In 2014, Afghanistan is scheduled to
hold its third presidential election since 2004, just 18 months after the next
U.S. presidential inauguration, and at the height of the withdrawal of the international
military presence. Then, just a year later, they are supposed to hold a
legislative election in 2015. There is
little prospect that either election will be adequately funded or competently
administered. But even if, by some miracle, they come off without a hitch, they
will only serve to entrench the corrupt, over-centralized administration in
Kabul, and do little to improve governance in the localities. Holding elections
in Afghanistan in the midst of its long-running political crisis is a lose-lose
situation.
The United States and United Nations
should work with the Afghans instead to push for a grand political bargain that
could actually make a difference in the counterinsurgency against the Taliban:
a new Loya Jirga to amend the constitution, devolve power, adjust the electoral
calendar, change the voting system, and invite the Taliban to form a political
party. Neither Kabul nor the international community stands to gain from
holding another round of elections, but a new political bargain can break the
paralysis in Kabul and break the logjam in talks with the Taliban.
I.
Devolve Power
Afghanistan's slow-burning political
crisis began in 2003, when a Loya Jirga convened in Kabul in December to ratify
a new constitution. The new document was modeled closely on the 1964
constitution, itself following closely in the footsteps of constitutions in
1923 and the 1890s. That a new democratic constitution was modeled on the older
constitutional monarchy is telling: the
new system simply replaced the hereditary Afghan monarch with an elected
President and retained on paper many of the centralized powers that the Afghan
kings had claimed (though not always exercised) since the late 19th
Century. The new constitution was unanimously ratified by acclamation in
January 2004.
The United States and the U.N. are
often blamed for creating or forcing a centralized system onto the Afghans at
the Bonn Conference in 2001. The accusation is wrong - the centralized system
came from the Afghans themselves, stemming from the century-old practice of Afghan
rulers, and readily accepted by the Loya Jirga. But the point remains true that
Afghanistan has one of the most highly centralized systems of government in the
world. Provincial governments are not independent governments, like U.S.
states, but implementing agencies of Kabul. Provincial councils are advisory,
not legislative, bodies. Provincial governors and district chiefs are appointed
by the president, not elected by the people.
Provincial and district police chiefs are also appointed by the
president, not by governors. That makes the President personally responsible for
hiring and firing every governor and police chief in 34 provinces and nearly
400 districts nation-wide.
The centralization is almost completely
unsuitable to Afghanistan's culture, economy, and society. According to Thomas Barfield's magisterial
book, Afghanistan: A Political and
Cultural History (arguably the most intelligent thing written on
Afghanistan in a decade), the Afghan government has always claimed centralized
powers, but has been most successful when it exercises those powers sparingly,
or in cooperation with local elites like tribal elders and landowners. Efforts to use centralized government to
compel social change tended to provoke resistance, as it did under the reign of
the modernizing king Amanullah Khan (1919-1929), who was overthrown by a
coalition of rural tribes and conservative mullahs; the communizing efforts of
the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (1978-1989); and the Islamizing
efforts to the Taliban (1994-2001), the two most recent of which sparked civil
war.
Despite the potential lessons of
that history, the ten-year reign of Hamid Karzai looks more like Amanullah in
his efforts to centralize power and push social reform, than that of Zahir Shah
(1933-73), who took a more relaxed approach to the provinces and whose rule was
marked by relative stability. Devolving
power, for example by making governors elected and giving them the power of
appointments in their province, giving provincial councils legislative power,
and enabling provinces to levy their own taxes would bring the formal
government into closer alignment with the informal practices that worked in the
past.
II.
Adjust the electoral calendar
Afghanistan's political dysfunction
gained a new complication in 2004 when the nascent Afghan government and the U.N.
Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) first decided to separate
presidential and legislative elections. They were supposed to be held
simultaneously under the original Bonn Agreement, but the latter were delayed a
year because of logistical difficulties.
That immediately saddled Afghanistan with the burden of hosting not one,
but two expensive national elections every five years. The 2004 election and
voter registration drive cost in the neighborhood of $200 million; the decision to separate the elections simply doubled the cost of
Afghan democracy and delayed the day Afghanistan could pay for its own
government.
The first round of split elections
in 2004 and 2005 were relatively successful: Afghans turned out to vote in
large numbers and the results were widely accepted. The success masked a deeper
problem, however: the elections were not
held by the Afghan government. The international community, primarily the
United States, paid the entire cost of the elections. And the U.N. administered
the elections through the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), a hybrid U.N.-Afghan
organization in which the international community could ensure the elections
did not fail.
