Defence`s Feeds

Organising elections in Nuristan, one of the most remote, under-served and unknown provinces, presents a severe challenge. Most villages are far from their nearest district centre and all of the districts are under some degree of Taleban control or influence. In two districts – Mandol and Du-Ab – people were fully deprived of their right to vote. Elections were held in the six others, but even then only in parts of the districts. Contradictions on the number of polling centres reported as having been opened on election day have also raised suspicions that some vote rigging may have taken place. AAN’s Obaid Ali, Jelena Bjelica and Thomas Ruttig scrutinise the context in Nuristan which makes holding free, fair and inclusive elections so very difficult and report on what was a troubling election day where few Nuristanis were able to exercise their franchise.

 Holding elections in Nuristan in 2018 was difficult. Mountainous terrain plus insurgency made logistics, eg getting voting material in and out, tricky. It was then difficult or impossible for many people to get to polling centres, if they had managed to register and if the centres opened. Monitoring the poll was even more difficult. It seems that, in many places, the IEC ‘subcontracted’ security and administration of the elections to local elders. Meanwhile, discrepancies in some of the basic reporting about election day, for example how many polling centres actually opened, flag up concerns about vote-rigging. Before delving into how the 2018 parliamentary elections went in Nuristan, we wanted to give some background and context about a province which is under-reported and seldom visited by outsiders.

The ethno-linguistic and administrative framework

Nuristan is one of the remotest provinces in Afghanistan. Its people, numbering an estimated 158,000 for 2018/19 by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) were, until their forceful conversion to Islam in the mid-1890s, non-Muslim. At that point, the province was renamed from Kafiristan (land of the infidels) to Nuristan (land of light) and the people re-named Nuristanis (read a good overview of this period here). However, locals have preserved elements of their pre-Islamic culture.

Livelihoods are based on subsistence farming, animal husbandryand forestry and people typically live in wooden houses on Nuristan’s mountainous slopes in order not to use up scarce agricultural land. Individual settlements are often isolated both from each other and from those in other valleys, as well as from the often token government presence in the district centres. Mohebullah Hamdard, a local journalist, told AAN it still takes days to travel from one valley to another. Various local sources told AAN that most Nuristanis have no interaction even with their district centres. Most decisions are taken by community elders and police are only present in the district centres. (This pattern was the same during Taleban rule when the ‘Islamic Emirate’ also had only a token presence in the province.)

This mountainous province, which borders Laghman and Kunar to the south and the southeast, Panjshir to the west and Badakhshan to the north, consists of three thinly-populated valleys largely isolated from one another. (See a population distribution map here, p 48).

In western Nuristan, in the upper reaches of the Alingar River valley (a tributary of the Kabul River), there are three districts, Mandol, Du-Ab, and Nurgram (also known as Nangarage).

In Central Nuristan, in the Pech River valley (a tributary of the Kunar River) there are two districts: Parun (also known as Prasun), with the eponymous provincial centre, bordering Badahshan to the north, and Wama, bordering Kunar to the east.

Eastern Nuristan, which lies along the Durand line and has Pakistan’s Chitral district to the east, has the Landay Sin River valley (also known Bashgal River), another tributary of the Kunar River and of the Kunar River itself. There are three districts here: Waigal, Kamdesh, and Barg-e Matal (Bargromatal).

Both eastern and central Nuristan share a border with Badakhshan to the north and Kunar to the south. The province’s eastern and central valleys are accessible through Kunar and the western valley through Laghman. The provincial capital, Parun, is hardly accessible from anywhere in the winter months due to heavy snowfall and poor roads. (1)

Districts of Nuristan, by Rarelibra, MTWT2012, CC BY-SA 3.0, Commons. Wikimedia.

Nuristanis are widely considered to be a single ethnic group and are mentioned as such in the Afghan national anthem. However, they, in fact, are comprised of various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups, many of them speaking distinct, Indo-European languages, sometimes summarily called Dardic (see a detailed description here). Even specialists disagree on how many there are, counting up to fifteen ethnicities and between five to ten languages. The main ethnic groups are the Kata (speaking Kati) in the mountainous north of both eastern and western Nuristan; the Vasi (also known as Paruni) and the Kalasha in central Nuristan; the Ashkun in the southern, lower part of western Nuristan; and the Kom (speaking Kamviri) in the southern, lower part of eastern Nuristan. There are also non-Nuristani minority populations, Pashai (around 15 per cent of the population), Pashtuns of the Safi tribe and Gujar (see here).

Languages of Nuristan, from https://nuristan.info

Salafis and insurgents

The mass, forced conversion of Nuristanis in the nineteenth century went along with an influx of particularly conservative religious groups, with ‘Wahhabi’ groups reported at that time and later, Salafis (Ahl-e Hadith) proselytising in the 1960s. This led to the emergence of indigenous Salafi groups in parts of the province and they participated in the province’s uprising against the pro-Soviet PDPA regime after it tried to assert its authority there in 1978. In 1982, a Salafist statelet, mainly covering Barg-e Matal and parts of Kamdesh in upper eastern Nuristan, emerged, called Daulat-e Inqilabi-ye Islami-ye Nuristan (the Islamic Revolutionary State of Nuristan) and led by a religious scholar, Mawlawi Muhammad Afzal. (2) His state had rudimentary government structures and received money from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan. In the late 1980s, reported Daan Van Der Schriek, “Saudi Arabia recognised [Afzal’s] government, helping it to establish independent consulates in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.” The statelet,, he said “subsisted by raising revenue from mujahedin supply convoys,” whose entry was regulated through an office in neighbouring Chitral.

