Afghanistan News October 5, 2004

October 5, 2004

Karzai Back for Final Run-In to Afghan Election
Mon Oct 4, 7:30 AM ET By David Fox
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai returns home on Monday with less than a week to go before a historic election with the opposition scrambling to present a unified challenge to the heavily favored incumbent.

Karzai, favorite to win despite being unable to campaign because of security concerns, was in Germany on Sunday to collect an international award that recognizes his contribution toward Afghanistan's progress since U.S.-led forces ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in 2001.

But while his international standing is not in doubt -- he is a key ally of President Bush -- Karzai's domestic popularity will be tested on Saturday when he faces 17 other candidates in the country's first ever presidential election.

With so many candidates standing, the vote could be diluted to some degree along ethnic and regional lines and deny Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, the 51 percent necessary to prevent a second round.

But his rivals still hope to present a more unified challenge and his main opponent, Education Minister Yunus Qanuni, said on Monday that the field could be trimmed down.

Qanuni told a 1,000-strong rally in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that 14 of the candidates had met and decided to unite, but as in the past, he remained vague on the specifics.

"We decided to have one single candidate or reduce the number of candidates," Qanuni said.

There was no immediate word from any other candidate that was happening.

Karzai said in Berlin that he hoped the vote would be decided in the first round itself.

"I hope for good reasons that the elections will not go to a second round, because it will be very expensive for us to have a second round and will be easier to have the results at the first round," he told reporters.

If there was any consolidation among the candidates, Qanuni, an ethnic Tajik, could draw support from other minority candidates such as ethnic Uzbek leaders Abdul Rashid Dostum and Abdul Satar Serat and Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, a Hazara.

Afghanistan's estimated population of 28 million people is more than 40 percent Pashtun, 27 percent Tajik, nine percent Hazara and nine percent Uzbek. The rest are Turkmen, Baluch and Aimak.

TALIBAN THREAT
Karzai has been criticized for being too pro-U.S.

President Bush, who himself faces re-election next month, has cited Afghanistan as a foreign policy success and the upcoming Afghan vote as a major achievement of his administration.

Officials hope that threats by the Taliban and al Qaeda to disrupt the poll will be thwarted by a security effort involving a reformed national army of about 14,000, about 17,000 police, 18,000 U.S.-led coalition troops and the 9,000 strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

But how the actual electoral process serves the more than 10.5 million people who have registered to vote will also be under close scrutiny.

"I have never observed an election like this before because I don't think there has been one like this," Robert Barry, head of the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), told a news briefing in the capital.

"It has all to do with the question of what is fair to expect in a country that is doing its first ever election."

The OSCE, which has sent thousands of observers to dozens of elections, is only taking part in the Afghan polls on a support basis because of security concerns, but mission chief Barry said one of their likely first recommendations would be to have more international observers.

"If you look at the regulations for this election ... it is completely impossible because the regulations are much too demanding for a country at this stage of the training and development of election officials."

The United Nations said on Sunday there were already several instances of intimidation and partiality shown to particular candidates by government officials during the campaign.

"You are asking me if the environment is entirely free and fair? Of course it is not," said Filippo Grandi, deputy special U.N. representative in Afghanistan. "But in balance people can cast their vote in most areas of the country with a relative degree of freedom and fairness."

Karzai has already survived at least two attempts on his life since taking the job of interim president in late 2001.

Afghanistan’s elections — fertile ground for fraud
* Analysts say winner will not be able to claim an undisputed victory
KABUL: Afghanistan’s historic presidential elections on Saturday will fall far short of internationally accepted standards, analysts say.

Violence and intimidation by warlords and supporters of the ousted Taliban regime combine with a lack of education among voters and a shortage of independent monitors to create fertile ground for fraud. That in turn increases the risk that the winner will not be able to claim an undisputed victory, possibly sparking further violence in this turbulent country rive by 25 years of conflict.

Western countries, which led the 2001 invasion that set the country up for the election, have been criticised for inadequate security provisions and for providing pitiful numbers of election monitors.

“NATO should have stepped up to the plate and provided much more security than they have,” said Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent think tank.

More than 18,000 US troops are in Afghanistan, mainly in the south and east, while 9,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops are deployed to help secure the capital Kabul and quieter northern provinces.

But the bulk of the security at the country’s 5,000 polling sites will be provided by poorly trained police, most of whom have links with local militia commanders known to have been bullying voters in the run-up to polls.

“This is the first experience with what is supposed to be a secret ballot and that will not boost confidence in the security arrangements,” said Vikram Parekh, Afghan analyst with the International Crisis Group.

International monitoring of the 5,000 polling stations will be weak, with just 230 officials limited to Kabul and a handful of major cities for security reasons. Domestic monitoring groups have pulled together almost 4,000 independent monitors in the last week and aim to have a presence at over 50 percent of the polling stations.

But the European Union, the biggest funder of the elections, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe are sending only 25-member missions to assist with monitoring.

Neither team will be making a public statement about the freedom and fairness of the vote.

“For an observer mission to say the process is flawed when the West has spent over 100 million dollars on this election would put international monitors in an awkward position,” said Wilder.

US-backed interim President Hamid Karzai, who was installed after the US-led invasion of 2001, is widely expected to win the elections easily against 17 other candidates.

In Washington and other western capitals the fact that more than 10.5 million Afghans have registered to vote has been hailed as evidence of the country’s overwhelming enthusiasm for democracy.

But it is also likely to reflect massive cheating. “Those numbers are now believed by election officials not just to be inaccurate, but vastly inflated,” said John Sifton, Afghan analyst for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The United Nations estimated that Afghanistan only had 9.8 million eligible voters, and voter turnout was thought likely to be around five to seven million people.

Those original estimates may be closer to the truth as thousands of people are thought to have picked up multiple registration cards either in the hope of getting benefits such as food rations or with a view to manipulating the vote.

However many cards they have, voters will have their thumbnails marked with indelible ink to ensure they vote only once but questions remain over those enforcing the rules. afp

'Heavy poll bias' towards Karzai
Monday, 4 October, 2004 By Andrew North BBC correspondent in Kabul
Five days before Afghanistan's presidential election, concerns are growing about media bias in favour of front-runner President Hamid Karzai.

According to figures obtained by the BBC, Mr Karzai has got over 75% of all state TV and radio coverage since the campaign's start in early September.

But there are 17 other candidates contesting the poll, due on 9 October.

Some of them have already complained that the state media in particular is ignoring them.

As Afghanistan's leader, it was inevitable President Karzai would get the most media attention but the figures shown to the BBC appear to support claims that the amount of coverage has given him a disproportionate advantage.

Reprimands
The international monitoring body which provided the figures, but which did not want to be named, has measured the amount of time and space given to all candidates by the Afghan media since the one-month campaign began.

For the first three weeks it found that on state-controlled radio - a key medium here - President Karzai received 85% of all the editorial coverage of candidates.

On state-run television it was almost 75%.

When political advertising slots, which all candidates are guaranteed, are included, things even out a little - although the Afghan leader still receives almost three times as much air time as anyone else.

Afghanistan's election commission has already reprimanded five media outlets for unbalanced coverage earlier in the campaign but it seems to have made little difference.

Concerns about media bias were raised in a report released on Sunday by the United Nations and the main Afghan human rights body.

