| | 'We will not risk our lives to vote again': Karzai's tribal allies AFP
10/14/2009
By Nasrat Shoaib
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KANDAHAR - Angered and disillusioned by Afghanistan' s election chaos, many tribal leaders who supported President Hamid Karzai say they would not risk their lives again by taking part in a new vote.
Fraud, the time taken to declare a winner and the government's inability to provide security have demoralised Pashtun tribal leaders in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand who form the backbone of Karzai's support.
Afghans voted nearly two months ago but no result has yet been declared.
"If there is a second round we will not participate," Sadruddin Khan, a tribal elder in Kandahar told AFP.
"It is not worth it to us to once again face the possibility of having our fingers and heads chopped off, and our police and soldiers die. Neither Karzai nor Abdullah are worth the lives of our children."
Taliban violence -- including grenade attacks on polling stations and amputations of fingers dyed as proof of voting -- kept turnout to below 40 percent nationally and as low as five percent in Helmand and Kandahar.
Karzai, who says estimates that 30 percent of votes were fraudulent were "totally fabricated", leads preliminary results with around 55 percent of the vote. He needs 50 percent plus one vote for victory.
His main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has around 28 percent.
Patience with the drawn-out process is wearing thin as Afghan election authorities investigate fraud complaints and crunch numbers following an audit of 345 suspicious ballot boxes.
Preparations have been made for a run-off between the two, which experts say must be held quickly as winter snows will soon make many regions inaccessible.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) is expected to announce within days whether a run-off is necessary, or if Karzai has won a second, five-year term.
A run-off will be called if Karzai's valid votes fall below 50 percent as a result of the investigations, although questions remain about how effective a new poll would be.
Khonchazai, an elder in Helmand, said: "Afghan people will not take the same risks again, especially in light of the fraud which proves that their genuine votes were not respected or given any value."
Another Helmand elder, Assadullah, said that in Nad Ali district, 1,800 people voted but the official figures showed many thousands more had turned out.
"This is a clear proof of fraud," he said.
"A second round will serve neither the country nor the people, will not make the people any more confident in the election process and will further weaken the Afghan government."
Abdul Satar, 55, an elder in Zabul province, said: "If I have to vote a second time, what does that say about the value of my vote the first time?"
Some elders blamed the international community for not ensuring a clean election, referring to a controversy that has embroiled the United Nations, which supported and bankrolled the poll, and led to the sacking last month of its deputy special representative Peter Galbraith.
Galbraith -- whose dismissal followed a row with his boss, Kai Eide, over how to deal with the fraud -- told CNN on Tuesday he believed the fraud investigations would see Karzai slip below 50 percent.
"Then the question is whether Karzai will accept that decision and whether the (IEC), which is a not independent but a pro-Karzai body, will accept that decision.
"If they don't, then the political crisis in Afghanistan, which has already done such damage to the overall effort there, will get much worse," he said.
Galbraith said the resignation on Monday of one of two Afghan members of the five-man Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) was a hint that Karzai could fall below 50 percent.
Afghan Supreme Court judge Maulavi Mustafa Barikzai -- said to be close to Karzai -- resigned because of "foreign interference" on the ECC.
With widespread question marks over the next administration' s legitimacy, Hafizullah Khan, 60, an elder from Kandahar, said "any curiosity we had before about who our new president will be is now dead in our hearts.
"No matter who they announce now it makes no difference to us. All we have learned from this election is that there will always be fraud in elections, and whoever is in power will commit fraud."
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