According to various sources, Afzal’s group was closely linked to the extremist group Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT). According to one source (see here), LeT might have even been formed as an Afghan anti-government group in neighbouring Kunar in 1990 (another Salafi statelet had emerged there in the late 1980s). Only after the fall of the Afghan communist regime in 1992 did the LeT turn its attention to Kashmir and became known as a Pakistani group. (The Kunar Salafis had a leadership distinct from Afzal’s and there are no reports about any possible collaboration.) (3)

When Afzal supported the expanding Taleban movement in the 1990s, it gave him a free hand to rule the province (see here). This incurred the hostility of Hezb-e Islami and Jamiat-e Islami and Jamiat attacked Afzal’s forces in 1997. He was wounded and fled and the daulat folded (see this AAN analysis and more background here).

Although Nuristan is extremely remote with roads mainly serviceable only by pack animals, it did became a key supply route from Pakistan both for the mujahedin who fought the Soviets in the 1980s, and remains so for the various insurgent groups currently active in the area. Onwards through Laghman and Kapisa, Nuristan also provides access to and from the central region around Kabul and to the Panjshir valley.

Hezb-e Islami had a strong presence in the lower areas of the province during the anti-Soviet war, and its insurgent ‘wing’ after 2001. This year, Zia al-Rahman Kashmir Khan, son of the most influential insurgent Hezb commander in Kunar and Nuristan, the late Kashmir Khan, was running in the election in Kunar province (see here). Hezb concluded a peace deal with the Afghan government in 2016, see AAN’s analysis here.

After 2001, insurgency

Given its strategic position as an infiltration route from Pakistan, Nuristan quickly came into the sights of the United States military in the years after it ousted the Taleban from power. In late 2003, 1,000 US troops were sent there in a limited operation, apparently trying to find Hezb leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was believed to be shuttling between Chitral and eastern Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden.

Between 2003 and 2006, coalition forces based at the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) bases in neighbouring Nangrahar, Kunar and Laghman were active in the province. They pushed forward road building and improvements, mainly to create access for a US PRT planned for Nuristan. According to a 2006 provincial survey by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), roads in Nuristan had already been improved by the mujahedin, although they were still not good enough for motorised vehicles. By 2005, the PRTs completed some 40 kilometres of road and some 30 kilometres more were under construction, all financed by USAID. They included those in Parun, Wama, Waigal and Du Ab districts. The construction of these roads remains incomplete.

The next attempt to stem the rising insurgency in the province came in February 2006, when the US’s 10th Mountain Division pushed into Nuristan. Over three months, units spread out through the narrow valleys and high altitudes of Kunar and Nuristan in ‘Operation Mountain Lion’. In August 2006, US forces established the first Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Kamdesh district and several other outposts, although they did not last very long. The New York Times reported that, in 2007 and 2008, two posts and a smaller satellite base were closed in the Waigal Valley and in 2009 two more were closed in Kamdesh (see here and here). American soldiers withdrew from Nuristan after around 300 insurgents overran an isolated combat outpost near Kamdesh village in October 2009, killing eight soldiers and wounding 22.  This military defeat was preceded by another battle in Waigal district in July 2008 in which nine US troops were killed when insurgents breached the security perimeter of a US Combat Outpost in this remote mountainous area.

By 2011, media were reporting that the Taleban again controlled large swathes of Nuristan, with Waigal the first district to fall (temporarily) to the Taleban in the spring of 2011. Pajhwok quoted then-newly appointed governor Tamim Nuristani as saying the Taleban held sway in five districts, Barg-e Matal, Kamdesh, Waigal, Mandol, Du-Ab and some parts of Nurgram. In 2011, US forces tried to recapture Du-Ab district, where, in the words of the US reservists from the Iowa National Guard, the “most significant” firefight their unit had been in since World War II took place.

An AAN dispatch in 2012 described how a Hezb-e Islami commander, Mawlawi Sadeq, himself a former insurgent, exercised control on behalf of the Afghan government in and around Kamdesh’s district centre. AAN also reported that in Mandol district:

On paper everything is correct: 85 teachers work in the district under the vigilant eye of 240 security personnel. But the reality, the delegation describes, is that the district – which has a population of 60,000 (official estimates allow for 20,000) – do not receive the money for a single functioning school. Meanwhile, the security commander, who was appointed three months ago, has been the first to set foot in the district in years, even though he receives salaries for only 70 men.

This neglect of the province by the government and its handover of authority to a local, self-imposed ruler resulted, as the BBC reported in 2013, in the province being “at mercy of the Taliban”. In 2014, The New York Times reported that “the provincial capital, Parun, has a government presence, but is disconnected from six of its seven districts,” while the district of Barg-e Matal “has remained under Taliban siege for years now.” Furthermore, the newspaper reported, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s flag “flew over buildings in districts here and dozens of men from Parun fought on its behalf in Kashmir.”

The Taleban continued to launch frequent attacks and seize district centres, such as Waigal in June 2015 and June 2016 and Du-Ab in March 2016, killing the local police chief. In December 2015, the Taleban claimed that nearly 200 security personnel and 140 government officials – practically the entire government presence there – had defected to their side in Waigal district. In October 2015, they attacked Barg-e Matal.

According to SIGAR’s latest quarterly report, not a single district in Nuristan is fully under the government’s control. Barg-e Matal, Kamdesh, Mandol, Nurgram and Parun are labelled as being ‘under government influence’, while Du-Ab, Wama and Waigal are ‘contested’. This is a surprisingly rosy picture of the situation, however. Mandol’s district authorities, for example, have been working from the administration centre of neighbouring Du-Ab district for at least the last two years.

A new element on Nuristan’s insurgency map is the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). In April 2016, after ISKP lost large parts of its territories in the eastern province of Nangrahar, there were reports that many of its fighters fled to Nuristan. In June 2017, provincial governor Hafiz Abdul Qayum and Nuristani MP, Maulawi Ahmadullah Muhid claimed there was an ISKP presence in five out of eight Nuristan districts, namely Mandol, Du-Ab, Nurgram, Waigal and Wama. They also reported fighting in Waigal between the Taleban and one of the movement’s former commanders who had joined the ISKP. On 10 November 2018, Afghan media reported an airstrike against ISKP positions in Kamdesh district.