They also highlighted complaints about President Karzai using official events such as road-opening ceremonies to bolster support for his election bid.

Afghan intimidation
The Boston Globe / October 4, 2004 EDITORIAL
THE PROSPECT of a presidential election in Afghanistan on Oct. 9 has provoked a surge of Taliban attacks, primarily in the provinces near the border with Pakistan. The most ominous threat to security, democracy, and rule of law comes not from Taliban remnants but from the warlords and armed factions that rule most regions of the country as their private fiefdoms.

One nasty irony of the coming election was disclosed this week when the United Nations undersecretary general for peacekeeping said warlords and local leaders "have been requested to both provide security and work with local councils to ensure that those attempting to disrupt the process are deterred."

That official, Jean-Marie Guehenno, was probably right to say that expected incidents of voter intimidation "will not be such that they damage the credibility of the elections." And he was merely being realistic when he added: "A perfect exercise, certainly not. An honest and credible one? Very likely so." Nevertheless, the staging of a presidential election, even if it results in a popular mandate for the moderate Hamid Karzai, the incumbent, must not be mistaken for a sign that conditions have been created to build a pluralist democracy. The opposite is true. The Afghans most able and eager to enact the values of free debate, political organizing, and press criticism to hold the powerful accountable are being intimidated, discouraged, or silenced by warlords and their proxies.

This is the sobering picture drawn by a recent Human Rights Watch report on political repression in Afghanistan aptly titled "The Rule of the Gun." Reflecting what Afghans and human rights workers have been warning about, the report describes patterns of mafia-like power exercised nearly everywhere outside Kabul, the capital. In most other areas, to criticize one of the strongmen who run military factions is to court death threats. Women in particular are threatened or attacked for trying to promote their rights.

So pervasive and overt is the intimidation that on Sept. 22 a tribal official in one province felt free to announce on the radio: "All Terezai tribespeople should vote for Hamid Karzai. . . . if any Terezai people vote for other candidates, the tribe will burn their houses."

There is no basis for President Bush to claim that Afghanistan is approaching true democracy. Before that can happen -- and before April's parliamentary elections -- the United States must cease collaborating with abusive, gangster-like warlords and instead defend human rights and the rule of law.

Afghanistan's Dostum seeks to re-invent, again
By Mike Collett-White / October 4, 2004
SHIBERGHAN, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Ever the master of re-invention, Afghan presidential hopeful Abdul Rashid Dostum will need all his chameleon skills to survive in a country where warlords and factional leaders are being gradually sidelined.

Only die-hard supporters believe Dostum can win the Oct. 9 election. His candidacy prompted the most number of objections to the election commission, with accusations of war crimes levelled at the ethnic Uzbek general from the north.

In Shiberghan, the town regarded as Dostum's fiefdom, the burly, moustachioed commander is portrayed on giant billboards both as a heroic fighter and as a besuited civilian leader befitting his latest incarnation as democratic champion.

"General Dostum's campaign motto is 'Together for a New Afghanistan'," said his spokesman, Faizullah Zaki.

When asked what Dostum would do if he did not beat U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, Zaki replied: "He will win."

The more likely scenario is that he will be forced to jockey for position like other losers among the 18 candidates.

Many of the contenders hope no one will emerge with a clear majority in the poll, forcing a second-round runoff in November between the top two candidates in which alliances could play a large part.

Dostum's fate is one shared by regional strongmen across Afghanistan, whose role in helping the Americans topple the Taliban catapulted them to positions of power in late 2001.

In some cases that power has eroded, as their reluctance to disarm personal militias and engage in regional turf battles saw relations with the United States, and Karzai, turn sour.

Dostum's forces, accused of widespread abuses which he denies, are being disarmed, and he failed to win the job of defence minister in Karzai's interim government.

SWITCHING SIDES
Dostum fought for the Communists during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, then turned against the Moscow-backed regime and joined anti-Soviet "mujahideen" holy warriors who later took Kabul.

He switched sides again to join another Islamist faction and then rejoined a mujahideen government.

Now Afghans wonder if his bid for the presidency is a final throw of the dice or a calculated move to win influence with Karzai.

"Dostum is being very smart on one level," said one Afghan analyst, who declined to be identified.

"If he gets a million votes in the northwest then it gives him some form of electoral legitimacy and it becomes more difficult to dismiss him as a warlord."

Afghan expert and author Ahmed Rashid agrees:

"I think all the contenders against Karzai are trying to get sufficient votes so they can exert leverage on him in the post-election government formation," he told Reuters in Kabul. "That's the key game now. Nobody's going to stand down."

Others argue there is still time for Dostum and Karzai to come to a deal before Oct. 9, whereby the challenger is promised a position in return for pulling out of the election.

Karzai has ruled out forming a coalition government, in which so-called warlords would sit side-by-side with Western-educated, moderate reformers from the president's ethnic Pashtun majority.

But if Dostum and rival candidate Yunus Qanuni, who represents a militarised faction of ethnic Tajiks, were to muster strong support within their communities, then Karzai may have little choice but to bring them into the fold.

That would be particularly true if the incumbent failed to win the vote outright on Saturday.

"I don't see how he can avoid doing a deal with the warlords, simply because some of these warlords, particularly General Dostum, are going to get a very large number of block ethnic votes," said Rashid.

Whether Dostum can win his coveted defence portfolio is doubtful, given that he has clashed with Karzai over disarmament and his vision of a federal system in Afghanistan that would give the regions extensive powers.

Karzai is keen to extend his writ beyond the capital and end quips that he is "Mayor of Kabul", not president of Afghanistan.

Dostum could push for another top government post or wait until parliamentary elections in April, where his Junbish party, and Qanuni's political movement, will be confident of winning a significant number of seats, thereby pressuring Karzai.

Afghanistan's elections seen as a fertile ground for fraud
by Rachel Morarjee
KABUL, Oct 4 (AFP) - Afghanistan's historic presidential elections on Saturday will fall far short of internationally-accepted standards, analysts say.

Violence and intimidation by warlords and supporters of the ousted Taliban regime combine with a lack of education among voters and a shortage of independent monitors to create fertile ground for fraud.

That in turn increases the risk that the winner will not be able to claim an undisputed victory, possibly sparking further violence in this turbulent country riven by 25 years of conflict.

Western countries, which led the 2001 invasion that set the country up for the election, have been criticised for inadequate security provisions and for providing pitiful numbers of election monitors.

"NATO should have stepped up to the plate and provided much more security than they have," said Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent think tank.

More than 18,000 US troops are in Afghanistan, mainly in the south and east, while 9,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops are deployed to help secure the capital Kabul and quieter northern provinces.

But the bulk of the security at the country's 5,000 polling sites will be provided by poorly trained police, most of whom have links with local militia commanders known to have been bullying voters in the run-up to polls.

"This is the first experience with what is supposed to be a secret ballot and that will not boost confidence in the security arrangements," said Vikram Parekh, Afghan analyst with the International Crisis Group.

International monitoring of the 5,000 polling stations will be weak, with just 230 officials limited to Kabul and a handful of major cities for security reasons.

Domestic monitoring groups have pulled together almost 4,000 independent monitors in the last week and aim to have a presence at over 50 percent of the polling stations.

But the European Union, the biggest funder of the elections, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe are sending only 25-member missions to assist with monitoring.

