Afghan warlord returns to help president Karzai in polls
Updated
With formal campaigning for Afghanistan's presidential election now over, polls commissioned by the American government predict the Afghan president Hamid Karzai will be re-elected. But Hamid Karzai has been criticised for strengthening ties with warlords, in particular, Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has returned from exile to support president Karzai.
Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speaker: Peter Tomsen, former American ambassador and special envoy on Afghanistan, Washington
- Listen:
- Windows Media
TOMSEN: In Afghanistan, if you're an ethnic leader of some standing or a tribal leader you have a small or a large vote bank and for instance Dr Abdullah, Karzai's main challenger, two days ago was in... a Pashtun area in eastern Afghanistan and up to ten-thousand tribesmen came to see him and the tribal chiefs guaranteed that he would receive their votes. Sayed Mansur is an Ismaili leader north of Kabul, that's a religious sect under the Aga Khan, and their leader Sayed Mansur has told Karzai that all Ismailis will vote for Karzai. And so you just go round Afghanistan to the different ethnic outposts like Abdul Rashid Dostum in the north, Mohammad Mohaqiq is a Hazara in the Hazarajat. And Hamid Karzai is trying to sort of harvest these vote banks for himself.
COCHRANE: What about Hamid Karzai's relationship with the US administration? He doesn't have a very strong party mechanism behind him and a lot of his power in a sense seems to be derived from his ties to the west administration. I mean that relationship seems to have soured in both directions recently. Is that having much of an effect on his chances in the poll?
TOMSEN: I don't think so, that cuts two ways, the Afghans are very wary of outsiders in general, there's a xenophobic streak in them. So this can help him in a way as well as undercut him, and I think so far we've done very well in keeping an aloof posture towards the campaign that's underway there even though some of Karzai's supporters have criticised us for interfering. We've made it very clear that we will work with and support whoever wins the election.
COCHRANE: What about the other contenders? Many people are saying it's essentially a two-horse race with Abdullah Abdullah as the close rival. What's his profile and what are his chances?
TOMSEN: Well I think that's a good assessment and I think his chances are not dim, put it that way. Hamid Karzai got 54 per cent of the vote in the last election, 2004, and now with so much competition and he's not highly thought of in many parts of the country given what's happened in the last several years. There is a very good chance if there's not massive vote fraud that he will dip below 50 per cent, which will force a run-off. And Dr Abdullah is very much the leading contender. His father is a Pashtun but in many areas in the east and south, the Pashtun majority areas, there's a lot of feeling that he's more a Kabuli and he's more attached to the north where he worked with Ahmed Shah Masood during the war than he is connected to the Pashtun area. So he might lose in the Pashtun areas. Nonetheless he's run a very smart campaign. He's got a major Pashtun figure as one of his two vice presidential candidates. So I think that he will score well, I think he'll do well in the voting.
COCHRANE: Peter Tomsen in just the few remaining seconds we've got left I wanted to ask you about the effect of the Taliban. They've made threats to disrupt polls. What sort of effect do you think they'll have on the vote?
TOMSEN: It's hard to say, they're going to have to close the polls in about ten districts in the south, but the Taliban are in a position to disrupt perhaps the voting arrangements in some 50 or 60 districts. So I think they're going to cause damage but I think they'll still be a fairly large turnout, which will be respectable and show that the election has succeeded.