Socio-economic situation

The population of the province is extremely poor. Apart from subsistence agriculture and forestry it relies on wage labour outside the province, while, according to a 2006 provincial survey by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, government figures, local strongmen and insurgents exploit the province’s cedar, oak and pine forests, as well as marble (in Waigal) and precious stone mines (in Kantiwa and Wama districts). Much of the latter is smuggled directly out to Pakistan.

There has also been some opium poppy cultivation. Between 2006 and 2016 Nuristan was considered opium free, but in 2017 UNODC recorded a minor opium cultivation, some 120 hectares in total in Mandol and Nurgram districts (see here).

Services and social infrastructure are patchy and low-level. According to a 2014 government health profile, Nuristan had three district hospitals, which should more properly be called clinics, three ‘comprehensive’ and eight ‘basic’ health stations. Its adult literacy rate then stood at 21.1 per cent. Almost half of Nuristan’s population was categorised as “people in need” in a January 2015 humanitarian profile of the province.  It said 13,700 children required treatment for malnutrition and catogorised 11 per cent of under-fives as having “severe acute malnutrition” and 19 per cent with “global acute malnutrition.”

Any improvement of basic health and education services has mainly been carried out by a few international NGOs and Nuristanis residing outside the country, for example in the US and Sweden. However, as the insurgency picked up again, this province, which had never appeared on any government’s agenda, lost most of the NGOs working there. Already in early 2005, UN news agency IRIN reported:

When you finally reach the tiny provincial capital [then Barg-e Matal], close to the Pakistani frontier, the vista is bleak. Local authority offices are closed and there is no sign of any aid agencies. There are gutted houses and bombed bridges everywhere. An empty health clinic is serving as winter quarters for someone’s private militia. The people look exhausted with thin, colourless faces.

In Barg-e-Matal and Kamdish, the two most troubled eastern districts of Nurestan, there is no sign of any government activity anywhere. In central Barg-e-Matal, Karim, a 40-year-old aid worker, stood behind the closed door of the Afghan Aid NGO’s office that was recently burned down by insurgents.

There is currently some new activity by Afghan and international NGOs, including under the Citizen’s Charter, the government development framework (more info here). The UN has no permanent presence in the province, but several of its agencies carry out ad hoc projects.

Nuristan is mainly covered by media outlets in Nangrahar and Kunar. There is no television station in the province. The state broadcaster Radio & Television Afghanistan (RTA) installed a special transmitter, which is switched on only for two hours every evening and broadcasts only to Parun, the provincial capital. In many districts, where they can afford it, people rely on satellite antennas. There are three radio stations: state-run RTA in Parun and two private radio stations run by local journalists, Radio Kalagush and Radio Alina in Nurgram. There are no local newspapers and one of the province’s two magazines, “The Nur,” has been discontinued due to lack of funding, while “Nuristan Hendara” is irregularly published from Jalalabad.

Election day in Nuristan, past and present

As can be expected from these circumstances, elections in remote and isolated Nuristan is a big challenge. Due to the strained security situation and the lack of infrastructure, the Afghan government faced enormous challenges in even supplying election material to Nuristan. The journalist, Hamdard, said election material was sent either by helicopter or transported via road from neighbouring Nangrahar, Laghman and Kunar provinces.

During previous elections, Nuristan’s remoteness and limited access to the province provided opportunities for electoral fraud. In the first presidential election of October 2004, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan survey quoted above reported suspicious data. The total population – men, women and children – was estimated then at 125,700. Yet, there were 124,500 registered voters. Almost 40 per cent of the registered voters (46,857), half of them reportedly women, were deemed to have case ‘valid votes’. One year later at the Wolesi Jirga elections, with the same number of registered voters, a female turnout of 52.8 per cent and a male turnout of 47.2 per cent was reported, even though election authorities had “found it troublesome to recruit adequate numbers of female election workers in Nuristan to staff women’s polling sites.”

In the 2010 Wolesi Jirga elections, of 130 polling stations scheduled to open, only 99 did so and, of these, the votes from 44 were later disqualified by the IEC and 17 more by the ECC. This finally left 14,449 votes rendered valid, 63 per cent of the 23,981 votes originally counted in the preliminary result. One polling station in Barg-e Matal had returned a total of 751 votes – a clear sign of ballot stuffing, as only 600 ballot papers had been delivered to each polling station (see this AAN analysis).

In 2018, according to Hamdard, the IEC was unable to hold the election itself in a number of districts but outsourced it to local elders who also took care of election security. The police only secured polling sites in certain district centres. In two districts, Wama and Waigal, Hamdard said local elders provided security for IEC workers against possible Taleban attack and to ensure the delivery of election material. The elders took the materials to their villages, looked after them on election day and facilitated their return back to the district centre.Local journalists told AAN that in Waigal, some ballot boxes were taken away by a parliamentary candidate’s agents. They added it is still unclear where the boxes are, but if true, it must be assumed that there was ballot stuffing.

In three other districts, Nurgram, Barg-e Matal and Kamdesh, IEC workers handed over ballot papers and boxes to elders who held the elections and returned the ballot boxes within 24 hours, according to Hamdard. He said that only in Parun, the provincial capital, where almost all polling centres were located in villages close to the provincial centre, did IEC personnel carry out the election.

Sadullah Payendazai, speaker for the provincial council, told AAN he had not heard of such proceedings. He did though indirectly confirm that turnout had been limited to the district centres.

As for women voters, there was, as in previous elections, according to Muhammad Shah Rahimi, a school teacher in Nurgram district, a shortage of female agents for parliamentary candidates. “There were very limited numbers of female agents in a few polling centres.” Payendazai also said it was difficult for women actually to get to polling stations to cast their votes. “It was almost impossible for families to walk for an hour and half along with their female to get to a poling centre,” he said. “Therefore, most women who live far away from the poling centres remained without casting votes.”