Neither team will be making a public statement about the freedom and fairness of the vote.

"For an observer mission to say the process is flawed when the West has spent over 100 million dollars on this election would put international monitors in an awkward position," said Wilder.

US-backed interim President Hamid Karzai, who was installed after the US-led invasion of 2001, is widely expected to win the elections easily against 17 other candidates.

In Washington and other western capitals the fact that more than 10.5 million Afghans have registered to vote has been hailed as evidence of the country's overwhelming enthusiasm for democracy.

But it is also likely to reflect massive cheating.

"Those numbers are now believed by election officials not just to be inaccurate, but vastly inflated," said John Sifton, Afghan analyst for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The United Nations estimated that Afghanistan only had 9.8 million eligible voters, and voter turnout was thought likely to be around five to seven million people.

Those original estimates may be closer to the truth as thousands of people are thought to have picked up multiple registration cards either in the hope of getting benefits such as food rations or with a view to manipulating the vote.

However many cards they have, voters will have their thumbnails marked with indelible ink to ensure they vote only once but questions remain over those enforcing the rules.

Afghanistan unlikely to live up to its own election laws: OSCE
KABUL, Oct 4 (AFP) - Afghanistan is unlikely to be able to live up to its own election laws in the October 9 presidential vote because administrators are inadequately trained, a European observer support mission said Monday.

Robert Barry, head of the group from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said they would not issue a statement on the fairness of the vote.

"If we did issue such a statement it would have to be based on the whole line of rules and regulations where they literally observe every polling station, enter every complaint in their logbook," Barry told reporters.

"In a situation like this, in the first ever election, that is too fine-toothed a comb to use," he said.

While elections in other post-conflict contries such as Cambodia saw international monitors at most polling stations, Afghanistan will only have around 230 international observers for 5,000 polling sites.

Barry said it was setting the bar too high to ask a country at Afghanistan's level of development to meet international standards for free and fair elections, or even to comply entirely with its own election laws.

"The regulations are much too demanding for a country at this stage of the training and development of election administrators," he said.

The European Union is one of the largest funders of Afghanistan's first presidential election and analysts say it would be in an awkward position if a body with many EU members had to declare the election process flawed.

"There are many ways in which this election will fail to meet many international standards," a Western election expert following the process told AFP.

"The EU has been one of the major funders of this process and to criticise the body it had set up would be very embarrassing."

Afghan refugee vote drive hailed
Monday, 4 October, 2004 BBC News
An extended four-day registration drive in Pakistan is likely to create another 600,000 Afghan refugee voters for Saturday's election, organisers say.

The drive was extended to include Monday because of voter "enthusiasm", the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) said.

About 1,670 registration centres, which will also serve as polling stations, have been set up in western Pakistan.

Around another 600,000 Afghan refugees in Iran are expected to vote.

IOM media officer, Greg Bearup, told BBC News Online he expected 600,000 people would be registered by the end of Monday but that the figure could be higher.

Exact figures on the number of women among them were not known, but Mr Bearup said the number had been rising in "small increments" each day and could reach around 27%.

"Registration will definitely be ending today. We're pretty pleased with what we've got," Mr Bearup said.

Security measures

Refugees living in Iran and Pakistan could make up a significant 10% of the total vote for the presidential election.

However, up to another two million Afghans living in Pakistan will not have a vote.

A late decision on whether to register voters in Pakistan and Iran has meant entire refugee populations in the east and south-east of Pakistan will be excluded.

Iran has a register of Afghan refugees, making the process there much easier.

Around 20,000 local and international staff have been employed in Iran and Pakistan to help organise the vote.

IOM director Peter Erben said registration at the Pakistani centres had been smooth.

"We are extremely pleased that there has been no major security incident so far and we hope that the situation continues," Mr Erben said.

He said the Pakistani government's security measures had "reinforced confidence among the refugees that they can come for registration".

Afghanistan's former Taleban regime has urged Afghans to boycott the poll.

Taleban fighters in Afghanistan have targeted voters registering for the poll.

Tajik held, Turkmen killed by tribal Lashkar in S Waziristan
Dawn
PESHAWAR: A Tajikistan national was captured and one of his alleged accomplices killed in Sarwakai area by the tribal Lashkar. The foreigners are believed to be involved in the killing of four school children in South Waziristan Agency. "Local tribesmen located them in the nearby mountains and sent an armed force to arrest them," said an official, pleading not to be named.

The official said that after an exchange of gunfire between the tribesmen and the group of foreign nationals, numbering four, the 17-year old Khalid from Tajikistan was injured and arrested, another was killed and two of them fled from the area. "Khalid has confessed that he and his colleagues were responsible for the killing of the students," said the official. Four children, including two brothers, were killed when a football-like booby trap bomb exploded in the Bangashwala area of the South Waziristan agency.

The arrested foreign national has been handed over to the security agencies and shifted to undisclosed location for interrogation, the source said, adding that the identity of the killed person has also been established.

"Khalid told investigators that the killed person was Turkmen national, but no details about the nationality of the other two have been retrieved from him so far," the official said. "I was mandated to kill the children, otherwise, my fate would not have been different from these students," the official quoted Khalid as telling the investigators.

The foreign nationals, the source said, are properly trained and were involved in such activities in the past as well. The arrested person, the official claimed, also told investigators that local population was no longer helping the foreign nationals and it has become difficult for them to hide in the tribal belt any more. "We are compelled to carry out such activities ourselves now because the locals are slowly disassociating themselves from us," the source quoted Khalid as saying. "We get orders and obey, otherwise, get killed in case of disobedience," he claimed.

The Turkmen national, the source said, was a trainer and used to train locals as well as foreign nationals residing in the tribal belt in military and sabotage activities. Khalid was taken to a military hospital for treatment and shifted to secret location for interrogation, the source said.

Change of guard
Editorial – The Nation 10/4/04
The appointment of the new CJCSC and VCOAS just ahead of the retirement of General Aziz and General Yousaf has begun the process of a major reshuffle in the army that may take some time to complete. That General Yousaf has been replaced by another VCOAS rather than a COAS signals that General Musharraf is disinclined to step out of uniform until he decides to take the nation by surprise by retiring as Army Chief any time before the promised deadline of December 31. As for Lt General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, currently Corps Commander Karachi, his promotion to the four-star rank and appointment as Vice Chief of the Army Staff is nothing out of the ordinary because he is the senior-most officer of the Pakistan Army after General Musharraf as well as the outgoing Chairman Joint Chiefs and the VCOAS. But if seniority is a major criterion for promotion in the armed forces, then DG ISI Lt General Ehsanul Haq’s appointment as Chairman is slightly unusual. Commissioned in 1969, two years after the incoming VCOAS, he headed the two top intelligence organisations of the country, first the MI and then the ISI. Going by the original concept of the Higher Defence Organisation, under which the Joint Staff Headquarters was established in 1976 and the office of its Chairman was to be held by all the three armed forces on rotational basis, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Shahid Karimullah should have been the new Chairman. But it did not happen perhaps because over a period of time the HDO saw a virtual disbandment than having been turned into a powerful institution. Maybe the reason behind it is that ‘power troika’ in this country consists of the President, the PM and the Army Chief, not the CJCSC. Barring Admiral Sirohey and ACM Farooq Feroze all the Chairmen had invariably been from the army since Zia’s time.

