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KABUL — A year before Afghanistan's scheduled elections, leading watchdogs are already expressing worry about how growing insecurity, government interference and popular disaffection may distort the results.
The country's election commission even raised the possibility this month of delaying the vote if security conditions remain grim.
But some election monitoring experts say it's precisely the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan that makes voting crucial, despite the risks. They're soldiering ahead with their election plans, even as they acknowledge that fair voting may be impossible under the circumstances.
"What can we do? The election must happen," said Jandad Spinghar, director of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA).
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Following a timetable set by Afghanistan's constitution, authorities have promised presidential and provincial council elections in August, 2009, and parliamentary elections in 2010.
Mr. Spinghar's organization plans to field 10,000 observers to monitor the process, starting with voter registration in October. Funded by foreign donors, including Canada, FEFA helped legitimize the previous elections in 2005 by sending observers to every province.
The agency's role in the next election may be threatened, however, because of what Mr. Spinghar and other experts describe as the government's attempts to control the vote.
President Hamid Karzai established the Independent Directorate of Local Governance last year with the stated purpose of professionalizing the appointment of local authorities. But the IDLG has instead filled the positions with people loyal to Mr. Karzai and his coming election campaign, Mr. Spinghar said.
Even more worrisome, he added, is the lack of neutrality displayed in recent statements from Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, whose director went on television this month and questioned whether people who have lived overseas should serve as president. The remarks were interpreted as criticism of Ali Jalali, a U.S. citizen and former interior minister who is viewed as a Karzai rival.
Many candidates have declared they're running for the presidency, but only Mr. Karzai, Mr. Jalali and possibly Zalmay Khalilzad - the U.S. representative to the United Nations - are viewed as serious contenders, though more may emerge.
Some government authorities used their positions to support candidates in the previous election and the issue will likely grow more important in the coming vote, said Grant Kippen, a Canadian who chaired the Electoral Complaints Commission during the last election.
"We saw certain governors, or district governors, or police chiefs or whatever who had a favourite candidate, using whatever resources they could to assist that particular candidate," he said.
A presidential decree was issued to prevent such interference, but it was largely ignored. "I don't think it was circulated outside of Kabul," he said.
Mr. Kippen recently finished a three-week visit to the country to assess election prospects on behalf of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent think tank based in Kabul. He conducted 75 interviews on the subject, the majority with Afghans.
"The main concern was the deteriorating security," Mr. Kippen said. "What struck me in my conversations with people is the amount of despair."
Still, like other experts, Mr. Kippen said he believes the election must go ahead.
That view also remains the UN's official position. UN spokesman Dan Norton said journalists recently started asking him about elections, and one of the first questions is often more like a statement: "It can't happen."
Mr. Norton shook his head, smiling. "The elections will be very different from 2005 but they will happen," he said.
But there isn't consensus within the United Nations about how, or when, the voting might occur. A senior UN official suggested the elections could be delayed a year, without breaking any of Afghanistan's laws or constitution.
In a similar move, the United Nations Population Fund has cancelled its plans to start a census of all households in Afghanistan next month. Ramesh Penumaka, UNFPA's country representative, said the information is badly needed - the most recent census was in 1979 - but it will be delayed at least two years, in part to avoid overlap with the voter registration drive but also because of worsening security. "It would have resulted in lopsided data, with the south and east under-represented because of the security problems," he said.
Another UN official suggested that the provincial council elections should be delayed for similar reasons, to avoid lopsided results caused by lack of access to voters in rural districts. In Kandahar province, for instance, voter turnout will likely be higher in the provincial capital and much lower in districts where government officials cannot visit without many armed guards, an imbalance that the UN official suggested could further alienate rural Afghans.
But a recent UN survey of government officials shows that public servants say they're able to visit 79 per cent of Afghanistan's population without armed escort, which gives hope to some officials that a presidential election may reflect that opinion of most Afghan voters.
"It's very important to go ahead with the election, because without it the Afghan people will lose trust in democracy," Mr. Spinghar said.
Given the popular disaffection with the Karzai government, he said, there is a good chance Afghans may change their leadership by ballot for the first time in the country's history.
"The Afghan government wants to delay this vote to stay in power," he said. "But the international community should push for a vote, because change is very important now."
