Afghanistan going into a new year, new hopes
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The year 2019 began on a promising note for Afghanistan as Taliban-US peace talks initiated in 2018 raised expectations for a political settlement of the seemingly intractable Afghan conflict.
Those hopes didn’t materialize even though the two sides came close to an unlikely peace deal before President Donald Trump abruptly canceled talks on Sept. 8, citing a rise in Taliban attacks as the reason. The reasoning was surprising considering the fact that the attacks claimed by the Taliban had continued during the duration of the peace talks and yet the process wasn’t halted.
The talks resumed three months later in December. The negotiators have now taken a pause to consult their respective leadership as the US has been pressing the Taliban to declare a cease-fire or at least reduce the violence and hold direct talks with the Afghan government.
The consultations continued as 2019 came to an end and the process is expected to be completed with the advent of the new year. The year 2020 has thus assumed importance in the context of the likely developments concerning the Afghan peace process.
Just like the start of 2019, when expectations for a Taliban-US deal were on the rise, there are hopes that 2020 could herald the signing of the agreement between the two sides followed by an intra-Afghan dialogue to chart out the roadmap for a stable Afghanistan in which the Taliban and their rival Afghans could peacefully co-exist.
However, things could quickly go wrong in Afghanistan as has happened so often in the past. The presence of warlords and politicians with vested interests, the stockpiles of weapons readily available for use, the war and drug economy and foreign interference will continue to threaten peace and stability in a country suffering from conflict for over four decades.
There are hopes that 2020 could herald the signing of the agreement between the two sides followed by an intra-Afghan dialogue to chart out the roadmap for a stable Afghanistan.
Rahimullah Yusufzai
Though the return of peace is the top priority for Afghan people as opinion surveys in Afghanistan have shown, there are other concerns as well including one more disputed presidential election.
It took Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission nearly three months to announce the preliminary result of the poll held on Sept. 28, but the outcome was rejected by almost all candidates except the frontrunner, President Ashraf Ghani. The losers, notably the runner-up, Dr. Abdullah, termed the election fraudulent and challenged it in the Elections Complaints Commission.
More than 16,000 complaints have already been registered with the commission and it could take longer than anticipated to take decisions before the final result is announced. In case the second round becomes necessary because Ghani won with a narrow majority, it could sharpen the ethnic divide as polling has already been taking place on the basis of ethnicity. Ghani is seen as a candidate of the majority Pashtuns and Abdullah of non-Pashtuns, mostly Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. This would be a repeat of the 2014 presidential election when Abdullah disputed Ghani’s win.
A major crisis with ethnic undertones was then averted when US Secretary of State John Kerry intervened to persuade the two to share power in a national unity government. There is a question mark about whether the US, under a disinterested Trump, will intervene again to ward off yet another political crisis. The US has a decisive influence on Kabul due to its large military and economic assistance and it is unlikely it will watch from the sidelines in case the Afghan political rivals that are part of the existing dispensation fail to resolve their differences.
The turnout was the lowest in the eight elections for president and parliament held in the post-Taliban period as only 1.82 million voters of the registered 9.6 million turned up to vote. Ghani’s 92,3868 votes (50.64 percent of those polled) were embarrassingly low in a country with a population of 37 million. Though Taliban threats to disrupt the election kept many voters away, there were other reasons for the low turnout as well, including the general disenchantment among Afghans for the political elite and yet another contest between Ghani and Abdullah who had been in power for five years and despite promises had been largely unable to promote the peace process, improve the economy and deliver good governance.
The low turnout and insignificant votes polled by Ghani despite having a big advantage over his rivals as the incumbent president raised questions about his representative status. This could also reinforce the inflexible Taliban position of not holding direct talks with the Afghan government, which Taliban leaders consider a powerless ‘puppet’ of the US.
The poor state of the economy, inadequate employment opportunities, high levels of corruption, governance issues and an unsatisfying delivery of justice were a cause for concern among the Afghans in 2019 and will remain so in 2020. However, these and other concerns could become the focus of attention and be addressed once violence is checked through a sustained peace process with the Taliban-- one that leads to national reconciliation.
*Rahimullah Yusufzai is a senior political and security analyst in Pakistan. He was the first to interview Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and twice interviewed Osama Bin Laden in 1998. Twitter: @rahimyusufzai1
