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Talking Pashto 2: 40 countries, two options

We continue our series of mini Pashto lessons, not with a poem or a proverb this time, but with a short and striking sentence I heard from a campaigner for one of the woman candidates in Paktia yesterday. ‘Da de tsalwexht pe sha-o-khwa hewaduna dwa lare lari: De edari fasad per zed mubareza – ya […]

22 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Context and Culture

2010 Elections 10: The Case of Ahmadkhel

Up in the mountains along the border between Paktia and Khost provinces, where proud and strong tribes live and Taleban and HIG fighters roam, lies the district of Ahmadkhel. It is named after one particular branch of the large Dzadzi tribe(*), funnily enough after the one which is smaller in number there. Another subtribe, the […]

21 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

Footnotes to an AAN political parties blog

On 13 September 2010, we published a piece about the role of political parties in the current Afghan election process and also touched upon the issue of the election system, the Single Non-Transferable Vote or SNTV. We called the latter ‘a party-less party-hostile system’. Our frequent author Aunohita Mojumdar disagrees – and finds the Afghan […]

21 Sep 2010 Andrew Wilder • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 9: So how did the elections go?

Like others we have been fielding questions all day on how yesterday’s elections went. And we’ve been saying the same thing in all its variations: it’s too early to tell. It will take several days for the initial reports and impressions to settle. It will take a bit longer to filter out the distortions. Then […]

19 Sep 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 8: Let’s talk turnout (updated)

The IEC has released a figure for the indicative turnout of yesterday’s poll (40%). It is now being widely repeated and compared to other figures, including previous elections and turnout percentages in our home countries. It happens so often. For some reason nobody finds it necessary to understand where these random figures come from and […]

19 Sep 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 7: Gardez on E-Day

Warning: The following are just some impressions from a limited area of Afghanistan. No conclusion should be drawn from it about the ‘Afghan’ elections as a whole. On the other hand, because Gardez town with its three polling centres has relatively clear borders, we were able to observe ‘all’ of it and a few trends […]

19 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 6: All Together Now: ‘This Is Not Switzerland’

This blog entry discusses the often heard proposition that ‘Afghanistan is not Switzerland’ and why it does not make sense when it comes to tomorrow’s parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. It argues that elections of a much better quality were indeed possible and recalls how this chance was squandered, by not implementing electoral reform as suggested […]

18 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

Looking Back: An Afghanistan Watch Analysis of the Voting Patterns in the First Parliament

What lessons can be drawn from the first parliamentary cycle? What voting patterns and political alignments have developed in the parliament? What ideas, ideologies and powers have been at play when the parliament voted for the Mass Media Law, the National Reconciliation Charter or the Higher Education Law? These are some of the questions addressed […]

17 Sep 2010 Sari Kouvo • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 5: What’s in a name? Relatives of the powerful run for parliament (Updated)

Khalili, Karzai, Dostum, Naderi, Gailani, Chamkani: the last names of a couple of dozen candidates in Saturday’s parliamentary elections are more famous than the candidates themselves. It is Nabil, not Karim; Jamil and Hashmat, not Hamed; and Qadir rather than General Abdul Rashid, who are running for election. In an election without parties, where the […]

17 Sep 2010 Kate Clark • Political Landscape

2010 Elections – No comment 2: Special Direction of the IEC Chairman to All IEC Staff

Special Direction of the Chairman of the IEC to all IEC Provincial Officers and Staff. Released 15 September 2010 by the IEC Chairman’s Office and sent out by the IEC Information and External Relations Department. “We all know that election is a national process by conducting of which, people’s power is exercised in the system […]

17 Sep 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape