Afghan Elections: Absence of Multi-Ethnic Parties A Telling Sign

Ethnicity is a fundamental fact of Afghan national life whereas the ruling elites are embarrassed to acknowledge it.

Around 45 percent of the Afghan electorate cast its vote for the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of Parliament, on 20-21 October. Originally scheduled to be completed in a day, voting had to be extended to the second because of technical and security issues.

Interior Minister Wais Barmak admitted that 192 security-related incidents had occurred throughout the country on 20 October, leading to the death of 17 civilians and 11 police and army personnel. In one attack in Kabul, 10 civilians and 5 security men were killed. On 21 October, 11 civilians died in a roadside attack in Nangarhar.

Did Voters Defeat Taliban?

The Taliban’s dire threats of violence on election day and terrorist attacks in the run-up to the election led to the death of 10 candidates and in a deadly blow almost all of the Kandahar provincial leadership but these could not prevent the people from casting their vote.

Thus, there is merit in Chief Executive Abdullah’s claim, after the vote, that the people rejected violence, terror and the return to the dark days of the past.

However, his view that the vote demonstrated that the Taliban “were defeated” and their “thoughts and ideas” have been rejected is premature. Only when the full voting patterns and percentages, especially among the Pushtoons, become available, can an approximation be made of the Pushtoons’ thinking. That will reveal the influence of Taliban’s “thoughts and ideas”.

As Afghanistan has a directly elected executive presidency, elections to the Wolesi Jirga do not determine who will rule the country. In this backdrop, do these far from perfect elections, whose results will be known only by 10 November, have any significance apart from the fact that they were held in very challenging circumstances and almost half the electorate voted?

Afghan: A Mix of Ethnic Groups

The Wolesi Jirga consists of 249 members. Ten seats are reserved for the nomadic Kuchi tribes and 1 for religious minorities.

The rest of the members are elected on a provincial basis; the population of the provinces determines their numerical strength in the chamber. Kabul and the four provinces -- Herat, Balkh, Kandahar and Nangarhar -- which account for the principal urban centres, provide one-third of the chamber’s strength.

Kabul is ethnically mixed. Kandahar and Nangarhar are Pushtoon while Herat and Balkh are mainly non-Pushtoon with Tajik, Uzbek and Hazaras in good numbers. Ethnicity is a fundamental fact of Afghan national life though the ruling elites are embarrassed to acknowledge its importance.

The Pushtoons who are the largest ethnic group have been politically dominant since the formation of the Afghan State by Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1757.

The Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks follow them, in that order, numerically. The ethnic composition of the new chamber will indicate if any inter-ethnic power shifts have taken place since the last election in 2010. That may have a bearing on the presidential elections slated for April 2019.

International focus has remained on Taliban terror, the emergence of the Daesh in Afghanistan and on the reconciliation process.

Societal changes and political processes, especially among the youth, have not attracted much attention.

These election results will give an indication of what is happening on the ground.

Need for Multi-Ethnic Political Parties

After the communists took power in 1978, Afghanistan experienced ideologically divergent political elites in the last two decades of the 20th century — communist, mujahideen, and the Taliban. After the Taliban were ousted from Kabul in 2001 the jostling among the jihadis and the West-returned émigré elements has continued without a decisive victory for either.

Now a new generation has taken part in these elections. The sons of some famous jihadi leaders—Sayyaf and Mohaqiq for instance—are seeking to make their mark. Will the people accept them?

More importantly, will these elections, the third for the Wolesi Jirga since the Constitution was adopted in 2003, show that legislative power will go into the hands of men and women rooted in the communities, committed to the traditionally moderate Islamic doctrines of Afghanistan and determined to take the country along democratic paths?

For that purpose, the formation of political parties truly multi-ethnic in character and composition are needed. One of the great failures of the post 2001 Afghan political elite has been their unwillingness to establish them.

President Hamid Karzai had the opportunity to do so but decided to govern like his Popalzai forbears.

President Ashraf Ghani has never had a real political constituency. His flawed 2014 victory was a result of electoral manipulation and an expression of ethnic Pushtoon sentiment.

The registered parties are the products of the Afghan jihad. At their core they champion the cause of single ethnic groups and reflect the theological and ideological thinking of their jihadi founders.

Consequently, the overwhelming majority of Wolesi Jirga members are independents and factions form in the chamber’s functioning.

The time has come for the young generation of political leaders from the principal ethnic groups to come together to form a truly multi-ethnic political party. 

That will represent the Afghanistan of the future. That will be able to show a path away from the sterile and violent ways of the Taliban.

Now that the voting has been done — and in view of the constraints it was a good exercise — the results will have to examined to ascertain if such hope should be held from the incoming chamber.

(The writer is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs. He can be reached at @VivekKatju. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)