Afghan poll: Too soon to write off Taliban

Afghanistan's presidential election closed on April 05 last amid relief that attacks by Taliban fighters were fewer than feared. The voting that will see the first-ever democratic transfer of power in a country plagued by conflicts for decades. It will take six weeks for results to come in from across Afghanistan's rugged terrain and a final result to be declared in the race to succeed President Hamid Karzai.
The turnout was seven million out of 12 million eligible voters or about 58 per cent, according to preliminary estimates, the country's Election Commission informed. That was well above the 4.5 million who voted in the last election in 2009 which was marred by widespread fraud.
The Taliban threat to wreck the vote through bombings and assassination failed to materialise and violent incidents were on a far smaller scale than anticipated. There is no clear favourite and if no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of the votes in the first round - preliminary results for which will be announced on April 24 - a run-off poll is scheduled for late May.
Massive fraud and widespread violence marred Karzai's re-election in 2009 and a disputed result this time would add to the challenges facing the new president. Whoever emerges victorious, he must lead the fight against the Taliban and also strengthen an economy reliant on declining aid money. This could be the beginning of a potentially dangerous period for Afghanistan at a time when the war-ravaged country desperately needs a leader to stem the rising violence as foreign troops prepare to leave. The NATO coalition force is pulling out its last 51,000 combat troops this year.
Will the new government be able to battle the resilient Taliban insurgency without their help? Afghan voters went to the polls to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai, braving Taliban threats in a landmark election held, as the US-led forces prepare to leave after their long intervention in the country. Security was tight after the Taliban had rejected the election as a foreign plot and urged their fighters to attack polling staff, voters and security forces.
Afghanistan's third presidential election brings to an end the 13-years rule of Karzai, who has held power since the Taliban were ousted in a US-led invasion in 2001, and will be the first democratic handover of power in the country's turbulent history.
Poll security was a major concern following a string of high-profile attacks in the capital Kabul, most recently a suicide bombing at the Interior Ministry that left six police officers dead. All 400,000 of Afghanistan's police, army and intelligence services were deployed to ensure security around the country. While there have been no significant attacks on the candidates, a charity's guesthouse, a luxury hotel and offices of the Independent Election Commission were hit.
The eve of the poll was overshadowed by the killing of award-winning Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus, shot by a police commander in eastern Afghanistan. Niedringhaus, 48, was the third journalist working for international media to be killed in Afghanistan during the election campaign, after Swedish journalist Nils Horner and Sardar Ahmad of AFP. Horner was shot dead on a street in Kabul, while Ahmad was killed along with his wife and two of his three children in a Taliban attack on the city's luxurious Serena Hotel.
Ties fell to a new low late last year when Karzai refused to sign a security agreement that would allow the US to keep around 10,000 troops in Afghanistan to train local forces and hunt Al-Qaeda.
A bigger-than-expected turnout in Afghanistan's presidential election and the Taliban's failure to significantly disrupt the vote have raised questions about the capacity of the insurgents to tip the country back into chaos as foreign troops head home.
There were dozens of minor roadside bombs and attacks on polling stations, police and voters during the day. But the overall level of violence was much lower than the Taliban had threatened to unleash.
And, despite the dangers they faced at polling stations, nearly 58 per cent of the 12 million people, eligible to vote, turned out, a measure of the determination for a say in their country's first-ever democratic transfer of power, as President Hamid Karzai prepares to stand down after 12 years in power.
This is how people voted to say death to the Taliban, as showed by a group of voters holding up one finger, stained with ink to show they had voted, in a gesture of defiance to Taliban threats.
There was a palpable sense in capital Kabul that perhaps greater stability was within reach after 13 years of strife since the ouster of the Taliban's hardline pro-Islamic regime in late 2001. The insurgency has claimed the lives of at least 16,000 Afghan civilians and thousands of more security forces.
Although the US-led international forces are in the process of winding down, suggesting partly a worsening of US-Afghan relations, this election may offer a chance for Afghanistan to improve relations with the United States, its principal donor. It may be too early, however, to conclude from the Taliban's failure to trip up the election that it is now on its back foot. It may be a lull before the storm. There are reasons to believe that they may soon regroup and wage fresh assaults.
More than 350,000 security forces were deployed for the vote, and rings of checkpoints and roadblocks set up around the capital may well have thwarted Taliban plans to hit voters and polling stations.
It is possible that the Taliban deliberately lay low to give the impression of improving security in order to hasten the exit of U.S. troops and gain more ground later. After all, they managed to launch a wave of spectacular attacks in the run-up to the vote. Indeed, they remain a formidable force: estimates of the number of Taliban fighters, who are mostly based in lawless southern and eastern areas of the country, range up to 30,000.
An independent Afghan analyst argues that although at the moment the Taliban do not appear to be winning, they might argue it has already exhausted the United States' will to fight.
Support for the Taliban was fading in regions where they had previously counted on help from villagers, the analyst writes. They appeared to lack the strength to besiege major towns or engage in frontal battles. There could, though, be an opportunity for the Taliban to reassert itself if - as happened in 2009 - the election is marred by fraud and rigging, and Afghans feel cheated out of a credible outcome.
Early reports would suggest that the election was far smoother than the last one. Still, there were many instances of ballot-stuffing and attempts to vote with fake cards. Around 14 per cent of polling centres did not open, most of them in the south-east and southern provinces where the Taliban presence is reported to be at its strongest.
Furthermore, there is also a risk that if a final result is delayed for several months, which may happen if there has to be a run-off between the top two candidates, this would leave a political vacuum that the Taliban could exploit. There are complaints of irregularities in the polls.
Representatives of eight presidential hopefuls complained of a number of irregularities. In a meeting the country's electoral watchdog members said shortage of ballot papers in polling centres, stuffing of ballot boxes and banning candidates' agents from monitoring the election sites had been among some of the major election offences. As a matter of fact, the Electoral Complaint Commission (ECC) had registered more than 1,200 complaints since the polling day.
Understandably, an ambiguous electoral outcome will breed uncertainty and confusion, which can widen the gap between the government and its citizens and leave a bigger opening for the Taliban to cause trouble.
It may be recalled that in 2003 the then-U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld suggested that the war in Afghanistan was in a "clean-up phase". It was soon clear, however, that the back of the insurgency was far from broken and the Taliban bounced back.
Indeed, Taliban attacks were muted during Afghanistan's first election in 2004, when Karzai obtained a mandate for a presidency he had held on an interim basis since 2002. By early 2005, U.S. generals were saying that the militants were on the run. But they regretted their optimism a short while later as casualties mounted.
There are threats from across the border. Military chiefs and security officials in the region warned last month that the Taliban had secretly agreed to focus on carrying out operations in Afghanistan, which confirms that the spate of atrocities from the Taliban side is not going to die down or reduce considerably in the days to come. For all practical and tactical reasons, Taliban cannot be written off. What remains to be seen is whether the next government will be able to fight the insurgents with its own power. If they can, half the battle for a peaceful and stable Afghanistan will be won.
[email protected]