Taleban violence

Like many other parts of the country, the Taleban attempted to disrupt the elections by attacking polling centres. According to local sources, including local journalists and the acting provincial police chief, the Taleban fired mortars at polling centres in order to scare people away from taking part in the elections. Ghulam Rabbani, the acting police chief for Nuristan, confirmed that there had been Taleban mortar attacks against the polling centres in Wama, Barg-e Matal, Kamdesh and Nurgram districts. He said four civilians including two IEC workers were wounded in an attack on a polling centre in Barg-e Matal. According to journalist Hamdard, the head of the IEC for Barg-e Matal district, Elyas Khan, was among those wounded. Payendazai, the speaker for Nuristan’s provincial council, said that, because of the insecurity in these four districts, local observers had not been able to get to polling centres.

Rabbani also said that five Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were killed a day after the election. Their convoy, which had been carrying ballot boxes from Nurgram district to the provincial centre, was hit by a roadside mine. The ballot boxes were also reportedly destroyed in this incident. He said air support was called in and 13 Taleban killed.

In Kamdesh, local journalists told AAN that two out of the four planned polling centres remained closed as a result of Taleban attacks against the district centre. They also said that in Parun and Nurgram the polling “largely took place in the district centres only.” Saadullah, the speaker of the provincial council, confirmed that polling centres were only open in the district centres. He said, “Most of the PCs outside of Kamdesh, Barg-e Matal, Waigal, and Nurgram’s district centres either remained close or operated for a couple of hours in the morning of polling day.”

Who voted and where? Contradictory figures

The first unexplained contradictions in election data in Nuristan was between IEC records and Central Statistics Organisation’s (CSO) figures. In some districts, the number of registered voters was close to or even higher than that of the total population estimated by the CSO. Wama district, for example has an estimated total population of 12,061, while the IEC data showed that 12,578 people had registered to vote. Similarly, Parun and Du-Ab registered voters in numbers close to the total population figures: 10,838 voters among a population of 14,755 and 6,612 voters among 8,598 people, respectively. No voter registration took place in Mandol district. All the other seven saw some registration.

As to polling centres, during the voter registration period, the IEC had foreseen 73 polling centres opening on election day. (See IEC details on voter registration in Nuristan here). 32 centres (44 per cent) had already been dropped from the list before 20 October for security reasons (see AAN reporting here). That left a potential 41 to open.

However, the exact number of polling centres that did open on 20 October remains unclear due to contradictory information from various sources. That voting only happened in six districts is agreed upon. Along with the potential, but unregistered voters in Mandol, those living in the other district almost entirely controlled by the Taleban, Du-Ab, were also unable to vote (although 6,612 people had registered) because no polling centre opened there on election day.

In the remaining six districts, some form of election did happen. According to IEC figures published on its website, 41 polling centres opened: nine in Nurgram; seven in Parun, the provincial centre; four in each Barg-e Matal and Wama; four each in Kamdesh and Du-Ab and; three in Waigal (see IEC details here). (That of course only adds up to 35 and also includes the four in Du-Ab which definitely did not open.)

According to Bashir Omar, the provincial head of the IEC for Nuristan, 37 centres opened.

However, journalist Hamdard told AAN that on the morning of election day, the local IEC had said that 20 polling centres were open and 21 closed. Later that day, he said, the commission claimed 26 centres were open, while 15 remained close due to high security threats. This proportion corresponds roughly with information from the spring 2018 voter registration campaign when 20 voter registration centres in Nuristan were reported as facing “high security threats” (see AAN reporting here).

Provincial IEC director Omar also said that in total, around 22,000 people voted in Nuristan. This would still be much lower than the IEC’s number of registered voters of 67,068 people (see here). It would show that only 32.8 per cent of all registered voters had taken part in the election.

However, the discrepancy between the number of polling centres open according to the IEC leadership and that provided by local IEC officials raises suspicions, that votes may have been ‘counted’ in centres that never actually opened. This will be something to watch as more information comes in.

There were other problems with the ballot aside from the contradictory election data. Local journalists, observers and voters told AAN that IEC staff lacked training. Muhammad Shah Rahimi, a school teacher from Nurgram, for example, told AAN that in most of the centres in his district the IEC workers had not been familiar with the biometric voter verification system. The local sources also said that some polling centres in Kamdesh, Wama and Parun districts did not get voter lists at all and others appeared to have received incomplete lists, further reducing the number of people who could vote. Saadullah, the provincial council speaker, told AAN that people were searching at different centres but could not find their names on the voter registration list. “Therefore, many people returned home without casting their votes.”

Provincial council speaker Payendazai told AAN that female participation in the provincial capital Parun had been “good.” He said he had seen queues of female voters at some local polling centres. However, he added that a lack of voter lists in some polling centres in Parun made many female voters leave without being able to cast their vote.

Hamdard and Rahimi said that in Nurgram, female participation had been good at the start of the day. Hamdard told AAN that there were queues of 20 to 30 women at three centres he visited. Later in the morning, he said, after reports emerged about Taleban shelling, only a few more women turned out to vote. He also reported that people in Barg-e Matal district stopped voting after the Taleban began shelling.

Rahimi confirmed Payendazai’s report, that female participation was limited to those living near polling centres. The other issue of concern for women, he said, was the use of biometric devices and the need to have photos taken for voter verification. This further dampened female participation, he thought.

Conclusion: how much of an election was there in Nuristan?

It is hard to judge the credibility of the parliamentary election in Nuristan. However, what can be said is that, because of widespread insecurity and Taleban territorial control, elections outside the immediate district centres were difficult, if not impossible to hold. Electoral observers also found access difficult because of the Taleban presence in most of the districts. It is clear that, in some areas, the election in Nuristan was out of the IEC’s control and it is likely that even the modest IEC figures on open polling centres and turnout have been exaggerated and possibly mask an unknown degree of ballot stuffing outside the district centres. In at least some of the district centres, local sources concur that there was a fair voter turnout, including some female voters. However, it remains unclear how many of the total 22,000 votes supposedly cast were real. That number is already far lower than ballots cast, even before disqualifications, in previous elections. Whatever else can be said, whoever is sent to Kabul to represent Nuristan will not have been sent there by the bulk of the population; most people were simple unable to get out to vote, even if they had wished to do so.