The weaknesses were exposed by the
second round of elections in 2009 and 2010, which the U.N. turned over to the
Afghan government to administer. The
elections were notoriously marred by logistical problems, fraud, and low
turnout. Although the Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) took the
accusations of fraud seriously, launched a credible investigation, and
eventually disqualified over 1 million votes
(facts almost always overlooked by critics of the Afghan government) it is
nonetheless true that that the elections were a disaster for the legitimacy of
the Afghan government and the Karzai administration. The international community's and the Afghan
people's disenchantment with Karzai accelerated dramatically after 2009.
III.
Change the voting system
Afghanistan's political crisis is
not simply a matter of over-centralization, expensive elections, and fraud. It
also stems from the absence of the one institution that is essential for the
basic functioning of any democracy: political parties. As any political
scientist will argue, political parties are essential for aggregating and
articulating voters' grievances and demands, translating them into a political
agenda, mediating political participation, moderating extremism, and linking
citizens to their government. Without
political parties, democracy cannot thrive.
Political parties exist in
Afghanistan, technically. But they play
no role in the political system, thanks to the (frankly) bizarre voting system
that President Karzai settled on in the Electoral Law in May 2004. The system,
called the single non-transferable vote (SNTV), is used almost nowhere else in
the world. Just three other states
(Jordan, Indonesia, and Thailand) use versions of it for part or all of their
legislative elections. The reason is that it is blatantly undemocratic and
hostile to political parties.
In a normal parliamentary system,
seats are allocated to parties in proportion to their share of the vote: if a
party wins 35 percent of the vote, it is awarded 35 percent of seats. In the SNTV system, by contrast, the
individual who wins the most votes in a given constituency is awarded the first
seat; the candidate with the second-highest vote tally is awarded the next
seat, and so on down the line until all seats are awarded. Regardless of how
many votes the candidate wins, he is awarded one seat. In theory, the top
candidate could win 90 percent of the vote and win one seat, while the
fifth-place candidate might win two percent of the vote, and also win one
seat.
The result is obviously
undemocratic, but it also results in a highly fractured legislature composed of
a few extremely popular, well-known (or feared) candidates with an independent
political power base - the first-place finishers in each province - and scores
of unknown, often extremist candidates who have no connections or loyalties to
established political groupings.
Political parties have no entry point into this system, and so play
almost no role in Afghan political life. Without parties, there is nothing to
structure debate or formulate competing agendas, and the result is a fragmented,
disorganized branch. Americans have grown jaded about the U.S. Congress, but it
is a well-oiled machine compared to the Afghan legislature.
IV.
Invite the Taliban to form a political party
Counterinsurgency is competitive
state-building. The counterinsurgent must build a government that is more attractive
to the people than what the insurgents offer. Kabul will not win a
counterinsurgency against the Taliban with a government that is distant,
over-centralized, disconnected from the population, and in which the only
opportunities for participation are periodic elections that are too expensive
to succeed and marred by fraud.
But most importantly, Kabul will not
end the war and stabilize Afghanistan until the insurgents and the constituency
they represent believe they have an opportunity to participate in Afghanistan's
political life. Afghanistan needs a Taliban political party.
The Taliban were the only faction
not represented at the original Bonn Conference. That is their fault: they were still actively
fighting a shooting war against the Northern Alliance up until the day after
the conference closed, and they almost certainly would not have accepted an
invitation to participate if one had been extended. Regardless, the Taliban do
have a constituency, and represent a view of Afghan political life that a small
minority of Deobandi Pashtuns still find compelling. Their exclusion from
Afghan life feeds resentment, and gives the insurgents a potent narrative with
which to sell their rebellion. Karzai knows that, which is why he has
consistently and aggressively sought to reach out to the Taliban ever since his
2004 inauguration.
The Taliban as a whole are not going
to surrender, lay down their arms, and peacefully convert into a political
party. The leaders, if no one else, are
true believers in their brutal theocratic system, in which elections and
compromise have no place. But the average Taliban foot soldier is probably more
flexible in his commitments, so long as he believes he is secure and
respected. Holding talks with the
Taliban and creating a way for them to participate in Afghan political life
will not end the insurgency, but it can weaken the movement, sow disarray in their
ranks, incentivize defections, and bolster Kabul's legitimacy. Reconciliation
with some Taliban could be a potent weapon in the counterinsurgency campaign.
