BackUS looks toward Hamid Karzai successor in praising Afghan elections
Preliminary results will be announced on 24 April with the final tally scheduled 14 May, according to the IEC
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Washington: US lawmakers of both political parties said they’re eager to look beyond Afghan President Hamid Karzai after more than 7 million Afghans flocked to the polls to elect his successor.
Karzai’s refusal to sign a security agreement with the US has roiled relations between the two countries as most American troops prepare to leave Afghanistan this year.
The election offers the chance for a fresh start with a new president, Representative Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. The Karzai government was a case study in how not to win international support.
Eight candidates competed to succeed Karzai in the first round of voting over the weekend in an election that may mark the nation’s first democratic transfer of power since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
Front-runners for the presidency include former World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, ex-foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul and Abdullah Abdullah, the runner-up in 2009, who also served as the country’s top diplomat.
All three have pledged to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement with the US that the Obama administration has said is needed for any American troops to stay on as advisers after this year.
“My biggest fear is we walk away without a bilateral security agreement," said Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee.
‘Positive signs’
“A lot of positive signs in this election, but we can’t just turn and walk away and let Afghanistan devolve back into what it was before," Rogers said on CNN’s State of the Union programme on Sunday.
Representative Charles Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on Rogers’ committee, praised the relatively high turnout, as millions of voters defied Taliban threats to cast their ballots.
“They stood up and risked their lives to vote," Ruppersberger said on the same programme. More than 300 women filed for political office, he added, a development that never would have happened with the Taliban there.
The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan said ballot counting had begun after voting was extended by an hour.
“Out of 7 million, around 35% of them were Afghan women, a great signal to practice democracy," IEC chairman Ahmad Yusuf Nuristani said on Sunday in Kabul, adding that the turnout was more than twice that of the 2009 elections.
Preliminary results
Preliminary results will be announced on 24 April with the final tally scheduled 14 May, according to the IEC. As many as 12 million Afghans at home and 8 million living in other nations were eligible to vote.
If no candidate wins more than 50% of votes—a scenario the head of US forces in the country views as probable—a runoff between the top two candidates would take place around the end of May.
The Taliban had vowed to use all force to disrupt the process monitored by more than 260,000 people and costing Asia’s poorest economy and its allies $136 million. Over the past month, the Taliban has killed at least 25 people in Kabul, including policemen, election officials and foreigners.
An Afghan policeman shot two female foreign journalists working for the Associated Press on 4 April while they were reporting on a convoy carrying materials to a polling site, Baryalai Rawan, a spokesman for the governor in Khost province, said by phone. German photographer Anja Niedringhaus was killed and Canadian Kathy Gannon was in stable condition at a military hospital in Kabul, according to the Associated Press.
Domestic observers
More than 10,000 domestic observers and 250,000 candidate and party agents were accredited to monitor the polls, and they were to be joined by several hundred international observers, according to data from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
“We commend the Afghan people, security forces, and elections officials on the turnout," President Barack Obama said in a statement issued by the White House over the weekend.
At least 54 Taliban militants were killed in a clash with Afghan national police while attempting to target polling centers in the eastern Ghazni province, according to the interior ministry.
“I am genuinely encouraged," said Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington who recently visited Kabul. The high turnout, modest levels of violence, and good performance of the Afghan army and police are all genuine good-news stories, he said by e-mail on Sunday.
‘Emotionally charged’
Still, O’Hanlon warned that the second round of voting next month will likely become very, very important, emotionally charged and probably close.
Whoever wins, he said, will have to build a sense of inclusiveness at home and passable relations at least with Pakistan.
“The election should refute claims that nothing has been achieved in the war-torn country," Ronald Neumann, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, said. Voter participation doubled from the 2009 presidential race despite greatest-ever Taliban threats and some rainy weather, Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington, said in an e- mailed statement.
‘Huge questions’
Even so, huge questions remain, he said, including whether fraud will cloud the election results and whether a close contest will lead to deep splits not easily healed.
Representative Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement yesterday he looks forward to moving US-Afghan relations past the acrimony of the Karzai era, to one where we can jointly build on the progress and gains made over the past 12 years.
Afghanistan’s economy has expanded eightfold since 2001 to $20.5 billion, while its infant mortality has declined 33 percent and school enrollment has risen to 7.8 million from 1 million in 2002, official data and figures from the World Bank show.
“If the process moves forward without any major glitches, then this will be a good sign for the US transition plan," said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington.
As long as the country doesn’t see major disputes over the election results that devolve into more violence, the next Afghan leader will likely request some form of US support and backing for years to come, Katulis said in an e-mailed message on Sunday.
Richard Haass, a former State Department official who is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed to Afghanistan’s political divisions and support for the Taliban from neighboring Pakistan in summing up the US reaction to the election over the weekend with a posting on Twitter: Afghanistan vote impressive, but massive problems ahead, Haass wrote. Bloomberg
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