So General Musharraf doesn’t seem to have made any major departure from the past. Both the officers he has selected for the key positions enjoy sound professional reputations. Maybe personal loyalty is an important factor for every army chief to consider but it would be extremely unfair not to acknowledge the professional competence of General Musharraf’s new team. By linking the new appointments with personal loyalty to the President the international media might not only be hurting the new CJCSC and VCOAS but also the army as an institution. But it isn’t difficult to understand why the focus is so intense on the political dimension of the changes being made in the top administration of Pakistan Army. Given its intrusive role in the running of the state affairs, the world at large must be eagerly watching whether General Musharraf keeps his promise to retire as COAS or not. A complete disengagement is the only way to protect the Army’s reputation.

As the ongoing debate on the uniform has not only engaged the domestic audience but also attracted world attention, it is time for General Musharraf to make a long-term arrangement by announcing a full time COAS. It would not only end the prevalent confusion about the uniform but would also spare him enough time to strengthen democratic dispensation as a civilian President.

Musharraf Reshuffles Generals as Lord of the Ring
By M T Butt – SA Tribune
ISLAMABAD, October 2: General Pervez Musharraf has made his move and like the Lord, swinging his lash in the middle of the Ring, he has thrown another five of his junta members out of the circus, promoting two others he thinks are more loyal to him than others.

The latest shuffle involves promotion of ISI Chief Lt. General Ehsan ul Haq to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, replacing the most feared but controversial General Mohammed Aziz Khan, the man Musharraf projected in private sessions with American leaders as the fundo who may take over and reverse their war against the Islamic radicals.

In appointing General Ehsan, Musharraf not only demonstrated a blatant disregard but publicly degraded the Pakistan Navy Chief, Admiral Shahid Karimullah, who as a matter of seniority, should have been named the new Chairman of JCSC, a largely ceremonial post with no real authority or manpower to command.

But the other key appointment was made to replace the largely docile and obedient General Mohammed Yousuf, or Joe, the Vice Chief of Army Staff. His replacement would be the man who would take over the circus, or the country, should anything happen to the Ring Master.

This key appointment went to Corps Commander, Karachi, Lt Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat, an officer of the Armored Corps who ranked number four in Pakistan Army’s seniority list. He has apparently been rewarded for the recent assassination attempt on his life in Karachi in which several others died but he survived.

Of the three officers senior to him and who are now expected to go home, one, Lt. General Hamid Javed, is already on an extension, while the other two, Lt Gen Munir Hafeez (currently heading the National Accountability Bureau) and Lt Gen Javed Hasan of AK regiment are scheduled to retire on October 30.

Thus having superceded them, means they will go home a few days before they were required to go in any case, unless of course they had proven to be more loyal to the King than others. It is now obvious Musharraf preferred others on these not-so-loyal colleagues.

Lt. Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, who will become a General and Chairman of JCSC on October 7, will feel his wings clipped as he was the pivot who ran the political, security and military show for General Musharraf as ISI Chief. He will have hardly anything exciting to do in his new position. He will miss the action more so because he was also head of the Military Intelligence before he was brought in as the trusted guy to replace almost disgraced Lt. General Mahmud, the man, who with Lt. Gen. Aziz, brought Musharraf to power but was sacked under US pressure.

While Musharraf himself is on his third extension as a General since 1998 when he was appointed Army chief by Nawaz Sharif, he has been constantly shuffling the pack of his commanders, as an astute commando who could not trust any one, for any extended time.

Since he took over on October 12, 1999, Musharraf has moved 38 commanders among the nine Army Corps, not allowing any General to settle down.

Six Generals have been brought in and kicked out of the most critical Rawalpindi Corps, or 10 Corps, being the closest to the nerve and power center of Islamabad. On average, in 5 years, six Generals came in and were moved out, thus no one was even allowed to complete a full one year.

Likewise five Generals each changed places in nearby Peshawar and Gujranwala Corps, four each were shuffled in and out of Mangla, Multan, Lahore and Bahawalpur Corps and three each at Karachi and Quetta Corps.

In short all the power players around Musharraf have been kept on the move, not allowed to settle down in one place lest they may start consolidating or plotting against the chief.

The latest reshuffle came within hours of Musharraf returning from his extended foreign trip to US and Europe as almost everyone was waiting, and speculating whether the last batch of the Generals who brought Musharraf to power while he was still in mid air would go out quietly and who may replace these loyalists who were ultimately out-maneuvered by Musharraf.

Even pro-establishment analysts and writers (Ikram Sehgal of the Defence Journal for one) were openly declaring that Musharraf’s main criteria in naming his Vice Chief will not be competence or merit but loyalty. Just a day before the shuffle, Sehgal wrote in The Nation: “One major factor is sacrosanct, the acid test for four-star selection will be personal loyalty to Pervez Musharraf.”

There is an irony in this acid test which all incumbents in the hot seat of power have either ignored or do not care about. Almost by design, all those who were appointed because they appeared to be the most loyal, turned out to be instrumental in throwing out their benefactors.

Examples can begin with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who thought General Zia ul Haq was his “chowkidar” (personal guard) as Zia would himself patrol the residence at nights where ZAB was staying. It was Zia who ousted Bhutto.

Zia named General Aslam Beg but did not directly face the situation, though many fingers still point at Beg as the man responsible for Zia’s C-130 crash.
Ghulam Ishaq Khan named General Abdul Waheed Kakar, superceding many seniors. It was Kakar who forced GIK and Nawaz Sharif to hand over their resignations at the height of the crisis in 1993.

Nawaz Sharif then appointed General Asif Nawaz and he so hated Nawaz that when he died it was universally believed that Nawaz Sharif and his IB Chief Brig Imtiaz had something to do with his death. Even his dead body was exhumed and tested for poisoning.

Sharif again appointed General Jehangir Karamat who called for setting up of the National Security Council and was forced to resign which led Sharif to name General Musharraf who then stabbed the man in the back.

So all these appointees were considered to be the most loyal to the men in power, at that given time, but turned out to be the villains. Now Musharraf has selected his own loyalists after cleansing the Army of all those who brought him to power or shared it with him in some form for the last 5 years.

Yet Musharraf is not naïve and his next move would be to invite all these now retired colleagues for a drink at his home and offer them some lucrative position or a post where they could sit over money making machines.

The examples of Lt. General Mahmud Ahmed and Jehangir Karamat are recent examples, besides a horde of Generals who have now come to be known as the Directors of Pakistan Military Incorporated. We will soon have some more ex-Generals turned corporate CEOs heading newly acquired civilian corporations.

Afghan, U.S. Forces Raid Taliban Hideout In Southeast Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
3 October 2004 -- Afghan security forces backed by U.S. helicopter gunships raided a suspected Taliban hideout near Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan, killing one suspected militant and arresting 15 others, Reuters reported.

Local Afghan border guard commander Abdul Raziq said the overnight raid was conducted near the town of Spin Boldak.

Raziq also said nine people were wounded in the raid.

The operation comes amid increased security measure ahead of this week's presidential election, scheduled for 9 October.

Pressure on Karzai as Afghan Drug Problem Worsens
Mon Oct 4, 9:23 PM ET By Peter Graff
KABUL (Reuters) - Mirwais Yasini, director general of Afghanistan's counter-narcotics department, tells the story of how a British general asked him for a list of Afghan commanders involved in the drug trade.

