Post votem

Why was turnout so low in the Afghan parliamentary elections? This morning we frail and vulnerable ex-pats were allowed out of our compound for the first time in four days, so I was able to explore a little. Over the last few days, BBC World had been feeding us a lot of feelgood pap about how the democracy-besotted Afghans were bravely and happily skipping off to the polls in their millions. I wanted to believe it – it is such a heart-warming tale, and as we were driven to the office I delighted in the myriad images of parliamentary candidates festooned in the trees, on the sides of water tanks and plastered on every wall of Kabul.

At the office, I asked all the Afghans I bumped into, and everyone gathered round the lunch table, to show me their index fingers, and they were all ink-free. None of them had voted – none of the educated, English-speaking staff that the NGO employees.

In the afternoon I had the opportunity to ask my favourite source Arezu, of HAWCA, for her thoughts. For one, she does not think the security situation is to blame. On her way to cast her vote, she met two men, a young man and an older man carrying a child in his arms, and she asked them why they did not wish to vote. The young man said that he did not see the point: many people had turned out to vote in the presidential elections, and yet the government did not seem to be doing enough to help the people of Afghanistan. If the parliament was just going to be more of the same, why bother to vote. The older man was more insightful, in Arezu’s opinion: “when I see the huge posters of the warlords and criminals who are standing for elections, I am disgusted. In Kabul, the very city that still bears the scars of the violence these men instigated, they are standing for election in parliament. To take part in an electoral process that has not excluded such people, would be a shame and an affront to the people of Kabul who have suffered so much. Let those who want such people to remain in power vote for them”.

And what of the majority of candidates for this election, who have no direct links to the bloodshed of recent history? Ah, but while the likes of Qanooni are allowed to stand, what would be the point of voting for any of the others, some people ask. “It would be like voting for an ant, who would find himself in a parliament with the elephants”.

The figures for vote turnout will not be available for some days, but Arezu confidently predicts that turnout will prove to be lowest in Kabul city itself – despite the greater security threats and lower literacy rates elsewhere. This is because, she explains, most of the notorious warlords and criminals who have escaped disqualification have gravitated to Kabul to stand for election – the city which also saw some of the most terrible fighting and atrocities committed (see the excellent report from Human Rights Watch ‘Blood-Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan’s Legacy of Impunity’). This is enough to discredit the nascent parliament in the eyes of some – while others are put off by the distance they would have to travel to vote[1], would rather take advantage of the holiday to spend time with their families, or are not even registered to vote.

But Arezu voted, in Kabul, collecting her registration card from a mosque in the area of her office, and proudly displays her inky forefinger. So did her mother and two sisters, who travelled to Nangahar province to cast their vote – they took a picnic and made a day of it.
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[1] As these are local elections, voters are only allowed to cast their vote in the area where they are registered as residents, creating problems in a country which has seen so much internal displacement, and entails long and arduous journeys across the country