Edited by Kate Clark

 

(1) Nuristan province was created in 1986/7 and then consisted only what is now its northwestern part, ie Mandol and possibly Du-Ab district. The provincial centre was the village of Gadmuk, the birthplace of Muhammad Sarwar, an army officer before the 1978 coup d’étatwho was defence minister of the Salafist daulatbut changed sides and reconciled with the government of President Babrak Karmal. In 1993, when the mujahedin were in power, Sarwar had joined them, and a larger Nuristan province was created. A new capital was gradually built in Pashki (Parun valley), but the Taleban’s arrival in 1996 stopped this work. The province has continued to exist in this form, first under the Taleban and then in the post-2001 order.

(2) According to Daan Van Der Schriek writing for the Jamestown Foundation in 2006:

Afzal was an accomplished Islamic guerrilla as early as the 1970s, fighting the regimes of King Zahir Shah (1933-1973) and President Daoud Khan (1973-78). Afzal’s grandfather was a key figure in the Islamization of Nuristan following the Afghan conquest of the area at the end of the 19th century (for which he was killed by anti-Afghan Nuristanis). (…)

During the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani [1992-96] Maulvi Afzal went to Kabul as assistant to the minister for Haj and charity. With the advent of the Taliban he returned to Nuristan (…). A civil war erupted between Maulvi Afzal’s men on one side and (…) supporters of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on the other. Initially the odds were against Afzal, leading him to enlist the support of the Taliban who sent him soldiers. Taliban assistance proved crucial in Afzal’s victory over (…) Hekmatyar loyalists. However the introduction of Taliban influence in the area inadvertently curtailed Afzal’s influence (…). In fact a combination of Taliban pressure and the worsening of the national civil war forced Afzal to abandon Nuristan and settle in Pakistan where he lived under the protection of the Lashkar-e-Toiba organization.

The 2006 SCA provincial survey mentioned in the text reported Afzal living in Nuristan again, under house arrest in his home village of Nekmok (AAN holds a digitalised version of the survey in its archives).

(3) This group was distinct, including in its leadership, from the Nuristani Salafis, and reportedly joined the Taleban in 2010 (AAN reporting here).

 

'The Policy Department is pleased to invite you to a workshop on EU preparedness against CBRN weapons with: • Dr Claude WACHTEL, Associate senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (Paris, France). • Elisande NEXON, Senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (Paris, France).
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak Building - Room P5B001
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SEDE is organising a public hearing on 'The threats posed by drones to Europe's armed forces' on Tuesday 20 November 2018, from 09.30 to 11.00, with three external experts
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Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

The Policy Department is organising a workshop on 'EU preparedness against CBRN weapons' which will be held during the SEDE meeting on Monday 19 November 2018, from 15.00 to 16.30
Further information
Workshop programme
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

SEDE is organising a public hearing on 'The threats posed by drones to Europe's armed forces' on Tuesday 20 November 2018, from 09.30 to 11.00, with external experts
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak, room 5B001
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Jorge Domecq, the EDA Chief Executive, met today in Rome with the Italian Minister of Defence, Elisabetta Trenta. He also had talks with Defence Capabilities and Policy Director, Major General Gianni Candotti.
   
The main topics discussed during these meetings included the state of play and way ahead in the implementation of the various EU defence initiatives (PESCO, CARD, EDF) as well as of the revised EU Capability Development Priorities (CDP) approved by Member States last June which are the baseline and key reference for all these initiatives. Italy’s strong involvement in EDA projects and programmes, it’s leading role in PESCO, the implications of the Agency’s Long-Term Review as well as the upcoming Foreign Affairs/Defence Council and EDA Ministerial Steering Board meetings on 19/20 November were also discussed.

“Right now, we are in an important phase of the implementation process of the various EU defence initiatives. After the approval of the revised EU Capability Development Priorities (CDP) in June, we will present our final report on the trial run of the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) to Ministers next Tuesday at the EDA Steering Board. Member States are also expected to select the second batch of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) projects at their FAC/Defence Council meeting on Monday. More than ever, it is important that CARD, PESCO and European Defence Fund (EDF) are implemented in a coherent and coordinated manner, based on agreed EU Capability Development Priorities, and in full transparency and complementarity with NATO. Furthermore, as the implementing agency for the Preparatory Action on Defence Research (PADR), EDA continues to help pave the way for the research dimension of the EDF. The results of the evaluation of the 2018 proposals will be available before end of this year.”, Mr Domecq stated.

Three Times as Many Thumbs Down to “Wear My Medals on The Left” As Thumbs Up. On Nov. 6, 2018, the Australian War Memorial posted a music video on YouTube by the choral group, “Sisters in Arms” of the Australian military. Just like the well-intentioned viral Rebecca Black “Friday” video of 2011 that garnered a […]

Where Paktika has been famous for ballot stuffing and mass proxy voting in previous elections, locals claim that this election was very different. A softer Taleban stance and a new slate of candidates, they say, allowed for more extensive campaigning. And the new electoral measures prevented rigging which, as a result, the electorate – including women – came out to vote. Reports of irregularities were indeed limited, with the exception of a large pre-election scam that involved thousands of duplicated tazkeras and led to several arrests. Turnout, as in most provinces, was varied and, in total, was given as around 20 per cent of registered voters. AAN’s Fazal Muzhary observed the election in this southeastern province and explains how it went before, during and after election day.

