The fraud-tainted Aug 20 presidential election in Afghanistan has exacerbated the political crisis there while the country continues to bleed from a raging insurgency.

This was chillingly demonstrated on election day when more than 400 Taliban attacks occurred despite the presence of an estimated 100,000 US-Nato troops, approximately equal to the Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s, plus 150,000 Afghan security personnel.

Violence is endemic in Afghanistan. It was prevalent before the emergence of the Taliban, during their draconian rule from 1996-2001 and after their ouster. In fact, durable peace has eluded the country since it was established as a kingdom by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1747 because its ethnic heterogeneity has shaped and influenced its violence-ridden past. It is the quest for national cohesion in a heterogeneous population that continues to define the Afghan problem.

The urge for national unity was absent from Afghan society because the dominant ethnic group, composed of the Pakhtuns, imposed itself on the others. Thus the rule of one ethnic group in a multi-ethnic society unleashed turmoil among a people who had never wanted to be united into a single nation.

The converse is equally true. The Bonn Agreement of December 2001 yielded a dispensation dominated by the Tajik minority, albeit under Hamid Karzai, a Pakhtun who was, nevertheless, rejected by his own ethnic group. It is claimed that in the 2004 election Karzai secured 56 per cent of the vote against a turnout of more than 70 per cent. However, peace did not return and the Al Qaeda-supported Taliban insurgency gathered momentum.

Despite this, Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, who undertook a strategic review of Washington’s Afghanistan policy last winter for President Barack Obama, wrote that the US desperately needed ‘a legitimate and credible outcome from this election’ to arrest the erosion of public support for ‘what is now America’s longest war both at home and abroad’. Riedel’s hope was that the election would yield ‘a partner who has the support of the people and can provide the decent governance that is essential to fighting an insurgency’.

This has not materialised. The Electoral Complaints Commission, which is headed by a Canadian and includes three members appointed by the UN, is swamped by allegations of vote rigging at 2,804 polling stations and 726 of these are serious enough to sway the outcome. It, therefore, requested that the announcement of the results be kept in abeyance till the complaints had been investigated.

Despite this, the Independent Election Commission, whose nine members were appointed by presidential decree, went ahead and declared the preliminary results giving Hamid Karzai 54.6 per cent of the tally while his main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, trails with only 28.7 per cent. The indecent haste in announcing the results was a desperate attempt to forestall the invalidation of a sufficient number of the ballots, which would necessitate a run-off, which is mandatory — under the 2004 constitution — if a candidate fails to win more than 50 per cent of the vote.

The gambit has not paid off. On Sept 12 the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights also revealed that 1,253,806 votes or 23 per cent of the total counted could be fraudulent. If these are set aside, analysts believe that Karzai’s share would drop to 47.8 per cent and a second round would become obligatory. This might not be possible till April 2010 because of the onset of winter.

The political uncertainty is therefore likely to continue and the insurgency is expected to gather momentum. A Sept 10 report by the International Council on Security and Development showed a deepening security crisis with heavy Taliban activity, defined as one or more attacks a week, in at least 80 per cent of the country and, as of August, almost half of Afghanistan was either at high risk or under ‘enemy control’.

Even more startling was the revelation that the insurgency, which had been mainly confined to the south and east of the country, had spread to the north and in particular to previously peaceful provinces such as Balkh and Kunduz.

The Washington Post reported on Sept 21 that the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, has asked for more troops, failing which the war ‘will likely result in failure’. In an assessment sent to Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Aug 30, McChrystal observed that ‘increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani counter-measures in Afghanistan or India’.

The reason for McChrystal’s concern about the excessive Indian presence in Afghanistan is the perception that it has prompted Pakistan to revive its ‘strategic depth’ policy through surreptitious assistance to the Afghan Taliban. US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson referred to this in a recent interview: ‘Where we differ (with Pakistan), of course, is the treatment of groups who are attacking our troops in Afghanistan. And that comes down to Haqqani and Gul Bahadur and Nazir, to a lesser extent Hikmatyar.’

India’s intrusive Afghanistan policy is ill thought through and fraught with negative consequences. It has established its first-ever foreign military base in Farkhor, Tajikistan, in order to facilitate the transportation of men and materials south of the Oxus. The Afghans are fiercely independent and resent any form of external interference. New Delhi seems to have learnt nothing from the experience of imperial Britain, the Soviet Union and now the US-Nato forces.

There is no need for Islamabad to react by resurrecting its failed strategic depth policy. Instead it should prevail upon Washington not only to pressure India to downsize its presence in Afghanistan but also to resume the composite dialogue with Pakistan. The latter cannot be expected to take on the Taliban in the tribal areas if 80 per cent of its army is committed along the eastern border.

The only sensible option available to Pakistan is a hands-off Afghan policy. Whatever the final outcome of the presidential election, only a multi-ethnic dispensation in Afghanistan supported by the people can effectively deal with the Taliban insurgency.

The writer, the author of Afghanistan: The Taliban Years, publishes the Criterion quarterly.

simurshed@yahoo.com