ISLAMABAD, July 21: Afghan elections require international support as the costs for allowing Afghanistan’s political transition to falter would be too high for international community to ignore, said Samina Ahmed, director for International Crisis Group’s South Asia Project. In a press statement on Thursday, she said in September 2005, Afghans would go to the polls to elect the National Assembly and provincial councils in a vote that would be crucial in consolidating Afghanistan’s fragile political transition.

Afghanistan requires a major strengthening of the country’s institutional capacity, and sustained international support. Afghanistan Elections: Endgame or New Beginning?, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, explores the obstacles in the holding of successful elections and suggests the steps that need to be taken to overcome them.

Expressing concern over the electoral system now in place in the country, it said, the system excluded political parties — essential in any functioning democracy — and favoured narrow ethnic interests at the expense of broad-based constituencies. Little groundwork has been done for the new institutions to flourish.

“Until the central government inspires trust locally, there will continue to be a risk of a return to factional violence; until impunity is ended at all levels of administration, there will continue to be a risk of human rights abusers becoming elected officials,” says Samina Ahmed, pointing to the vetting process for the elections in which just 17 people were excluded.

“Stability and justice have been seen as mutually exclusive. Actually these are twin goals which reinforce each other and ensure the security of the population and the legitimacy of the state.”

However, it is not too late to address these and other concerns, strengthening the electoral process for both this and future elections, and improving the chances that Afghanistan’s new institutions will be able to sustain peace, she said.

“These elections stand as both a testing ground and an incentive for a number of programmes to build security in Afghanistan and stabilize the transition,” says Crisis Group Senior Analyst Joanna Nathan.

“The opportunity for a major step forward in September is there, but so too is the risk the elections will fail to provide adequate momentum to build up the Afghan state and re-enforce its legitimacy,” he observed.