The Bush administration’s concern with holding free and fair elections in Afghanistan is as touching as its current determination to rebuild the country.
The reality is that both of these are very much by-products of the invasion of that country three years ago during the heat of post-9/11 anger.
You need a well-developed sense of irony to appreciate what is happening in Afghanistan. The country had its first presidential election last Saturday; its most recent history includes three decades of occupation, civil war and catastrophic political conflict.
While about a dozen people died in the run up to the poll, vast numbers of Afghanis had their first, albeit imperfect, taste of democracy: women made up 41% of the 10,5-million registered voters; polling took place under the occupation of close to 30 000 predominantly American troops; and observers numbered in the hundreds, but it wasn’t possible for them to cover the 22 000 polling stations.
And the election was not problem-free: the 15 candidates who stood against transitional President Hamid Karzai all demanded a rerun amid evidence of electoral fraud: multiple voting and ineligible ballots being cast.
At least two candidates are now prepared to accept the outcome of an independent investigation announced last Sunday.
United Nations electoral management official David Avery said he did not even expect every ballot box to reach the counting stations. ”In the end, you count what you get,” said Avery.
It is hoped that counting will finish before the start of the holy month of Ramadan at the weekend.
If no one cracks the 51% mark in the first round, the process will be repeated in November.
The United States government invited me and 12 other journalists from Africa, Europe and Latin America to Kabul earlier this month to show a society approaching normality.
But doing this involved surrounding us with a ring of steel and a contingent of heavily armed security personnel. We got limited access to Afghanis and practically no contact with women.
We did, however, get access to top level Americans — including Afghan-born US ambassador Zalman Khalilzad and commander of the US forces Lieutenant Colonel David Barno — because the visit was also designed to showcase the rebuilding.
Nevertheless, the US is once again engaged in nation-building from behind heavy fortifications. As a result is we see Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Timoney, the leader of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Ghazni, proudly showing us pictures of the upgraded hospital and the new bus depot. This from a man with a helmet, flak jacket, sidearm and carbine, protected by a company of airborne rangers and living in the secure compound with an infantry battalion.
Living cheek by jowl, and now subjected to an 8pm curfew, the Americans entertain themselves.
Specially cleared merchants enter the embassy compound to sell them local handiwork — including the infamous light blue, tent-like burkas worn by Afghan women. On karaoke night, a popular choice was Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens, who is now on a watch list barring him from entering the US.
In Afghanistan, which supplies 75% of the world’s heroin, the US and its allies are forced to turn from its ”war on terror” to the older war on drugs.
The British-led counter-narcotics programme concentrates heavily on finding alternative sources of livelihood for poppy farmers. But here too soldiers are needed to protect the farmers from warlords determined to keep those under their influence growing the lucrative flowers.