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AFGHAN ELECTIONS: Refugees Want Karzai As Their Man
By Ashfaq Yusufzai *
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 13 (IPS) - As Afghanistan gets ready to start counting votes Wednesday from a historic presidential election, after several key candidates threatened to declare the poll illegal, Afghan refugees living in Pakistan were confident incumbent president Hamid Karzai would become the first-ever legitimate head of state and speed up efforts for much-needed peace in the war-torn country.
''Definitely, Karzai will win. The other candidates cannot match him. Karzai's past is
clean, while his opponents have indulged in the bloodbath of their countrymen in one way
or the other,'' said 70-year-old Noor Jamal, an Afghan refugee who now resides in border
city of Peshawar
''We voted for peace, which can be possible when Karzai becomes president,'' Jamal told
IPS.
Yasmin and Saeeda, two Afghan women refugees at the Shaiekhabad camp said they
voted for Karzai ''because he's liberal and we like him.''
Saira, their 40-year-old mother, said she also voted for Karzai because she wanted to
put an end to her country's bloodshed.
At the same camp, Khadija, 25, was quick to respond on why she voted for Karzai.
''You see Afghanistan is marching toward progress. For the first time in the country's
history women are allowed to participate in the Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly),'' she told IPS.
''Under Karzai the situation with regard to women's rights would be improved,'' added
Khadija.
Other male candidates, she said, tend to ''humiliate'' Afghan women.
Apart from the millions of Afghans who voted in their homeland, about 850,000
refugees living in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran also voted - the largest out-of-country
election ever.
Afghan refugees first fled to Pakistan in 1978, after a communist government seized
power in Kabul. The influx mushroomed after the then Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan
in December 1979, growing to more than four million in the 1980s.
In the mid-1990s, the radical Islamist Taliban faction seized control over southern
Afghanistan and Kabul. Taliban offensives in northern Afghanistan in the late 1990s sent
hundreds of thousands of new refugees into Pakistan and Iran and displaced large
numbers of people within Afghanistan.
International bodies have endorsed the elections, with the largest monitor group - The
Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan - describing them as ''fairly
democratic''.
An exit poll conducted by the Washington-based International Republican Institute, a
U.S. think tank associated with President George W. Bush's Republican Party, showed
Karzai heading for a landslide.
Karzai, a member of Afghanistan's largest ethnic group - the Pashtun - was picked to
head a transitional government after the Taliban militia was ousted by U.S.-led forces, at
the end of 2001, for refusing to hand over al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
On Saturday in the Afghan capital Kabul, 15 opposition candidates complained of fraud
when washable ink rather than permanent ink was found to have been used to mark
voter's fingers. As a result, reports of multiple voting were widespread.
But the tension was diffused on Monday when key candidates threatening to boycott the
result were promised an independent United Nations investigation of any irregularities.
The Afghan-U.N. Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) is setting up a panel to
investigate. Privately, election officials say few votes were fraudulent and would have no
major effect on the poll.
The candidates welcomed the investigation.
''We (will) accept the results of the investigations, whatever it be,'' said Abdul Hadi
Khalilzai, a presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, officials from the Afghan elections board said ballot boxes are being moved
from 34 provinces, Iran and Pakistan to eight regional counting centers.
The transfer of ballot boxes from Kabul polling stations, Maidan Wardak, Panjshir,
Parwan, Logar, and Kapisa, and of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran will be
gathered for counting in Kabul's Taj Big Hill.
Qutbuddin Qayem, of the Afghan election board, said it may take a lot of time to collect
the boxes. The election results will be announced after three weeks, he said.
In Kabul, U.S. ambassador Zalmai Khalilzad met with the candidates about their
complaints.
Masouda Jalal, a presidential candidate, said she and the others talked to Khalilzad, the
European Union and the election board. ''We discussed the election day, our problems, and
our views on the way to solve them,'' she told Pajhwak Afghan News.
Shereen Bibi, a 20-year-old Afghan student in the posh University Town area of
Peshawar while rejecting the poll rigging charges and the subsequent boycott, told IPS:
''Two of the presidential candidates, Abdul Hasib Aryan and Syed Ishaq Gilani, have already
withdrawn their candidature from the race, while the others, who announced the boycott
on election day did so, because they had seen the writings on the wall.''
On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan congratulated Afghans on ''their
patience, resilience and civic maturity'' during the presidential election process that
culminated in Saturday's vote.
Annan said the inquiry into reported polling irregularities will ensure that the procedures
are more reliable for local and parliamentary elections scheduled for next year.
In a message to the Afghan people, read out on local television and radio by his special
representative in Kabul, Jean Arnault, Annan said they had shown a welcome
determination ''to take charge of the affairs of their country.''
(*With additional reporting from Pajhwok Afghan News) (END/2004)
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