It would be a lot easier to take a list of commanders and just cross off the names of the few that could be innocent, Yasini replied.

Whatever has gone right in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban three years ago, its war on drugs has so far been a colossal failure.

Western and Afghan officials say the problem is warlords - many of whom owe their power to private armies funded mainly by drug money - who filled the power vacuum after the Taliban were driven from power by U.S.-led forces in late 2001.

But they hope a win in this week's presidential election will finally give President Hamid Karzai the strength to face down the drug warlords, including some who helped install him in power.

"Private armies are funded by drug money. Warlordism is funded by drug money. It is the biggest problem, worse than al Qaeda and the Taliban, for the security of Afghanistan," said Yasini, Karzai's drug policy chief.

"Some of the warlords, some of the government officials and some of the governors, they were involved and they are involved in drugs," he said.

"The wolves cannot guard the hen house. A doctor with dirty gloves cannot do open heart surgery. The removal of them from government power, this is the first step."

Karzai's supporters say he has already begun to show courage in battling regional strongmen, dismissing the governor of Herat in the west and removing his powerful Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim Khan from his electoral ticket as a vice president.

But much more needs to be done.

Afghanistan is the source of the opium poppies used to make three quarters of the world's heroin. And in the years since U.S. warplanes and Afghan guerrillas ousted the strict Islamic rulers in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the problem has worsened.

Western officials involved in counter-narcotics policy in Kabul expect a U.N. report due later this month to show record poppy cultivation of as much as 250,000 acres, up from 200,000 acres last year.

In several parts of the country, poppy is effectively the only crop. Estimates of its share of Afghanistan's economy run as high as a third or a half.

This is especially embarrassing because the Taliban, with their strict moral code and harsh methods of enforcement, had all but eliminated poppies from territory they controlled in the year before they were toppled.

FORCE 333
Western countries, led by Britain, are training paramilitary anti-narcotics forces who they hope will give Karzai's central government the muscle to take on regional militia linked to drug lords.

In addition to dedicated anti-drugs police, there is the shadowy Afghan Special Narcotics Force - known for some reason as Force 333 - tasked with shutting down drugs laboratories and so secret that even the Western donors paying for the force won't say how big it is.

In all, 130 tonnes of opium were seized this year, out of an annual product of 3,600 tonnes.

There is also a new Central Eradication Force, trained by the U.S. military contractor Dyncorp to rip out poppy fields. Since going active in May it has so far made one major raid, in Wardak province near Kabul, destroying about 2,500 acres, despite being rocketed by furious villagers.

Western officials say they have been disappointed by eradication efforts so far, but hope the new force will prove itself before next year's harvest.

New prosecutors and judges are being trained to take on drug kingpins and a new jail is planned to house them.

Religious leaders have been summoned to rule poppy cultivation a sin. Scriptwriters for New Homes, New Lives, a popular short-wave radio soap opera broadcast in Pashto and Dari by the BBC World Service, have been told to develop anti-drug plot lines.

But persuading farmers to switch to other crops will not be easy. In some areas, such as the Badakhshan region of the high Hindu Kush, opium has been grown for generations.

There, in one of the remotest areas on earth, it has proven the ideal crop, concentrating large value in small bulk that is easy to transport and does not spoil in the long journey over mountain tracks to market.

Mountain borders with Tajikistan and Pakistan are nearly impossible to police.

Assuming Karzai wins the country's first presidential election on Saturday, he should have the muscle to crack down on the narcotics trade.

Yasini, the drug policy chief, thinks his boss will prove himself soon.

"Our president has always had the determination," he said. "With this government having the strong backing of the international community, why should we not overcome this?"

Afghan Election Unstoppable, Says U.S. Ambassador
Mon Oct 4, 2:29 PM ET By Raju Gopalakrishnan
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's historic presidential election is now unstoppable, the United States said on Monday, but other officials warned of more attacks by Taliban guerrillas and their al Qaeda allies before Saturday's vote.

In the latest violence, Afghan troops killed at least seven Taliban gunmen on Monday in the southern province of Uruzgan, a provincial spokesman said.

President Hamid Karzai, favorite to win despite being unable to campaign because of security concerns, returned from Germany after collecting an international award that recognized his contribution toward Afghanistan's progress since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But while his international standing is not in doubt -- he is a key ally of President Bush -- Karzai's domestic popularity will be tested on Saturday when he faces 17 other candidates in the country's first presidential election.

The Taliban has called the election a sham orchestrated by Washington and Karzai and has vowed to disrupt it.

"There have been efforts ... to prevent this election from taking place. Those efforts have failed," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters.

"Now there is an effort by the enemies of Afghanistan, those who don't want Afghanistan to succeed, to disrupt the process. Those efforts will also fail."

Bush, who faces re-election next month, has cited Afghanistan as a foreign policy success and the upcoming vote as a major achievement of his administration, ahead of a planned January election in violence-torn Iraq.

The guerrillas distributed leaflets in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan saying anyone who killed a poll worker would earn a divine reward and those who registered to vote would face punishment.

But at least 650,000 Afghans in the camps had registered by Monday, in addition to 10.5 million registered in Afghanistan itself. Another 600,000 refugees in Iran are also eligible to participate.

Officials hope that threats by the Taliban and al Qaeda to disrupt the poll will be thwarted by a security effort involving a national army of over 17,000, about 25,000 police, 18,000 U.S.-led coalition troops and an over 8,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Kabul and major cities have been quiet for some weeks, but there has been considerable violence in the volatile south, the Taliban stronghold.

SUPER BOWL
"I am very satisfied with the security arrangements," Lt. Gen. David Barno, who heads the coalition troops in Afghanistan, said while visiting a marine detachment in the southern province of Khost.

"Saturday is a big day. This is the Super Bowl as far we are concerned," he added. "So far the enemy has been relatively quiet but I think he is saving up a few of his punches to throw probably on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We have to be ready to deal with it."

With so many candidates standing, the vote could be diluted along ethnic and regional lines and deny Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, the 51 percent needed to prevent a second round.

But his rivals still hope to present a more unified challenge and his main opponent, Education Minister Yunus Qanuni, said on Monday the field could be trimmed down.

Qanuni told a 1,000-strong rally in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that 14 of the candidates had met and decided to unite, but as in the past, he remained vague on the specifics.

"We decided to have one single candidate or reduce the number of candidates," Qanuni said, although there was no immediate word from any other candidate that that was happening.

Karzai said in Berlin he hoped the vote would be decided in the first round, and told Germany's n-tv channel that Afghanistan would enter a new era after the vote.

"There will be a greater acceptance of the government and the psychological climate will change ... The fact that more than 10 million Afghans are voting will change a lot," he said.

But he added foreign troops were crucial.

"International troops must stay in the country until we have build up our own security forces, our army, our police and until we have an established infra-structure. This will still take some years."

If there was any consolidation among the candidates, Qanuni, an ethnic Tajik, could draw support from other minority candidates such as ethnic Uzbek leaders Abdul Rashid Dostum and Abdul Satar Serat and Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, a Hazara.

Afghanistan's estimated population of 28 million is more than 40 percent Pashtun, 27 percent Tajik, nine percent Hazara and nine percent Uzbek. The rest are Turkmen, Baluch and Aimak.

