[The pre-election period has been plagued by other problems, including insurgent violence and low turnout for ID-card registration, that have left many Afghans worried that credible and safe elections cannot be held this year. Fraud marred the past two elections, and the 2014 contest between Ghani and Abdullah was so discredited that the two finally agreed to share power.]
By Sayed Salahuddin and Pamela
Constable
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Afghan
President Ashraf Ghani speaks in Herat, west of Kabul, in February.
(Hamed
Sarfarazi/AP)
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KABUL
— Afghan President Ashraf
Ghani inaugurated the long-delayed distribution of electronic national ID cards
Thursday, hailing it as an important step toward securing national elections,
but his governing partner warned that the move could instead trigger a political
and ethnic crisis.
While Ghani was rolling out the cards at a
ceremony in his palace, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah declared at a news
conference that the disputed design of the ID card “has not received the needed
legitimacy and support from the Afghan people.” Such a “one-sided decision,” he
said, can only lead to “more problems.”
The main point of contention has been the use
of the word “Afghan” on the cards to refer to all Afghan citizens. The word was
historically synonymous with Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group.
Other groups, especially the second-most-numerous Tajiks, have objected that
using “Afghan” would politically benefit Pashtuns.
The debut of the IDs, which was held up for
several years by ethnic disputes and technical problems, came just six months
ahead of scheduled parliamentary elections. A presidential contest is due to
follow next year. Ghani is expected to run for reelection, and it is unclear
whether Abdullah will back his rival or run against him for a second time.
The pre-election period has been plagued by
other problems, including insurgent violence and low turnout for ID-card
registration, that have left many Afghans worried that credible and safe
elections cannot be held this year. Fraud marred the past two elections, and
the 2014 contest between Ghani and Abdullah was so discredited that the two
finally agreed to share power.
In the past month, two insurgent bombing
episodes rocked the capital and took more than 75 lives. On April 22, a suicide
bomber on foot detonated in a crowd of people waiting to apply for their ID
cards, killing 57 and wounding scores. On Monday, two back-to-back suicide
bombings in a high-security zone killed 25, including nine Afghan journalists
who had rushed to the scene.
With concerns growing over election security
and political stability, experts are debating whether it would be worse to have
another high-risk, fraud-marred election or none at all. The consensus appears
to be that it would be worse to have no elections because that would leave the
power-sharing executive and the legislature in a state of legal limbo and
foster public disenchantment.
Still, the high-level rift over the
electronic ID cards has sabotaged hopes that the creation of a foolproof voting
document would lead to more credible results — and help resolve protracted
fights over the size of each ethnic group, by allowing people to choose among
15 groups to identify them on their cards.
The creation of a fair, inclusive and
biometrically secure card was one of the first tasks set out by the national
unity government, brokered by the United States after the 2014 contest
collapsed. But three years and many delays later, the fight over what
information should be on the card is ongoing.
Now the contradictory positions taken by
Ghani, a Pashtun, and Abdullah, who is half-Pashtun and half-Tajik but is
allied with a Tajik-based party, seem likely to exacerbate the feuding that has
long divided the country into regional fiefdoms led by ethnic strongmen and has
prevented a more modern democratic party system from taking root.
The disagreement is also likely to further
discourage people from registering, even in urban centers that in theory are
safer than rural regions under insurgent control. In the first two weeks that
applications for voter IDs were open last month, a little more than half a million
people signed up, while the potential number of eligible voters is estimated at
more than 12 million.
“This . . . may turn into an ethnic crisis, and it will
be a big opportunity for those who are playing ethnic cards,” said Najib
Mahmoud, a scholar of law and political science. Such a development, he said,
“would be a disaster for the country.”
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