Afghanistan Election Watch pt. 1: Location, Location, Location

Shortly after my return from a deployment with the U.S. Army to Uganda, which I blogged about a few times on this site, I was offered the chance to come to Afghanistan as a Long-term Election Observer with Democracy International. Having been deployed here from 2006-7, and with this being such a critical election – and a critical period, generally, for Afghanistan – I enthusiastically accepted the opportunity.

I realized that I might be sent almost anywhere, since Democracy International is endevouring to send observers to a representative sample of locations throughout the country. Part of me wanted to return to Ghazni Province, where I was stationed, to see how things have changed. But Ghazni is apparently such a high-risk area now that it is off limits to our delegation. Which is too bad, because 107 of Ghazni’s 379 polling centers have been closed by Afghanistan’s Independent Electoral Commission due to security concerns – to the protest of many of the province’s residents (see story here) who believe that they are being disenfranchised. Ghazni would have been an interesting place to observe how the ongoing war is affecting the election.

But I am happy to be reporting now from a much smaller, much safer province than Ghazni – which I will not name here, in order to keep my partner and I (and the people we interact with) safe. Like much of the country, it has some astonishing mountain views and a rich local history and culture.

Three of the reasons I am happy to be an LTO here so far (besides the idyllic views) are the following:

1) Greater freedom to move and interact with people. One of the first things to go out the window when you are working in a war zone appears to be freedom of movement. I recall that as a soldier on a PRT, I could only go “outside the wire” in a highly visible, pre-planned military convoy. I was hoping/expecting that being a civilian would mean greater freedom of movement, but clearly this isn’t always true (especially now). The observer teams that are operating in higher-risk parts of the country are taking necessary precautions that, unfortunately, limit their time on the ground.

By contrast, my team and I spent a few hours yesterday celebrating the Eid holiday in a village nestled in the mountains. It just sort of happened: one minute we were scouting out the local polling station and asking residents what they thought about this year’s candidates for MP, the next we were being ushered into someone’s home for some chai and traditional food.

I felt especially privileged to have the option of eating with the women, away from the main feast. In a side room we sat on the floor and, over tea and snacks, three generations of women told me how excited they were to vote for the popular female candidate and why they thought she would do a good job. Then the grandmother insisted that I was not eating enough; grandmothers are truly the same everywhere.

2) Exposure to important (non-security) issues. Many polling centers have been closed by the IEC in this province, too – but if security is not an issue here, what can account for these closures? The local election authorities have told us that centers that experienced low voter turnout last year were the ones selected for closure. But one local candidate calls this excuse dubious, and even drew a map of significant population centers where polling stations have been closed. Another candidate maintains that only the voting stations for females (they are segregated here) have been closed at these locations due to the high levels of fraud they experienced in last year’s election.

The polling center issue has been an interesting one to investigate because it highlights many of the concerns that may affect this election. Closing polling centers risks disenfranchising voters, especially in more remote areas. But keeping polling centers open that cannot be adequately secured,staffed, or monitored presents more opportunities for fraud. In making decisions about which polling centers to close or move, has the Independent Electoral Commission acted in an informed way that takes into account local circumstances?

And what about the fact that much of the cheating that took place in the 2005 and 2009 elections occured in women’s polling stations? Some of our interviewees have told us that, previously, the cultural requirement that women stay segregated from men during the voting process meant that women’s voting stations were often in private houses. Families and communities stuffed ballot boxes while poll workers went to lunch. So now women’s polling stations must be in public places, which perhaps accounts for some of the polling station closures here. But one candidate here is still so concerned about the lack of supervision at female polling centers that she has recruited an all-female election observation team.

The challenges of fraud mitigation, voter access, and safeguarding women’s enfranchisement – though often overshadowed and/or complicated by security concerns elsewhere – are undoubtedly relevant in much of the rest of Afghanistan. But here at least we have the chance to explore these issues in some depth on the ground.

3) The chance of going to bed on election night. Afghanistan has selected an electoral system does not favor the formation of political parties; voters instead make their choice from a list of mainly independent candidates. In some of the country’s larger constituencies, the ballot might look like a hard copy of Facebook, with candidate names, symbols, and pictures taking up several pages. When voting ends on 1600 on the 18th, poll workers must start going through each and every page of these ballots to ensure that they are not double-marked or otherwise spoiled. Sure, each station can only have 600 ballots, but if each ballot is 10 pages, that’s still 6000 pages of ballots to check carefully.

Observing the vote count in this relatively small province should be considerably less of an arduous task. After a long day of election observation, I am sure that we will appreciate having fewer candidates on the ballot. In fact, I am appreciating it already: after only a week here, my partner and I had already managed to speak with most of the candidates. This province may not be a microcosm of Afghanistan, but doing as thorough a job as we can of observing the election process unfold here will surely provide some useful insights.