(Additional reporting by David Fox and Simon Cameron-Moore in Kabul, Mark Chisholm in Khost, and David Brunnstrom in Islamabad)

Afghan village hopes for victory, excuses absence of most famous son
Tuesday October 5, 1:09 PM AP
Hamid Karzai hasn't set foot in his Afghan village for years, but the residents are still cheering for its most famous son in Saturday's landmark election _ and hoping a big payday will follow.

A lone campaign poster in a shop is the only outward sign linking the country's interim leader to Karz, a parched village of a few hundred mud houses on the edge of the main southern city of Kandahar.

His former home lies amid a maze of ruins in what was the center of the village until it was devastated in the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Karzai's humble roots may have helped him develop a common touch that marks him out from some of his 17 rivals in the race to become Afghanistan's first popularly elected president.

But concern for his safety means he has traveled to the Afghan provinces extremely rarely during the campaign. On one stop, suspected Taliban insurgents fired a rocket at his U.S. military helicopter.

Wali Jan, the silver-bearded shopkeeper, says Karzai hasn't visited his birthplace for five years, though he did come to his father's grave _ on the side of the main road toward the city _ a few months ago.

Elders say they would be very pleased if Karzai would come to the village itself, where the mosque has been re-built and there is a school for boys _ though none for girls.

Ahmad Wali Karzai, a kind of shadow governor in Kandahar and the power behind his brother's campaign in the south, is attentive to their problems, they say, mediating tribal feuds and organizing food aid when drought has hit hardest.

But they are still hopeful that the president, who left Karz in his teens when his lawmaker father moved to Kabul, can deliver the new wells and canals that their withering vineyards desperately need.

Wali Jan said all the men in the village had registered to vote in the election and that 90 percent of the women had also signed up _ all to cast ballots for Karzai, a fellow ethnic Pashtun.

A clutch of elders giving visitors a tour of the village said they knew nothing of Yunus Qanooni, Karzai's main rival from the northern Tajik minority, or even the other Pashtun candidates.

They also had little time for the ousted Taliban, who made Kandahar their capital.

"They did nothing for us, just for their own," said Akhtar Jan.

Wali Jan said the government has promised the village, where many have given up farming to seek jobs in the city, a cash handout of US$120,000 for its "general problems" but couldn't say which ministry made the pledge or when it was due.

"Karzai is working first for the nation, and then he'll look after his own people," he said. "Maybe after the election we'll get the money."

Afghans Studying the Art of Voting
By DAVID ROHDE and CARLOTTA GALL October 4, 2004 The New York Times
HULAM ALI, Afghanistan, Sept. 28 - In front of Ed Morgan's eyes, democracy appeared to take root in Afghanistan.

Mr. Morgan, 64, an American election expert, stood in a classroom in this small town just north of Kabul and watched an Afghan staff member teach 50 men how to vote in the country's first-ever presidential election, to be held on Oct. 9.

The Afghan instructor asked the men, who seemed enthralled by the idea of being able to actually choose their own leader, if it was legal to vote for two candidates.

"No," the men replied.

"Choosing them all?"

"No," they answered resolutely.

But when the trainer asked for questions, the complexity of the ambitious American experiment to spread democracy to Afghanistan and other Muslim countries emerged.

One man asked what would prevent election workers from casting leftover ballots for their candidate of choice. Others said they heard on the radio that whoever won the election, President Bush would enforce American, not Islamic, law. Another said he had heard that the Americans had fixed the election in favor of the incumbent, Hamid Karzai.

The scene, from the rudimentary nature of the democracy class to the shrewdness of the Afghan questions, is typical of the American effort to introduce democracy in Afghanistan, according to Western election experts. After 23 years of conflict, many Afghans appear to be enthusiastically supporting the simple concept of resolving political differences through peaceful democratic elections. Western experts, as well as average Afghans, say the presidential election is a positive first step in a long process.

But illiteracy, ignorance and the remoteness of many communities all mean that many Afghans do not understand the process and will stick to tradition and vote along ethnic and tribal lines. And while the United States has pushed hard to ensure that the elections appear to be a success, Western elections experts say too little has been invested in political parties and nonpartisan government institutions that are the bedrock of stable democratic systems.

"Too much attention has been focused on just the election," said a Kabul-based Western election expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Not enough attention has been given to the much longer-term process of democratic development, the role of political parties, government institutions."

Also, the registration process was so flawed - with potentially large numbers of duplicate or underage registrations, and with some local totals exceeding estimates of the number of eligible voters - that much of it may have to be repeated before parliamentary elections next year. The number of people who registered exceeded estimates in 13 of 34 provinces - in 4 of them by more than 140 percent.

Only about 230 foreigners have come as observers or "special guests," according to United Nations officials. The United States is financing only about a dozen elections experts who have moved to Afghanistan to help develop democracy. Many aid groups and United Nations agencies have actually urged their staff members to leave the country for the election because of the security threat, and they are doing so en masse.

As a result of security problems, international observers will be largely confined to the country's eight largest cities, where ballots will be counted. But over 70 percent of Afghans live in rural areas where much of the expected intimidation, violence and irregularities could occur.

With so few international observers involved, 120,000 Afghans are being trained to run 5,000 polling centers on election day. Of 16,000 domestic observers, 12,000 will be political party agents, raising the potential for intimidation or fraud.

In concept and execution, the Oct. 9 election in this deeply tribal, deeply traditional Islamic society is likely to produce a uniquely Afghan democratic mélange. Tribal elders, warlords and clerics may instruct their followers how to vote. Men are likely to instruct their wives and children. Some candidates are reportedly handing out money and expect votes in return.

But the decisive factor in the success of the election will probably be the secret ballot. Much will depend on just how much ordinary people come to understand - and trust - the privacy of the ballot, this wholly new concept in a country where for generations agreements have been brokered between big men in private, or by public communal gatherings.

After an earlier voter education class, Mr. Morgan was visibly pleased when a group of female Afghan teachers and students refused to tell a reporter which candidate they would support.

"There were some men from the village," he explained later, referring to a group of men inside the school. "I don't know what the repercussions would be."

Two hundred miles north of Kabul, the village of Ghundan illustrates the type of conditions that could make the vote unfair. Situated in Balkh Province, Ghundan is populated by ethnic Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan but a minority in the north, which is dominated by the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara tribes.

Accused of siding with the Taliban, which was a largely Pashtun movement, the Pashtun villages here suffered extortion, robbery and rape at the hands of the various local militia groups during the past three years and are prime targets for intimidation or violence to keep them from voting.

One Monday, old men, laborers with soiled hands, and students sat cross-legged in the village's small mud-plastered mosque, clutching information posters and listening carefully to the visiting election worker. No one seemed to remember the last election held in Afghanistan - a parliamentary vote in 1969 in which only 7 percent of the population took part.

"Suppose you are faced with a commander or very rich person and he wants you to vote for the person he wants," Muhammad Eklil, a civic educator, tells them. "You can tell him 'O.K.,' but when you go to vote, no one can see what you do, and when you come out, he will not know who you voted for. Secret voting and democracy, this is it."

The villagers then watched a fellow villager mime voting behind a screen, folding the ballot and putting it in a cardboard box.

"If it is as he explained, it will be secret," said Muhammad Zaman, 65, a farmer. He said that although the villagers had not experienced any intimidation so far, he did not rule out threatening visits from militiamen on the day of the vote.

