So far, so good

The counting of the votes cast in the Afghan election of April 5 is almost 20 per cent complete and there are two clear front runners — the opposition political leader Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai — previously of the World Bank. One candidate needs to garner more than 50 per cent of the vote for there to be an outright winner, and it is increasingly likely that there will be a run-off between the two candidates in May. Electoral monitors are reporting that corruption and vote rigging are much reduced compared to the last election in 2009 and that the Taliban have failed thus far to significantly disrupt the process. Around 60 per cent of those eligible to vote did so, and a third of them were women, all of which are, at least on the surface, positive signs.

It is one thing to win an election, and quite another to win a country. Whoever sits in the presidential palace once the process is complete faces a very uncertain future. Foreign combat troops will have left by the end of the year, leaving the Afghan National Army to fend for itself with precious little by way of armour and air assets and a slow-burn insurgency that could quickly flare to a conflagration in the absence of the firewall provided by foreign forces. The Taliban already run a parallel government in the south and east of the country, and although they have not ‘taken and held’ territory, they do have that potential, at least in areas that are ethnically Pashtun. The economy is in a shambles and the country is heavily aid dependent. Relations with its neighbours — including Pakistan — are occasionally fractious and border ‘incidents’ are common. Despite the withdrawal, institutional ties with the US remain strong, with an announcement in July 2012 that the two countries are formally allies, a status that goes beyond the long-term multilateral efforts to bring stability. Few are going to lament the departure of Mr Karzai, widely regarded as corrupt and ineffectual for many years. Afghanistan is truly at a crossroads and the route it eventually chooses is going to affect us all.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15^th, 2014.

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