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Late Night: Don’t Forget Afghanistan |
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Today marked the shameful and depressing anniversary of the War in Iraq, an occasion which was commemorated in news outlets and protests around the world. But in the background, as always, violence continues in Afghanistan as well. I hope this reminder only confirms the urgent need for a refocusing of American foreign policy.
Yesterday, prisoners took control of parts of a prison compound during a riot. A suicide bomber killed seven in Helmand.
Early this morning, a US raid killed six civilians, leading to more charges of unnecessary heavy-handedness.
And the Economist reminds us that Afghanistan has elections too - too many of them, in fact.
According to the 2004 constitution, the country will go to the polls in 11 of the next 17 years, the result of holding presidential, parliamentary and provincial-council elections on different cycles. If district-council elections were held on yet another separate cycle (as is proposed), the calendar would become more crowded still. Quite apart from voter fatigue, the financial burden will be enormous for the world’s fifth-poorest country: it costs about $150m to hold each poll.
President Hamid Karzai, who completes his first term of office in May 2009, wants to synchronise the presidential and parliamentary cycles. This makes sense, not least because the elections will require a surge of international troops to guard against Taliban attacks on polling booths. But that would require parliamentarians to forgo one year of their term, an idea they do not like. The lower house voted this month to hold elections in consecutive years.
Many parliamentarians say that combining the polls would anyway require changing the constitution, which can only be done by a loya jirga (grand council)â€â€which itself would have to be elected. And if a loya jirga were convened, it might want to tinker with the constitutional settlement in other waysâ€â€by trimming the power of the president, making Afghanistan “more Islamic†or reducing the 25% of seats reserved in parliament for women.
Time is short. Voter registration has to take place this summer if polls are to go ahead next year. So far, no plans are ready. The parliament has not yet decided which electoral system to use for the parliamentary vote, or even whether to allow political parties to take part (they were banned in the last election). Parliament may not change the electoral law in the final year of its term, so its members have only a few weeks left to take these decisions. In short, Afghanistan’s arguments over the technicalities of voting are already complex. And that is before voters start thinking about whom to vote for.
In other words, a real mess.
Thanks for posting this, Alex. My husband served in Afghanistan for a year and he is saddened to know it is the “forgotten war” of our generation.