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2010 Elections 17: A tense electoral run in Takhar

The first, very partial election results in Takhar have appeared on the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) website. This offers the opportunity to go back to notes taken on a field trip over election-day, and present them along with our perceptions of the situation in the province. By AAN researchers Fabrizio Foschini and Obaidullah Ali. The […]

30 Sep 2010 Fabrizio Foschini • Political Landscape

Warlords’ Peace Council

After a series of announcements that the members of the High Peace Council would soon be announced, and a considerable delay reportedly about who should chair the council – a question that is still open – the names of 68 members were finally released today (with apparently two more still to be added). Looking at […]

28 Sep 2010 Martine van Bijlert • War and Peace

General Petraeus about Taleban contacts (updated)

Reconciliation – a.k.a. talking to the Taleban – is a hot issue. Anything new is picked up quickly by the media world-wide, in particular when it comes from someone with a political weight like Gen. Petraeus. But please also read the small print. So, here is what Gen. Petraeus said: ‘There are very high-level Taliban […]

28 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • War and Peace

2010 Election 16: Will women win both Nimruz seats?

It is interesting to see how candidates narrow down the local parliamentary elections to a competition between a limited number of rivals. The women in many provinces have their own competition, vying mainly for the seats reserved for female candidates. Their complaints thus tend to focus on their immediate female rivals, disregarding the fraud that […]

27 Sep 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

Empire Going Mad

The current US clue- and helplessness in Afghanistan, with its strategy that no one knows whether it will work and with no Plan B, is definitely crying out for some ‘out of the box’ thinking. But the ideas which have started to appear on various websites reminds one of the mad Dr. Strangelove, who learned […]

27 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • International Engagement

2010 Elections 15: What a Kunar Candidate Complains About

These days are filled with stories of electoral fraud and irregularities, copies of complaints forms, grainy videos, and the wait for some solid results to be posted on the IEC website. Some reports are more detailed than others and some are so detailed and illustrative that they are worth repeating. The following is a report […]

26 Sep 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 14: Voices from Paktia

Amongst high official turnout figures, the first results being announced and reports of irregularities coming in from all corners of Southeast Afghanistan, it is also perception which counts. Here some voices from Paktia, some with an own interest to be elected, other from an impartial position. ‘This was not an election, but a selection.’ Two […]

26 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 13: A ‘Taleban Election Campaign’?

There have been statements and speculations recently about a possible involvement of the Taleban in the recent Afghan parliamentary elections, directly or indirectly. So, let’s summarize what we have about this and see whether there was possibly was a ‘Taleban elections strategy’. On 13 September, the UN Special Rep in Kabul Staffan de Mistura said […]

25 Sep 2010 Thomas Ruttig • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 12: Behind the complaints

Candidates, candidate supporters and observers are awaiting the posting of the preliminary results, to see what has been made of the messiness that surrounded much of the polling. The first partial result was released on 23 September 2010 – Panjshir with 66.7% of the vote counted – but the results per polling stations are still […]

24 Sep 2010 Martine van Bijlert • Political Landscape

2010 Elections 11: A cab ride through Herat voting

Impressions from one of the biggest and richest Afghan cities where high turnout and low levels of fraud were expected highlight how the appearance of a highly organized election can distract from the fault-lines all around: just few kilometres out of the nicely accessible Herat city centre, a whole slew of fraud techniques were being […]

23 Sep 2010 Fabrizio Foschini • Political Landscape

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