V.
Convene a Loya Jirga
Each of these problems -
centralization, the disjointed electoral calendar, the wonky voting system and
weak political parties, the exclusion of the Taliban - exacerbates the
others. The weakness of parties make it
hard for an authentic local voice to be heard in Kabul, while the
over-centralization gives Kabul little incentive to seek such a voice out. The
electoral calendar has driven the cost of elections up, while fraud and
corruption is making the international community ever more skeptical about providing
the money necessary to keep the democratic charade going. The exclusion of the
Taliban fuels the insurgency, but Kabul's incompetence and political paralysis
cripple its own counterinsurgency efforts, and weakens the will of its
international backers. Under these circumstances, new elections in 2014 and
2015 offer nothing good for Afghanistan or the international community.
Afghanistan has a mechanism for
dealing with the "supreme interests of the country": the Loya Jirga. The Loya Jirga, a grand council
of elders, is the supreme authority in Afghanistan, higher than any branch of
government and the constitution itself. It is perfectly legal and
constitutional: Chapter Six of the Afghan Constitution describes the Jirga and its powers. It is also a relatively democratic gathering,
consisting of the National Assembly and chairmen of provincial and district
councils, almost all of whom are elected (only one-third of the upper house of
the Assembly are appointed by the President). The Afghans held an Emergency
Loya Jirga in 2002 to ratify the Bonn Agreement, and a Constitutional Loya
Jirga in 2003-4 to ratify the new constitution. Karzai has called "mini" loya
jirgas in the years since to ratify specific decisions or agreements, including
the U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership in 2005.
Many of the political changes needed
would not even require constitutional amendments. Chapter Eight of the Afghan
Constitution actually mandates that the government "delegate
certain authorities to local administration units for the purpose of expediting
and promoting economic, social, and cultural affairs, and increasing the
participation of people in the development of the nation." The President's
power to appoint governors and police chiefs is nowhere mentioned in the
constitution. The voting system was
created by statute, not by the Constitution. Changing the Afghan political
system to be more decentralized, more democratic, and more responsive to the
people could probably be accomplished even without the two-thirds vote of a
Jirga required for constitutional amendments.
But the biggest potential
benefit of the Jirga would be the inclusion of Taliban representatives. The Jirga could itself be an important medium
in the ongoing efforts to hold talks with the insurgency. Kabul would have to
be flexible about the Jirga's composition - the Constitution does not exactly
have a clause about representatives from an active rebellion sitting in on a
Jirga. But there are ways to skirt this, for example by allowing Taliban
"observers" to attend without voting rights or, even better, through an understanding
that district council representatives from southern provinces would be speaking
for the Taliban. Regardless of the modality, the presence of Taliban spokesmen
or their proxies would be an important symbolic step in the effort to
incorporate willing Taliban into Afghan political life, catalyze talks with the
insurgents, prompt defections, split the insurgency, and edge closer to peace.
A Loya Jirga in 2014 would be a more
cost-effective use of international money.
More elections at this point will accomplish little to stabilize
Afghanistan or bolster Kabul's legitimacy.
A Jirga, by contrast, has a greater chance of being seen as legitimate
and accomplishing something worthwhile. An election will only pick the next
person to head the corrupt and incompetent administration in Kabul. A Jirga, by
contrast, would be empowered to tackle the full range of problems that plague
Afghanistan's political system.
Elections, held just as the international military presence is winding
down, would be a dangerous nation-wide event for which security would be a
major challenge. A Jirga, by contrast, would be a smaller, easier affair to
secure.
Of course, a Jirga would be unwieldy
and unpredictable. The international community would not be able to control it.
Even with the substantial aid international donors continue to give
Afghanistan, the international community has much less leverage over the course
of events in Afghanistan than it did in 2001-2. But that is probably a good
thing. The heavy international hand guiding events in Afghanistan ten years ago
was perhaps necessary, but it was also abnormal. A new Jirga, this time under
unquestioned Afghan leadership, could be the step needed to restart normal
Afghan political life.
Dr. Paul D. Miller is
an Assistant Professor of International Security Studies at the National
Defense University's College of International Security Affairs. The views
expressed here are his own, and do not reflect those of the U.S. government.
