Dodging Death, Candidates Vie to Lead a Broken Afghan Nation
Whoever wins will inherit a government struggling with the aftermath of the collapse of U.S.-Taliban peace talks.
(Bloomberg) -- Whenever Afghan presidential candidate Sayed Noorullah Jalili reaches out to hug or shake hands with voters at an election rally, a familiar panic begins to rise. “I feel that I’m going to hear an explosion. I get scared.”
Jalili’s fears reflect how high the stakes are for both the candidates, as well as the war-torn nation itself, as Afghanistan sets out to elect a new president Sept. 28.
Whoever wins will inherit a government struggling with the aftermath of the collapse of U.S.-Taliban peace talks and a resurgent Taliban that has repeatedly opposed direct talks with the country’s elected officials.
The insurgent group, once pushed to the fringes by the American invasion in 2001, now controls or lays claim to half the country and has threatened to target the polls. Last week, a Taliban suicide bomber narrowly missed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at a campaign rally in Parwan that killed 26 people and wounded 40 others. Another blast claimed in Kabul on the same day killed 22 civilians.
“Every moment in Afghanistan is volatile and accompanied with death,” Jalili said in an interview at his heavily-guarded, luxurious five-story office building just opposite the country’s defense ministry in the capital Kabul. “When I speak of sacrificing my life for my country, I accept all these risks.”
The poll is largely seen as a race between Ghani and his main rival and current government chief executive Abdullah Abdullah. But there are also 12 other candidates, including Jalili in the fray. Unofficial online polling on social media pages show Ghani and Abdullah as the front-runners.
Afghanistan’s problems have multiplied over the 18-year long war, said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a retired Afghan army general and a political analyst. So the new president will lead a country “that’s devastated by a poor economy, deadly war, growing disunity among ethnic groups and politicians, in addition to the collapse of the U.S.-Taliban talks,” Amarkhel said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Challenges Ahead
There’s real concerns this vote could turn out to be a repeat of the 2014 presidential elections and last year’s parliamentary polls -- mired in allegations of corruption and overshadowed by violence. The 2014 election nearly caused a war between the two main candidates who accused each other of election fraud until the U.S. intervened and a brokered a deal that made Ghani the president and Abdullah the chief executive.
Tensions are already growing. At an election rally Abdullah accused his main rival of rigging the vote in his favor.
Security will be tight on polling day. The government plans to deploy more than 72,000 Afghan forces across the country to secure some 5,370 polling centers. As many as 9.6 million Afghans are registered to vote.
The Independent Election Commission is scheduled to announce provisional results on Oct. 19 and the final results on Nov. 7. A run-off vote will be held on Nov. 23 if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.
The elections are also a reminder of how much influence the U.S. -- having spent nearly $900 billion in rebuilding and securing Afghanistan during its 18-year war in the country -- has over how any future government runs the country.
In a scathing statement, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said last week that Washington was going to withdraw $100 million meant for an energy project “due to identified Afghan Government corruption and financial mismanagement.” On Thursday, Pompeo spoke to Ghani to underscore expectations that the conduct of candidates and government institutions holding the election are beyond reproach to ensure the legitimacy of the outcome, spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statment.
Despairing Voters
Ordinary Afghans are disillusioned by the democratic process which seems to have brought their country no closer to normalcy in the years since the Taliban were overthrown.
At election rallies, some citizens only show up because candidates promise them 300-500 Afghani ($3.84-$6.40) and they are desperate for funds. Even then the crowds don’t hold back from disrupting and jeering at the candidates -- at a rally held by Ghani’s team the crowds tossed water bottles at the speakers to protest their failure to deliver on their 2014 promises on security and jobs.
Voters are torn between hope and despair.
“I still vote because that’s the only solution for the country’s chaos,” said Shokoria Asef, 24, a Kabul university student. “If we don’t vote that means we support the Taliban.”
Yet Naieem Bakhtyar, 23, a shopkeeper in Kabul, sees few benefits in voting. “I don’t trust any of the candidates and have no faith in elections at all.” The debacle that was the 2014 election has left him dejected, Bakhtyar said. “We risked our life in the hopes of choosing a better leader but the fraud and the ballot-box stuffing and the irregularities undermined the past elections and we expect the same situation for Saturday’s elections.”
For Jalili, 44, fears of violence won’t dissuade him from running, even though he’s already survived a recent abduction attempt in Kabul that he believes was meant to force him out of the race.
The construction company owner has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last two months on dozens of Kalashnikov-carrying bodyguards and armored cars as he makes the rounds meeting supporters and holding rallies. Paying for his security has been the biggest single expense of the campaign.
“The country is mourning every day due to the violence and conflict, and is near to collapse,” Jalili said. “But I owe it to this country to save it.“
To contact the reporter on this story: Eltaf Najafizada in Kabul at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net, Muneeza Naqvi
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