Vote counting ends in Afghan elections

Supporters of Afghanistan’s president appeared to have won a majority of seats in landmark legislative elections, according to observers after the results were released today.

Counting of the votes has been slowed down by allegations of fraud, and has taken eight weeks in total.

The polls were hailed as a success in the country’s slow march toward democracy, but their legitimacy has been undermined by widespread stuffing of ballot boxes that has seen 50 election staff dismissed and fears that more than half of the winners are former regional strongmen.

Nearly all winning candidates ran as independents, making it difficult to determine where power will lie in legislature. But observers said allies of US-backed Karzai control most of the 249 assembly seats.

“The government has the support of more than 50% in the parliament,” said Ali Amiri, a political analyst and author on Afghan affairs.

“There are some small opposition groups, but nothing big enough to challenge Karzai.”

A Western diplomat in Kabul said Karzai’s rivals were splintered along factional lines and not a serious threat.

“Our intelligence reports tell us that Karzai’s people have a slim majority,” she said on condition of anonymity because she is not authorised to speak to the media.

The September 18 polls were hailed as the final formal step toward having a representative government in Afghanistan after a quarter century of war that left more than 1 million people dead.

“We have now completed certification of all final results …. Today marks an important milestone in Afghanistan’s transition to a stable and strong democracy,” Bissmillah Bissmil, chairman of the Joint Electoral Managemen Body (JEMB) said in a statement.

A list of winners was published on the JEMB’s Web site.

The elections will be a major boost for women, who have had almost no role in political affairs. A quarter of the parliamentary seats were reserved for them and 68 were named as new parliament members.

“The women in parliament will be a voice for the half of this country who have been silent for so long,” said Safia Siddiqi, a winning independent candidate from the eastern city of Jalalabad.

More than half of the men listed as winners are former warlords and other regional strongmen, such as Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a powerful militia leader accused of war crimes by New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Hakim warned that the men are likely to block moves to bring to justice those responsible for past atrocities and efforts to push through wide-ranging reforms, including greater equality for women.

Also on the winners’ list were at least two former Taliban leaders, who were permitted to take part in the race to promote reconciliation.

One is an ex-regional governor who oversaw the destruction of two massive 1,500-year-old Buddha statues during the fundamentalists’ reign, while the other is Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former frontline commander.

Many had hoped that the polls would strengthen Afghanistan’s nascent democracy and sideline Taliban rebels, but there has been no sign of a letup in escalating violence that has killed about 1,500 people this year.

Karzai appeared on state television today to urge the rebels to stop fighting and to reconcile with his government.

In the latest violence, militants pulled a deputy provincial governor from his car and shot him dead before killing a former district chief while he prayed in a mosque in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

Three police were also killed, including one murdered in a rebel attack on a regional police headquarters near the eastern border with Pakistan.