America also a winner in Afghan elections

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By Amir Taheri

April 7, 2014

Modal Trigger

It will be weeks before the final results of Afghanistan’s presidential election, held Saturday, are announced. And the winner won’t take office until June. Nevertheless, the voting, the third of its kind since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, has already provided a new and exciting political snapshot of a country emerging from four decades of turmoil. 

The first feature of this snapshot is that a majority of Afghans have adopted elections as the best means of choosing and changing governments. On Saturday, more than 7 million went to the polls — almost 60 percent of registered voters — a turnout about twice the level of four years ago. 

Second, the appeal of elections cuts across ethnic, regional, sectarian and gender boundaries. Turnout was heavier in the six provinces where ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazara form a majority — but it was also high in provinces where the majority is Pushtun, the country’s largest ethnic group. In some towns and villages, Pushtuns went to the polls for the first time ever. Even in areas partly under Taliban influence, the number of voters was up at least 30 percent. 

Women’s turnout was also impressive, registering a 40 percent gain over the last time. (And the number of female election monitors was up 70 percent.) 

More impressive was the massive turnout of young, often first-time, voters. By official estimates, at least 1.8 million people were voting for the first time. 

Turnout was higher for Sunni Muslims and even more so for Shiites (a majority in just two of the 34 provinces). More interesting, there is evidence that this time around more people voted for (or against) the candidates’ policies, rather than their religious backgrounds. 

The third feature of the new snapshot is the convincing rejection of Islamist ideology in general and its Taliban variety in particular. The three candidates that appear to have secured the highest number of votes are known for their political skills rather than religious credentials. Abdul-Rasul Sayyaf, the only candidate describing himself as “religious scholar,” looks to have pulled only around 5 percent of the votes. 

Also rejected are the warlords who, during the decade before liberation, fought a bloody civil war. Apart from Sayyaf, the only other warlord to head a ticket was Gul Agha Sherzai, who failed to make a splash even in his Pushtun ethnic base in Kandahar. (Two other ex-warlords, the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum and the Hazara Mohammed Mohaqeq, ran as vice-presidential candidates.) 

Also interesting was the failure of the ruling elite established under President Hamid Karzai with support from the international community. Despite government backing, the elite’s candidate, former Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, looks to have placed a distant third. 

Finally, the picture emerging from the election indicates much stronger support for close ties with the United States than one might think when listening to the buzz from Washington. The likely two top vote-getters, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, both support a treaty under which the United States would maintain a military presence of 10,000 to 12,000 troops in Afghanistan — a clear sign of consensus. 

All in all, thanks to the quality of the debates during the campaign and the unprecedented turnout, democracy has scored a major victory in Afghanistan. This confirms the experiences of a number of other Muslim-majority countries, notably Iraq, that democracy is not incompatible with Islam. 

In Iraq, by choosing a cynical cut-and-run strategy, President Obama squandered much of the power and prestige that the United States had won by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The question now is if he will make the same mistake in Afghanistan, and seize on some pretext to kill the treaty and take all US troops home. 

That would be bad for the Afghans and for America. Premature US disengagement could turn Afghanistan into a battleground for regional rivals, among them such opportunist powers as Iran, Russia and Pakistan. That, in turn, would deny Afghanistan the time needed to strengthen its new institutions, gain experience by practicing democracy and emerge as an element of stability in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. 

The United States gave Afghans a chance to try something different; now they’ve shown that they’re ready to do that. This is a success. President Obama should not throw it away.