toppled in 2001. This is his third time running for the presidency.

He is presenting himself as the moderate leader who can work with a broad coalition, in contrast to Mr. Ghani, who has alienated many political leaders — including his own vice president, who now backs Mr. Abdullah.

A third candidate, Mr. Hekmatyar, made peace with the government only in 2017, leaving behind a small but stubborn insurgency. Mr. Hekmatyar was one of the main faction leaders during civil wars in the 1990s that left Kabul in ruins.

Only fraud could deprive him of a clear victory, Mr. Hekmatyar recently declared, adding a veiled threat.

“Don’t make us regret our return, don’t make us regret our participation in elections, don’t force us to chose another option — we can do that, and we have the experience of it also,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Najim Rahim from Mazar-i-Sharif, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost, Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad, and Assadullah Timory from Herat, Afghanistan.