Across parts of Afghanistan, male and female teams have arrived in villages with mock ballots and boxes and a poster showing the photographs and symbols of all the 18 presidential candidates. They make the villagers act out the voting procedure, telling them that illiterate people can hold the marker pen in their fist and make any mark in the box of their choice. Relatives can help the blind and old people. Women will vote in women-only enclosures and so should familiarize themselves with the candidates' pictures. There is only one day of voting, and they can vote only once, they say.

In all the wealth of detail, the secret ballot seems to resonate most with the villagers, who have traditionally chosen leaders by public show of hands in tribal councils of elders. Now in the villages and towns, caught up in the often brutal fighting between different militia groups and ruled by military commanders for two decades, they see a chance to choose for themselves.

"In the old tribal system, sometimes people did not agree and created problems," said Ghulam Nabi, an elder of another northern village. "No one will argue with this result."

But the provincial police chief in Balkh, Muhammad Akram Khakrezwal, said the failure of international efforts to disarm militias could lead to intimidation in isolated rural areas.

"Fifty percent of the people are confident they are free," he said, referring to residents of cities and towns. "But in the far districts, the gunmen still have the power to put pressure on the people."

In the end, the success of the election will depend on how much Afghans, ordinary people and powerful people, understand and respect the rules of the process, Western election officials said. Villagers who had come into Balkh for market day did not exude confidence.

"We have our registration cards, but the main problem is we don't know the candidates; we do not know who they are," said Mirza Muhammad, an old farmer sitting at a teahouse where election posters were stuck on the windows.

Without modern communications, villagers like Mr. Muhammad do not recognize the candidates they are supposed to vote for. So for the many voters who are both illiterate and do not recognize the faces of candidates, voting is a real problem. Mr. Muhammad said he knew none of the faces.

"As long as the weapons exist, who will change the government?" asked a village teacher, Muhammad Ayub, who was listening in. "You cannot change the government by vote."

David Rohde reported from Ghulam Ali for this article, and Carlotta Gall from Ghundan and other parts of northern Afghanistan.

Afghan women in the firing line for the suffrage of their sisters
Tuesday October 5, 8:15 AM AP
The 30 Afghan women leaned forward on their plastic chairs as an instructor showed them how to count votes and seal them away to keep the country's first presidential election as fair as possible.

"There might be journalists and foreigners watching, so be professional," Rahima Wasifi told the class during a crash course Monday ahead of Saturday's vote.

The women are key to the success of the election in Kandahar, former capital of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban and a city synonymous with the hard-line Islamic regime's harsh treatment of women.

Since the militia's ouster three years ago, millions of women and girls have returned to the workplace and to schools, especially in the cities. But some Afghan warlords who took power share the Taliban's views on women.

A report released Tuesday by the New York-based Human Rights Watch says progress has been made, but Afghanistan has a long way to go to ensure women's rights.

The group says in a 36-page report that Taliban insurgents and government-allied warlords are both guilty of intimidating women not to take part in the election.

"A pervasive atmosphere of fear persists for women involved in politics and women's rights in Afghanistan, despite significant improvements in women's lives since the fall of the Taliban," the report says. Both "warlords and the Taliban are undermining Afghan women's participation in the political process through ongoing threats and attacks."

So-called night letters distributed in many parts of the south and east have warned women not to vote, and four women were among 12 election workers killed in attacks in the months leading up to the vote.

"The Bush administration is particularly proud of the progress women have made" in Afghanistan, said LaShawn R. Jefferson, executive director of the women's rights division of Human Rights Watch. "But Afghan women themselves say their hopes for even basic rights have gone unfulfilled."

Still, many women are hopeful that the election will add substance to freedoms anchored in a new constitution passed in January _ which enshrines equal rights for women and has been hailed as one of the more enlightened in the region.

Many of the new rights were unthinkable under the previous regime, which banned women from working or school and subjected them to myriad dress code and travel restrictions.

According to the U.N.-sponsored electoral commission, 41 percent of the 10.6 million registered voters are women, more than expected. Still, the number of women who registered in the south was fewer than expected _ apparently hamstrung by conservative customs and a lack of security.

Of the 606,825 Afghans who signed up to vote in Kandahar province, 27 percent are female. Women account for less than 10 percent of those registered in neighboring Uruzgan and Zabul provinces, where election staff only ventured out to sign up voters under U.S. military protection.

Given the violence already directed at women who have dared to participate in the vote in the south, the trainee election workers know they are at risk.

"I'm happy to do something for my country," said Maimana Tarek, a 43-year-old aid worker who was among the oldest in the class. "But some are afraid of what might happen, that there might be rockets and bombs."

Men and women will vote separately, and election officials in Kandahar acknowledge they cannot find enough educated women to staff election sites in remote districts. In some places, Islamic clerics and male elders will oversee voting by women.

Recruitment and training has been delegated to district-level organizers who are not expected to report whether they have been successful, acknowledged Homayoun, the top election official for five southern provinces. "It's all in flux."

The arrangement raises questions about the freedom of women to vote freely, or whether elders will try to organize a block vote to bring favors from the victor _ probably Kandahar-born interim leader Hamid Karzai.

In Kandahar, views are mixed on whether women should be allowed near a polling booth either to work or vote.

Mohammed Hanifia, a 70-year-old security guard, said he saw female suffrage as part of a change for the better. But a farmer with a black turban and long beard was against the whole idea.

"In my village, people think it's very bad for woman get involved," Haji Abdullah Jan said. "If we let them out, they will soon be demanding all kinds of things."
___

Associated Press reporter Paul Haven in Kabul contributed to this report.

Key contender in Afghan presidential race says opposition candidates looking to form unified election bid
Tuesday October 5, 8:14 AM AP
A leading Afghan presidential candidate is launching a last-minute bid to team up with other contenders to topple heavily favored interim President Hamid Karzai, putting a new twist into the lackluster campaign ahead of Saturday's election.

Details on the proposal by former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni weren't clear, and other candidates' representatives maintained they would stay in the race. But a unified bid is likely the only hope for a serious challenge by any of the 17 candidates challenging Karzai _ who has ruled Afghanistan as Washington's hand-picked leader since the Taliban were forced from power in 2001.

Even a vote shared among the contenders could stop Karzai from winning a simple majority he would require Saturday to prevent a run-off election between the top two vote-getters.

Addressing several hundred supporters in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Qanooni said Monday that he was in talks with 14 other candidates _ including Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum and Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqeq. He said he was hopeful they eventually would back him.

"If we are able to introduce one candidate, we could win," Qanooni said at a rally in the city's Hazrat-e-Ali shrine, one of the holiest sites in Afghanistan.

The fervent crowd _ including many young men who appeared to have shown up just to see what the fuss was about _ pressed toward the podium, often interrupting his speech with the Islamic prayer cry of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great."

Qanooni is regarded as Karzai's strongest challenger, backed by Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim and Foreign Minister Abdullah _ all from the former Northern Alliance of ethnic Tajiks that pushed the Taliban from power with U.S. backing.

Representatives of Dostum and Mohaqeq, ethnic leaders believed to enjoy strong regional support, denied talk of a coalition.