Interesting and new candidates

Paktika, with a population of close to 1.5 million people, has four seats in the Afghan parliament: three for men and one for women representatives. (1) A total of 30 candidates ran for these seats, eight women and 22 men (see the candidate list here). Three were incumbent candidates, Mahmud Khan Sulaimankhel, Nader Khan Katawazai and Najia Babakarkhel Urgunwal; the rest were new contenders, although a few had also run in the 2010 election. The new candidates included Muhammad Mirza Katawazai, a rich businessman living in Kabul who is originally from one of Paktika’s more peaceful districts, Yahyakhel. He claims to be the fifth-richest man in the country. According to his campaigners, Mirza registered 500 million US dollars as his net assets at the Independent Election Commission (IEC). Though his claim of being the fifth-richest man in the country can be questioned, he may well be the richest in his province.

The population mainly consists of Pashtuns whose tribal structures are largely still functional. Apart from this, there are Tajik enclaves in the provincial capital Sharana and the second-largest town, Urgun, in the southeast of the province. Paktika came into being as a separate province relatively late, under President Daud (1973–78). Therefore, the sense of belonging in the three sub-regions is still relatively strong: (a) the northern-central zone with the districts of Matakhan, Sarhauza, Sharana, and Yusofkhel, which are mainly dominated by the Andar, Kharoti, Alikhel and Sulaimankhel tribes; (b) the southeast along the border with Pakistan with the districts of Urgun, Gomal, Barmal, Gian, Zeruk and Sarobi, dominated by Dzadran and Wazir – both had belonged to the old ‘Greater Paktia’ – and (c) the southwest which had formerly belonged to Ghazni province, known as Katawaz and mainly inhabited by the large Sulaimankhel tribe (districts: Zarghunshahr/Khairkot, Khushamand, Tarwa, Wazakhwa, Wormamey, Omna). The government has a strong presence around the provincial capital, Sharana, and in Matakhan, Yusofkhel, Khairkot, Yahyakhel and Urgun districts. Apart from those five districts, the Taleban fully control Nika and Omna and have varying degrees of control and presence in the rest of the districts, particularly in southern Katawaz.

The thirty candidates in Paktika were mainly from six tribes. Sulaimankhel was the leading tribe, with seven candidates; Kharoti was second, with five candidates. The Pashtun tribes of Alikhel and Dzadran as well as the Tajiks had three candidates each and the Andar tribe had two candidates. The other ten candidates included the eight female candidates who were mostly not originally from Paktika. They were either married to husbands from Paktika, or for some reason had tazkeras from the province (only one female candidate is originally from Paktika: Suraya Akbari, who is Andar by tribe and from Matakhan district). The other women candidates included Maryam Zurmati, who according to local people is originally from Zurmat district in Paktia, and a female candidate who claims in her biography, (see the biography here) to be Alikhel. Local people say she is not from Paktika and can hardly speak Pashto; some claim she is Tajik from one of the northern provinces.

The Taleban’s softer policy gave space for campaigning

Local people, including civil society activists, journalists, and businessmen, told AAN that this year’s parliamentary election was interesting and different from the previous ones. In previous elections, residents of the central zone did not see much campaigning by candidates. One of the major reasons was insecurity, based on a widespread Taleban presence and the fear of attacks. A local journalist, Abdul Bari, told AAN that in previous elections, candidates had difficulty finding campaign offices: “If a person would rent his house to a candidate, the next day he would receive a call from the Taleban who would threaten to kill the house owner.” Therefore, no one wanted to rent out their houses as candidate campaign offices.

Previously, Taleban fighters not only warned ordinary voters in the rural areas against casting their votes, they also prevented local radios from publishing advertisements of candidates. One local journalist, who has worked at Pashtun Ghazh (Pashtun Voice) Radio for more than ten years, told AAN, “In the past we could not broadcast a single candidate advertisement. If we did, the next day Taleban fighters would inquire why we did that.” In this year’s election, he said, local radio stations broadcasted campaign adverts and conducted several roundtables without much of a reaction. Once local people and candidates grew confident that there seemed to be no serious threats, they tried to benefit from the opportunity.

Candidates visited many of the district centres and large villages in all three zones of Paktika, sometimes even in large convoys (see for example this video). Local people told AAN that the candidates paid visits to 11 out of the 19 districts during their campaigns and sent their representatives to remote districts where the candidates could not go. The candidates even gathered people in remote desert areas and paid visits to different districts in the evenings – a riskier time to travel, but better for campaigning as people can gather in village mosques and local bazaars. For many of Paktika’s residents it was their first experience of an actual electoral campaign in their own area.

The richest candidates organised cricket tournaments and educational competitions between schools with big prizes. For example, Muhammad Mirza, the richest candidate from Yahyakhel district, sponsored a cricket tournament in Sharana city before the election where the winning team received a car. Muhammad Daud Katawazai gave a motorbike to the winning team of another cricket tournament. In the educational competitions, participants who wrote good poems or correctly answered questions about the books they had read received money as a gift. Both candidates invited musicians from Kabul and held music nights, which according to local journalists were popular, particularly with the youth. Muhammad Daud Katawazai even paid a musician from Jalalabad to compose a campaign song for him, which plays in the background here. This kind of campaign, people said, had not be seen in Paktika in any of the previous elections.

Before the election, residents of all three zones – central, eastern and western – recounted how the Taleban had left prospective voters largely alone, whereas in previous elections Taleban fighters would tell people not to cast their votes. One resident who lives about six kilometres to the north of Sharana city told AAN, “In our mosque the Taleban told people that if anyone would cast his or her vote, they would cut their fingers.” This year, he said, no such threats had been reported prior to the election.

After the election, a journalist who did not want to be named said: “If the Taleban had wanted to disrupt the election, they could have easily done it. If they had made a single call to any of these voters, I am sure we would not have seen such long lines of voters in Sharana.” In the end the Taleban did try to disrupt the election in certain areas, mainly through shelling (see below); the impact was limited.

