A committed jihadi from Paghman, a valley overlooking Kabul, Walid Muhammad neither gave nor took quarter to defend his city. In the 1980s, he fought the Russians, who torched his house and killed his relatives. Then he took up arms against the Taliban, who lashed him to a bed and flogged him with a cable.
On Sunday morning, when Muhammad casts his vote for Afghanistan’s new Parliament, the retired holy warrior will see the faces of his former enemies on the ballot sheet. It makes him furious.
”The communists sold our country to the Russian infidel. The Taliban turned it into a terrorist haven. And now they want to be part of government?” he said, incredulously.
More than 12-million Afghans are eligible for Sunday’s election to choose the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga — Lower House of Parliament — and 34 provincial councils in a vote fraught with peril. On Saturday, 12 people were killed in clashes with Taliban insurgents, while police in Helmand province foiled a plot to blow up a dam that could have killed thousands. United States military officials predict further violence on Sunday, but said it will not deter a record voter turnout.
Reckoning of the past
Although the landmark election is supposedly about the future, it has in many ways become a reckoning of the past. Ghosts from the various regimes that ruled and ruined Afghanistan for a quarter of a century have emerged from the woodwork to run for office. First are the communists who collaborated in the 10-year Soviet occupation, marked by a catalogue of brutality.
Muhammad Gulabzoi has returned from Moscow after 17 years in exile to stand in the town of Khost. A former army officer, he helped to overthrow King Zaher Shah in 1973 and served in three communist governments.
Six senior Taliban officials, freed from US custody after renouncing their leader, Mullah Omar, are also in the race. The most prominent is Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, a former minister; the most notorious is Maulvi Qalamuddin, whose religious police beat beardless men, smashed televisions and hanged alleged adulterers.
Candidate lists are peppered with hundreds of former mujahedin commanders, many of whom apparently forgot to hand in their arms first. Election officials identified 210 warlord candidates, but just 32 have been disqualified for retaining their private armies. Human rights groups say this is a travesty of democracy, but President Hamid Karzai says it is necessary for a smooth transition from the rule of the gun.
Vehicle for anger
With so many questions about the past still unresolved — there has been no South African-style peace and reconciliation process — the election campaign became a vehicle for anger.
”The mujahedin leaders are criminals with blood-stained hands. They destroyed Kabul and killed more than 65 000 people. I saw it with my own eyes,” said Dr Kabir Ranjbar, a former adviser to the communist dictator Najibullah, who heads the Afghan Democratic party.
”It’s all propaganda,” insisted Haji al-Mas, a mujahedin commander who is standing in Parwan. ”We saved this country from the Soviets. Then we destroyed the terrorists. Now they call us warlords.”
Ill tempers will not be settled by Sunday’s ballot. Although 5 800 candidates are standing, there will be no clear winners because the voting system chosen by Karzai sidelines political parties. Instead, the election has effectively become a vast popularity contest between individuals, ideologies and histories. Revisionism is rife.
One of the most contentious candidates is Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a powerful warlord running in Kabul. Sayyaf has been subjected to a series of allegations — during the 1990s, his troops raped and tortured, according to human rights groups. He is considered a fundamentalist, funded by Saudis promoting the extremist Wahhabi strain of Islam.
But supporters insist that his past is as white as his snowy beard.
”He is a great intellectual, a great mujahid and a great man,” said Muhammad Asif, an 84-year-old from Paghman, whose three sons fought with Sayyaf. ”Whatever anyone else says about him is just lies.”
In a rare public appearance, Sayyaf held a rally in a mosque last week. Surrounded by gunmen, he announced a vision of an Afghanistan ”led by men of good Islamic character”.
Weasel words
It is impossible to say who will prevail in Sunday’s vote. Many insist they will not be fooled by candidates’ weasel words.
On Saturday, Nadir Muhammadi, a puncture repairman, sat on the verge of a broad Kabul street. Behind him lay the shell of a neighbourhood pulverised by interfactional mujahedin battles in the early 1990s. Across the street is the sports stadium where the Taliban chopped off limbs and stoned people to death.
”Our past rulers brought disaster to this country, they destroyed everything,” he said grumpily. ”I’m voting for a candidate who has no party, no faction and no past.”
The new Parliament is unlikely to resolve the old difference between the communists, the jihadis and the Taliban. The ban on political parties now means it could take years for solid political caucuses to form.
And when the novice politicians traipse into Parliament, officials are worried about ”ethics” — whether, in the words of one, ”they will solve their arguments with words, fisticuffs or worse”.
The vagaries of the obscure electoral system have compounded jitters. Single non-transferable voting is easy for inexperienced electors to understand because they choose only one candidate. But officials warn it can result in disproportionate results favouring minorities, resulting in widespread claims of vote-rigging.
”There will be over 5 000 losers. I am concerned they will not accept the result,” said Peter Erben, the chief electoral officer.
Chaos might suit Karzai, whose American backers favour a strong Presidency, but it deepens disillusionment.
”Karzai talks like a democrat but thinks like a king,” said Ranjbar. ”How can we build a democracy with such a totalitarian mindset?”
The greater peril is that a botched poll will blunt Afghans’ new-found enthusiasm for democracy. — Guardian Unlimited Â