"That is not true, we are campaigning independently and we are not in talks to join with anyone," said Mohaqeq spokesman Aziz Royesh, reached at a noisy campaign rally in the capital, Kabul. "General Dostum has not supported any other candidate," said Sayed Noorullah Agha, Dostum's spokesman, also in Kabul.

Qanooni acknowledged the difficulty Monday of building a consensus among the factions and said they might only whittle the number of candidates down to two or three, but he expressed confidence their candidate would prevail even if the vote goes to a second round.

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad denied a widespread perception that he was working behind the scenes, urging candidates to drop out of the race and ease the way for Karzai. He acknowledged he had offered to act as go-between in negotiations between Karzai and Mohaqeq and would do so for other candidates if asked.

"Never have I said to someone that you should withdraw in favor of President Karzai," Khalilzad said.

International observers said they have teams in position to monitor the vote. The head of one of two European-based missions said they will not pass judgment on the war-battered nation's first attempt at democracy and noted it was unrealistic to expect a perfect vote.

"We are not going to say whether it is free and fair, or free, fair and flawed or whatever," said Ambassador Robert Barry, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's election support team. "But we will be making recommendations which we hope will be useful."

In a clear swipe at Karzai, Qanooni told the crowd Monday that no single candidate had the explicit backing of the international community.

"They are supporting the poll of the people, they are not supporting a single candidate," he said, citing conversations he has had with diplomats and international officials.

Qanooni said Karzai himself had asked for his backing or withdrawal from the race, but Qanooni had rejected the suggestion after consulting with elders.

Campaigning in Mazar-e-Sharif has been subdued, as it has been across the country, with only a few rallies. Still, campaign posters from a variety of candidates can be seen across the bustling city.

Attacks also have surged ahead of the elections and remnants of the ousted Taliban have vowed to disrupt the voting.

In the latest violence, Afghan militia forces on Monday killed seven suspected Taliban rebels in a firefight in Uruzgan province, a Taliban stronghold in central Afghanistan, said Fazel Rabi, a close aide to the provincial governor. Afghan forces suffered no casualties, he said.
___
Associated Press reporter Paul Haven in Kabul contributed to this report.

About 650,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan register to vote in presidential election
Monday October 4, 8:23 PM AP
Within just four days, about 650,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan have registered to vote in landmark presidential elections in their homeland on Oct. 9, organizers said Monday.

The International Organization for Migration said that according to its initial estimate, 25 percent of the registered voters were women.

The quick-fire registration campaign ended at 4 p.m. Monday after it was extended for one day to encourage more refugees to sign up for Afghanistan's first direct presidential election after two decades of war.

About 100,000 people were estimated to have registered on Monday, in addition to the 550,000 who signed up on the previous three days, said IOM spokesman Darren Boisvert. He said confirmed figures would be available Tuesday.

Despite some threats against election staff and at least one act of arson at a registration center, organizers reported no major attacks. Inside Afghanistan, pro-Taliban rebels have been trying to sabotage the poll.

The IOM, which is organizing out-of-country voting by refugees in both Pakistan and Iran, had said it hoped 600,000 to 800,000 refugees in Pakistan would sign up.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the refugee registration had been a "major success, despite all the logistical difficulties and short notice given for these elections."

Whereas voter registration inside Afghanistan was conducted over a period of months _ resulting in 10.6 million people signing up _ preparations for the out-of-country voting have been rushed because of lengthy negotiations among the host countries, the United Nations and Afghanistan.

Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai, who came to power after a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban militia in late 2001, is expected to defeat his 17 challengers in the Oct. 9 election, and could win much of the refugee vote, particularly among fellow Pashtun tribesmen staying in Pakistan.

Ethnic divide risks being reinforced in Afghan vote
Tuesday October 5, 8:06 AM By Mike Collett-White
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - "I am going to prove that being Hazara is no longer a crime in this country."

So reads the main quote on the Web site (www.mohaqiq.org) of one of Afghanistan's 18 presidential candidates.

Mohammad Mohaqiq, a member of the minority Hazara community, clearly believes ethnicity is an issue in Afghanistan, a nation that is a patchwork of the largest and most powerful Pashtun tribes and the minority Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen and Baluch.

President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun and frontrunner to win the presidential election on Saturday, is careful to play down ethnic differences, aware they could be used to inflame disenchantment and worse among small yet significant minorities.

Afghan and Western commentators warn that ethnic divisions could become yet sharper during the presidential election and in parliamentary elections in April.

Several criticise Karzai for failing to establish a new political party that bridges ethnic differences.

"Around 95 percent of the election will be decided by ethnicity," said Professor Yamar Sharaf, a lecturer at Balkh University in the ethnically diverse northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

"That is rather than by the intellectual capacity of the candidate, for example. We can only get over ethnic divisions once people are educated."

Afghanistan's estimated population of 28 million people is about 40 percent Pashtun, 27 percent Tajik, nine percent Hazara, nine percent Uzbek, and the rest are Turkmen, Baluch and other minorities.

The 18 candidates include seven Pashtuns, eight Tajiks, two Uzbeks and one Hazara.

Pashtuns have traditionally been Afghanistan's rulers but ethnic Tajiks have held numerous positions of power since Tajik fighters helped U.S. forces oust the Pashtun-dominated Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Experts agree candidates are likely to do well among their ethnic kin, although some voters will back contenders outside their community.

"I don't only respect ethnicity," said Faruzan, a 19-year-old law student at Balkh university.

"For me it is education and knowledge. I will vote for Latif Pedram," she said of her choice for president, who is Tajik. "If Latif Pedram was a Baluch, it would not bother me."

Another important factor in the country's first ever direct presidential vote will be recognition. More than 70 percent of Afghans over the age of 15 are illiterate, meaning a familiar face such as Karzai's will have a huge advantage.

KARZAI CRITICISED
One reason Mohaqiq appears more sensitive about ethnicity than Karzai is that Hazaras have been persecuted throughout Afghanistan's recent past, such as in a massacre by Taliban fighters in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998.

In fact, the prime reason for that slaughter of at least 2,000 people was probably more religious than ethnic -- Hazaras belong to Afghanistan's minority Shi'ite sect and the mostly Pashtun Taliban are usually Sunni Muslims.

Pashtuns, who live mostly in the south, have complained of ethnic violence in the north since the defeat of the Taliban in late 2001 in areas where they are outnumbered by Uzbeks and Tajiks.

To prevent ethnic polarisation, experts say, Karzai will probably have to accommodate some of the very people he would least like to have in government.

His three main opponents are leading figures from their respective ethnic groups: Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Tajik commander Yunus Qanuni and Hazara commander Mohaqiq.

Dubbed "warlords" by critics, all had been in Karzai's government before deciding to contest the election, and a strong showing among their respective communities could see them return to positions of influence.

"There's certainly a danger that if there is block voting along ethnic lines, that these will create more divisions," said Ahmed Rashid, an author and analyst of Afghan affairs.

"He has to bring in the ethnic leaders and he has to avoid ethnicising the country before the April parliamentary elections next year," he said, referring to Karzai.

He said Karzai had failed to use his power to form a nationwide political party to neutralise ethnically based factions.

"It has been, I think, very negative that Karzai himself has not formed a party," Rashid said.

"I think if he had formed a party it would have been a cross-ethnic, cross-cultural party which would have had a lot of support in the whole country, whereas the ethnic warlords are forming parties that are basically mono-ethnic parties, which is a very dangerous situation."