Reactions to the Taleban’s softer policy

Local journalists and civil society activists said they did not know the exact motives behind the softer policy of the Taleban or whether some of the candidates or local officials had made deals with the Taleban. Some thought the general talk about a possible peace might have prompted them not to want to disturb the vote. Walid Alikhel, an observer of one candidate, thought the Afghan security forces had become stronger. He said security forces had been deployed to all places where the election was planned and had pushed the Taleban to areas from where they could not easily reach the cities or attack the polling centres. A civil society activist said he thought the Taleban had simply not seriously wanted to disrupt the election. His argument was that if Taleban fighters had wanted to target polling centres, they could have fired rockets in almost all districts of the province, or sent suicide attackers, and the Afghan government would not have been able to prevent it.

He thought they had two possible reasons for not wanting to attack. First, since the media did a lot of campaigning in favour of the election process, saying it was a civilian process, the Taleban fighters might have realised that their attacks would mostly harm civilians and may have decided to refrain. The second reason, he said, could have been a more general policy of the Taleban to not seriously target the elections (although looking at some other provinces that does not seem to have been the case; see for instance this AAN report about Kunduz and this report about Zurmat district in neighbouring Paktika).

According to local journalist Dad Muhammad, the Taleban fighters in Paktika have simply not been very active recently and have rarely been conducting attacks against government forces. He said the most recent attack had been on Khushamand (also known as Dela) district, a week before the election. Beside that, there had not been any major attack by Taleban fighters in the province since August 2017, when they carried one out on Gomal district. The major reason, he said, was that Taleban fighters had been busy in neighbouring Ghazni province.

Election day in Paktika

Election day in Paktika appeared to go relatively smoothly. Although some polling centres opened late or suffered technical or logistical problems, this seemed to have been less prevalent than in other provinces. Paktika was one of the few provinces where the IEC did not call for a second day of voting. Harun Bawar, the provincial director of the IEC, said that most centres in the province had started operating on time, at 7:00 am. Some centres, he said, opened one or two hours late and only one polling centre, in Ali Baz in Urgun district, had started operating after 12:00 pm (because, he said, the voter list did not arrive on time).

Local reporter Rahim Khushhal, however, told AAN that additional centres had started operating late. He gave the example of Al Jehad High School, in Sharana, where voting started around 11:00 am. AAN also learned that some polling centres opened late in Yusofkhel, Yahyakhel and Khairkot districts. Other journalists spoke about centres that had not opened at all, but could not give exact names. After election day, the IEC official said that all 166 centres across the province had been open, but local journalists found that difficult to believe.

Later, it turned out that, according to voters and observers, local IEC officials had given false reports to the IEC officials in Sharana, telling them that the centres had started working on time when this had not been the case. For this reason, their seniors hadn’t seen a need to either extend the time of voting or allow certain centres to be open for voters on the second day. “We were either intentionally ignored or local IEC workers were negligent,” one voter, Zamir Khan in Yahyakhel told AAN over the telephone.

Observing the vote in Sharana, the provincial capital

AAN observed the opening of the election process at the Ali Baba High School, one of the 16 polling centres in Sharana. Voting started on time at 7:00 am. Voters’ turnout was low in the beginning, but later increased as people started casting their votes at nine stations (seven for men, one for women and one for Kuchi voters). Based on the voter lists AAN has seen, 3,800 voters (of whom 226 were Kuchi and 25 women) had registered at this centre. The long line of menwaiting to cast their votes, numbering in the hundreds, continued until midday. After that, the lines became smaller. In two stations in this polling centre, the process started with a small technical problem when the biometric machine did not start properly, but this was resolved in about 30 minutes. At this centre people could cast their votes in three to five minutes; only rarely did voters spend ten minutes or more. But because so many voters turned up, some had to wait for more than two hours. Based on AAN’s observation of the logbook at the end of the day, roughly 1,800 voters – including 16 Kuchis and 12 women – had cast their votes at this centre (a little less than half of the voters who had registered here). The main problem observed was that some voters could not find their names on the voter list.

At a second polling centre, in the provincial hospital in Sharana, AAN also observed a considerable turnout. Here, 2,247 voters had been registered, among them 534 women and 75 Kuchis. They could cast their votes at five stations. Voting started without problem and AAN did not see any irregularities, except again of people not finding their names on the list. At the end of the day, 887 voters (654 men, 230 women and three Kuchis) had cast their votes – around 40 per cent of those registered.

At Yusofkhel High School (where 1,900 voters were registered, among them 150 women), around 820 voters, including 30 women, had already cast their votes by the time AAN visited in the early afternoon. Similarly, at Khushhal Baba High School in Mushkhel district, AAN observed a polling centre where 830 out of the 1,900 registered voters had cast their votes by the afternoon. Local observers at both centres said they did not see any problems on election day.

At one of the polling centres in Sharana city, AAN saw a large number of women waiting in front of a tent for their turn. Once inside, the women generally spent two to five minutes casting their votes. The female candidate observers said they did not see any problems at this station. A female IEC worker who had also worked in previous elections told AAN that women’s participation was much higher than in the past. In previous elections, very few women showed up, but in this year’s polling, she said that, as soon as the voting started at her centre, within an hour, dozens of women had shown up. At this female station, AAN observed that, by the afternoon, 230 out of 534 registered female voters had cast their votes.

At all four centres visited by the AAN observer, voters said they were happy to take part in the election and to vote for their representatives. The voters included men and women, youth, elders, teachers, students, journalists, members of the security forces and Kuchis. One voter who did not want to be named said that in the past there had been many security problems, but this year, security was good and that allowed people to take part in the election. As many women had difficulty coming to vote from areas far from the polling centres, some villagers voluntarily used their cars to drive women to the city so they could cast their votes. Walid Ahmad, one of the volunteers, who drove several voters to the provincial hospital, told AAN: “We drove these women here only to help them cast their votes for their favourite candidate. No one has paid us to do this.”

A high level of participation in and around the capital and in the central zone

Talking to AAN during the election as well as on the day after the election, local journalist Yasin said he thought the introduction of the biometric system had been an important factor in increasing voter participation, as it had built people’s confidence that there would be less rigging. Because most candidates realised there would be no (or less) chance for fraud, they tried harder to campaign. As a result, ordinary people understood the significance of the election. This, he said, in particular affected women’s participation, because candidates had encouraged their tribes to let the women vote too. Where previously men would often cast votes on behalf of their female family members and relatives, this year women came out and cast their own votes.

