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EDITORIAL: Afghan prospects and Pakistan

Barely a week before Afghanistan’s scheduled election run-off between him and the incumbent President Hamid Karzai, the presidential challenger Mr Abdullah Abdullah has quit because his “demands for a fair vote were not met”. This has put the legitimacy of the presidency in the melting pot once again because without an election, and given President Karzai’s patchy record, the current presidency can’t go on for another five years.

Mr Abdullah had set the deadline of October 31 for the overhaul of the country’s electoral institutions after putting forward a number of conditions: he wanted the pro-Karzai head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) sacked; he had demanded closure of hundreds of “ghost polling-stations” with no credible security and impartial monitoring, based on the experience of what the world had termed a flawed first round.

After the delegitimisation of the first round, the exit of President Karzai’s rival from the run-off reinstates the results that the world had rejected. Observers in Afghanistan say the run-off with only one candidate is meaningless. Will President Karzai remain unmoved by Mr Abdullah’s protesting exit or will he remove the said obstacles to fair elections? Logically he should give in and reform the electoral system that brought a bad name to Afghanistan.

President Karzai is the Pashtun candidate who is supposed to win easily against a candidate who is considered Tajik because his mother is a Tajik. But there are complications that might make him hesitate. Mr Abdullah has built alliances among the Pashtun rivals of Mr Karzai. (Pashtun communities are always riven with internal rivalries.) Additionally, the Taliban have weighed in by unleashing a killing spree against those who would go out to vote. And the Taliban prey on the Pashtun areas of the country with greater ease.

The turnout in the August 20 polls was low because of the Taliban factor. This time, on November 7, it is expected to be still lower because the Taliban have struck once again in Kabul and destroyed a UN guesthouse with a massive explosion which, according to the Afghan authorities, was regrettably carried out by bombers brought in from Pakistan. If Mr Karzai reforms the electoral system, chances are that he will lose the run-off. Will he risk it? That seems unlikely. There are scandals about him and his family that will reveal themselves in more gory detail once he is out of power. If he loses he will probably have to decide whether he wants to stay in Afghanistan or go and live in the US or possibly India, since Quetta is no longer the place he can return to as of yore. His relations with Pakistan are not very good and Quetta is no longer safe from the Taliban. His father was killed in Quetta by assassins sent in by Mullah Umar from Kandahar.

Washington says it will leave the matter for Afghanistan to settle. Whoever comes to power after the run-off will be acceptable and whichever way the politicians in Kabul unravel the deadlock of Mr Abdullah’s exit from the run-off will be acceptable too. The truth is that the Americans must be trying hard to get an increasingly besieged Karzai to agree to clean up the rigged electoral machinery. They had not done it earlier because they had no credible alternative to him and Mr Abdullah was considered too hard to maintain in power.

Unfortunately all this is snowballing into a grand persuasion for the Americans to leave Afghanistan. Looking at all this, the foreign minister of Pakistan Mr Shah Mehmood Qureshi has asked the US to consult with Pakistan on any changes in its Afghan policy. The change in policy will emanate from whether President Obama will send in the 40,000 additional American troops and escalate the $4 billion he is spending every month on the war in Afghanistan or think of an exit strategy.

Pakistan too needs to have a clear strategy on Afghanistan. It can no longer rely on the Taliban since their objectives now include factors that are hostile to Pakistan. Pakistan needs to coordinate with the neighbours of Afghanistan who are all united in their concern about Al Qaeda and will not let the power vacuum in Afghanistan be filled by forces they consider hostile. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Imran Khan and ‘mass movement’

Leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Mr Imran Khan has decided to hold mass movement rallies in Islamabad and Lahore to mobilise the people for a mid-term general election and against the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) as it passes through the process of legislation in the two houses of parliament.

It is difficult to imagine how Mr Khan will manage to whip up any national passions for a mid-term election when people don’t even come out to the marketplace; and Mr Nawaz Sharif, the most popular man in the country and the one most likely to become the next prime minister, vows that he has no plan to go for a mid-term change. Nor will the people feel moved greatly by the NRO to mob the streets and deliver on the plans set on foot by PTI.

There is a separate politics of mass mobilisation in the country and the last time it was done, not by the political parties exclusively but by the lawyers agitating for an independent judiciary, its denouement was prevented by a phone-call from the army chief. Is that a part of Mr Khan’s strategy? We have seen many small parties trying to get people to come out on the streets for their causes without great success. People seem to have switched off from the politicians. Jamaat-e-Islami is still at it — it has even held a national referendum on the Kerry-Lugar Act — without much effect.

Mr Khan is a big leader of a small party and has a growing political profile, but he may be jumping too far ahead by calling for a mass movement. He runs the risk of becoming the head of a fringe party forever by running after objectives that may be before their time. The Jamaat has actually reduced itself much by moving in radical directions under its former chief, Qazi Hussain Ahmad. It continues to do so under its new chief. The JUI under Maulana Fazlur Rehman has been more pragmatic. The PTI is still cutting its teeth; it must be more supple in its selection of goals. *

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