WERKSTATT | SAMMLUNG | KOMPOSITION

13-10-2010

Recent AAN blogs - elections, talks, justice

For those who have missed AAN's latest twenty-or-so blogs, since the last mailing on 25 September 2010, a quick overview of wha t you may still want to read. A lot on the elections, a fair bit on the talks about talks, and some much needed attention for justice and human rights.

2010 Elections 14: Voices from Paktia

Amongst high official turnout figures, the first results being announced and reports of irregularities coming in from all corners of Southeast Afghanistan, it is also perception which counts. Here some voices from Paktia, some with an own interest to be elected, other from an impartial position. read more »

2010 Elections 15: What a Kunar Candidate Complains About

These days are filled with stories of electoral fraud and irregularities, copies of complaints forms, grainy videos, and the wait for some solid results to be posted on the IEC website. Some reports are more detailed than others and some are so detailed and illustrative that they are worth repeating. read more »

Empire Going Mad

The current US clue- and helplessness in Afghanistan, with its strategy that no one knows whether it will work and with no Plan B, is definitely crying out for some 'out of the box' thinking. But the ideas which have started to appear on various websites reminds one of the mad Dr. Strangelove, who learned 'how to stop worrying and love the bomb' in Stanley Kubricks's 1964 movie. read more »

2010 Election 16: Will women win both Nimruz seats?

It is interesting to see how candidates narrow down the local parliamentary elections to a competition between a limited number of rivals. The women in many provinces have their own competition, vying mainly for the seats reserved for female candidates. In some areas, however, women candidates have entered the competition for the non-reserved seats as well - most prominently in Nimruz. read more »

General Petraeus about Taleban contacts

Reconciliation - a.k.a. talking to the Taleban - is a hot issue. Anything new is picked up quickly by the media world-wide, in particular when it comes from someone with a political weight like Gen. Petraeus. But please also read the small print. read more »

Warlords' Peace Council

After a series of announcements that the members of the High Peace Council would soon be announced, and a considerable delay reportedly about who should chair the council - a question that is still open - the names of 68 members were finally released today (with apparently two more still to be added). Looking at the list, the council's composition is no surprise, but a disappointment all the same. read more »

2010 Elections 17: A tense electoral run in Takhar

The first, very partial election results in Takhar have appeared on the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) website. This offers the opportunity to go back to notes taken on a field trip over election-day, and present them along with our perceptions of the situation in the province. read more »

2010 Elections 18: A look at the first Khost ballot sheets

Since a few days, the IEC posts - as promised in its pre-election transparency offensive - copies of the 'result and tally sheets' from the polling stations (PSt, vulgo: the boxes) on its website. This will make it difficult to tamper with the content of the boxes, i.e. stuff additional ballots into them post festum, and increase the votes as it happened during the 2009 presidential and provincial council elections. Of course, disqualifications and re-insertion of disqualified votes (if without proper documentation as during the 2009 provincial council elections) still can rend er these sheets useless later in the process. But for the time being, we will give the process the benefit of the doubt. read more »

2010 Elections 19: Two cases of electoral violence

Afghanistan's elections have been surrounded by a swirl of politicking and tricking, of wrangling and pressuring, of outcry and resignation, of threats and promises, and of outbursts of violence. They show how old habits die hard and how new prospects of power inspire violent behaviour - as Jawed Kohestani, the leader of the Freedom and Democracy Movement of Afghanistan, recently experienced firsthand. read more »

2010 Elections 20: What if the Hazaras win in Uruzgan?

Afghanistan's parliamentary election, as is by now well-known, is seriously pulled out of balance by fraud, insecurity and an unusual variation of the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV), an electoral system that is prone to erratic outcomes. This has been played out rather illustratively in Uruzgan, where a small and secure corner of the province may well have dominated the whole vote. read more »

2010 Elections 21: A Tale of Two Parliaments

Afghanistan sometimes really can be paradoxical. Its President, often (and wrongly) described as the 'Mayor of Kabul' has a grip on the administration country-wide, reshuffling ministers, governors and police chiefs at will, but his administration does not administrate - or only when bribes are paid. Parts of the opposition occupy government posts. And its parliament - i.e. its lower house, the Wolesi Jirga - continues to sit although the members of a new one are just being elected. read more »

2010 Elections 22: IEC delays preliminary final result

Not surprisin gly, the Afghan Independent Election Commission has given the ECC a bit more time to work on the almost 4,000 complaints that have come in until now. But there are concerns about the ability of the ECC to work on them, given the very low speed with which it gives out precise information - a contrast to the IEC which keeps up its promise of transparency. read more »

2010 Elections 23: The Wardak election in AP3's shadow

A close look at the electoral result sheets published online by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) allows observers to get an idea of how elections went countrywide. The results for Wardak, where the number of polling centres (PC) this year was higher than during the past elections, reveal some problematic trends, raising the question whether the increase in PC in some areas has represented a positive development at all. read more »

Talk about Talks Again

'Bazaar du-bara garm shud' - the market has become hot again. That's how many Afghans reacted to the breaking news of 'high-level talks' between Taleban leaders and the Kabul government (and possibly some US actors) as well as about the not-so-secret-anymore talks in the Kabul Serena. But look at the small print: read more &raqu o;

No Nobel Price (Yet) for Sima Samar

The Nobel Committee is never shy of picking a fight. The one it picked this year is with China - by awarding its Peace Prize to the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo; it has been warned before by Beijing that this could impact on Norwegian-Chinese relations. AAN wished the Committee would have picked a fight with last year's winner by sending the message that human rights do matter, also in Afghanistan. read more »

2010 Elections 24: An anti-election insurgency in the making in Ghor?

While the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) keeps working on the preliminary results and announcing its decisions regarding suspicious or invalid polling stations, the importance of this phase of the electoral process is highlighted by protests and reports of fraud coming from different provinces. One of them is Ghor, an area that often escapes the attention of Afghanistan watchers. read more »

Facts for reconciliation: Human rights documentation needed

Over the past month a rather heated debate has arisen first over the leaked and then over the formally released UN mapping of human rights violations and war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This debate has also drawn attention to other hidden UN gems, most notably to the unreleased UN mapping report on human rights violations and war crimes in Afghanistan 1978-2001. Reflecting on why facts are considered so dangerous. read more »

2010 Election 25: The ECC, one district a time?

The Electoral Complaints Commission is there after all. Beyond the criticism it has received, beyond the obscurity which surrounded its recent activities, beyond the fears of it being reduced - after last year's confrontation - to a rubber-stamp body not willing to pick up a fight with strongmen if needed. The decision to invalidate all 34 polling centers (PC) of Purchaman district, Farah province, is a remarkably bold one - but it also is exactly that: one decision only. read more »

Who wants peace, needs to get serious about justice

The current ineffectiveness in Afghanistan's justice sector is a legacy of three decades of war and factionalism but not of an historical absence of a formal system of independent adjudication of disputes through courts of law. That it has not been rebuilt, is less due to an inherent inability but to a lack of political will - because justice was seen as 'counterproductive' for 'stability'. read more »

As always, best regards from the Afghanistan Analysts Network.