Lucky Afghanistan

I have been hesitating to write about the April 5 Afghan presidential election, whose outcome is still unclear.  Views of its significance among people I respect are wildly varied.  Sarah Chayes thinks it means nothing.  Andrew Wilder, who observed the election, thought the Afghans had–with strong turnout–sent a clear message of rejection to the Taliban.

I’m less impressed than some with the process, as it appears that there may have been widespread fraud.  The number of complaints, including apparently serious ones, is up from four years ago.  The Afghans are inclined toward stuffing ballot boxes on an industrial scale.  I won’t be surprised to find that the relative peacefulness of election day ends up less emblematic of this election than post-election disqualification of large numbers of votes, as happened last time around.

The interesting thing is that it hardly matters if you are worried about the results.  It is looking as if Abdullah Abdullah, who came in second to Hamid Karzai in the last election, and Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official and Finance Minister well known for his academic work on state-building, will be the clear front runners.  If neither gets more than 50%, which is likely, they will face each other in a second round.  The internationals worry that there could be controversy about the ultimate result, so that the election confers legitimacy.  But any country on earth would be blessed to have either Abdullah or Ashraf as president.  These are two people of notable intelligence and distinction.  That they would emerge in Afghanistan, of all places, after Karzai’s erratic performance, seems almost too good to believe.

But it is symptomatic of something interesting about Afghanistan.  While most of its population is illiterate and its physical infrastructure ravaged by war, it boasts a thin layer of extraordinarily well-educated and capable people.  Ghani I am told spent the last year managing the security transition–from US lead to Afghan lead–throughout the country.  Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister, has led the parliamentary opposition to Karzai.  Both have said they would sign the bilateral security agreement with the United States that will allow thousands, but perhaps not many thousands, of American troops to remain in Afghanistan for training and counterterrorism purposes.

Neither is likely to be any less critical of American mistakes in killing Afghan civilians than Karzai.  Ghani has a particularly acerbic and sharp tongue.  I’ve heard him use it as a private citizen on US contractors and government officials.  I wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end if he becomes president.  Abdullah I don’t know, but he has been sharp and effective in his public critiques of Karzai.

So after all the sound and fury of Karzai’s railing against the Americans for the last year and more, Afghanistan is likely to see its first peaceful alternation of power without any dramatic change in its political direction.  But the much improved Afghan security forces are far more costly than the Afghan government can afford without international help.  Whoever he is, the next president will want to focus major attention on growing the country’s economy while maintaining the relationships that allow major international military and financial assistance to flow.  Continuity, hopefully with improvement, will characterize the transition, not a sharp change in direction.

The big question is whether the aid flow will be sustainable in the US Congress and elsewhere around the world.  Annoyed with Karzai, Congress voted in January to halve US assistance. That and the further reduction of US troops will be major blows to an economy already feeling the impact of drawdown.  Ghani or Abdullah will have major challenges ahead.  Whichever it is, Washington should count itself as lucky.

PS:  There are concerns about Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ghani’s warlord running mate, and Eng Mohammed Khan, Abdullah’s Islamist running mate.  The amazing thing is that Abdullah and Ghani are heading their tickets and both entering the second round.