People told AAN that the number of women who voted at many centres in Sharana, Yusofkhel, Urgun and some other districts could not be compared to previous elections. Local journalist Obaid told AAN that in Mest area of Yusofkhel district, women were casting their votes until late evening. According to a member of civil society who visited polling centres in five different districts, many men had voted in the morning, but the number of women was less. But in the afternoon, he said, the number of women increased and they came to cast their votes until late in the evening. Talking to AAN, he said that he had also witnessed considerable numbers of women voters in Khairkot and Yahyakhel districts. He said that because security was good, most candidates had observers in most of the polling centres. Therefore, he thought, most districts saw no ballot stuffing, even though many  had been previously known for it. For example, he said, in the previous election, ballot stuffing had been reported in Yahyakhel, Khairkot and Janikhel districts. “This year, we did not have a single report of ballot stuffing,” he said.

He also believed that changing the system from voting cards to stickers on people’s tazkeras – the new registration system that linked voters to polling centres (see previous AAN reporting here for details) – played a key role in people’s increased participation in the election. After this decision, the office for population registration started distributing new tazkeras in local villages. In several places in the central zone, as well as in districts close to the provincial capital, their workers went from house to house. Whereas in the past many families did not allow their women to go to the city to get a tazkera, this time they did not mind because it was distributed in front of their own houses. As a result, many women who had never had an identity document now got a tazkera and were able to vote.

Obaid also thought that the level of participation had been particularly high in the central zone – Sharana, Matakhan, Sarhauza and Yusofkhel – because people from this area had had no representative in the past two parliaments and had felt side-lined by the MPs from Katawaz and Urgun zones. According to civil society activist Elham, when people from the central zone needed help, they were mostly ignored, as the MPs from other zones did not care about the problems of people from the central zone. This, he said, was the main reason that ignored residents of the central zone decided to not only have candidates but also to actively participate in the election.

The election in the Katawaz (southwest) zone

The election in the southwest and southeast zones of Paktika generally went smoothly, although in several districts no or very little polling took place. In the Katawaz zone, elections took place in Khairkot, Yahyakhel, Janikhel, Tarwa, Wormamey and Wazakhwa districts, although in the Tarwa, Wormamey and Wazakhwa this was largely limited to the district centre due to limited government presence. In these districts, around five to 20 per cent of registered voters appeared to have cast their votes. Independent observers from civil society – who did not want to be named because they said attributing the figures to them could cause problems – said that in Khairkot, 3,125 out of 30,000 voters cast their votes (10 per cent); in Yahyakhel, 3,500 out of 20,000 (17.5 per cent); and in Janikhel, about 1,500 out of 30,000 (five per cent). In Janikhel, most of the votes were cast in Jalalzi village, where observers counted 900 votes. In Wazakhwa, around 750 votes were cast; in Tarwa, about 800 and in Wormamey, about 3,000. (Most of these figures are based on observers’ record of the tallies in the ballot books at the end of the day.) AAN was told that in all these districts, the presence of candidates’ observers was thought to have reduced the possibility of rigging, whereas in the past, they said, ballot stuffing had been widespread.

In Omna district, very few votes were cast. Polling took place at only one centre, where observers told AAN that only 60 votes were cast. This polling centre was in Ginawa area; the district compound was moved here in June 2016, after the district fell to the Taleban. In Khushamand district, there was no election at all. Around 800 voters had registered near the district compound, and local observers told AAN that the IEC had sent materials and staff, but the voters simply did not show up. The IEC head, Harun Bawar told AAN on the day after the election that in this district one vote only was cast (possibly one of the staff). Local observers told AAN that the lack of turnout was mostly because of a Taleban attack in Khushamand a week before the election. As many as 21 Taleban fighters and 14 security forces were killed in the attack.

Problems were reported in a polling centre Khairkot district, where observers had initially counted 3,125 votes but claimed that after IEC workers had interfered, the count went up to 4,600. In Janikhel, AAN was told that one candidate, Mahmud Khan Sulaimankhel, had taken people’s tazkeras in the nomination process and had not returned them after his nomination, which meant that these eligible voters could not cast their votes. In Yahyakhel, voters told AAN that the election started around 10:00 am due to problems with the biometric systems. One observer told AAN: “The IEC workers could not turn on the biometric machines. By the time the machine started, there were already hundreds of voters waiting in the queues, which resulted in many voters’ frustration.” Voters were unhappy that the IEC officials did not listen to their demand to extend the time for voting. Security officials apparently told IEC workers to stop working exactly at 4:00 pm, as they said they could not protect the centres beyond that time. Observers said this deprived a number of people from voting.

In Khairkot district, three polling stations allocated for Kuchi voters were closed on election day. Two of these stations were in Segana area and a third was at the district hospital. According to observers, Kuchi voters had registered at these centres but could not vote here. One observer told AAN, “The IEC workers told the Kuchi voters, that since so few Kuchis had registered, they could not open a separate polling stations for Kuchis.” Voters were told that wherever fewer than 100 voters were registered, no separate polling station would be open for Kuchis.

The election in the Urgun (southeast) zone

In the eastern zone of Urgun, local observers said there had been no election in Neka district. IEC officials told AAN that they sent all required materials to the district without any problem and that the polling centres had been open, while local observers said that no polling centres were open. In Gomal district there was only one polling centre, in the Shkin area, which borders the South Waziristan Agency of Pakistan. The main populated area, Chahrbaran, had no polling centre as it is currently under Taleban control. In Sarobi district, the election was disrupted by Taleban rocket shelling, but local observers said that 1,200 votes were cast in this district, despite the shelling. No problem was reported in Barmal district. Local observers thought that the fact that two candidates, Taj Ali Wazir and Admir Entezar, were active in the district was why no rigging had been reported.

In Gomal district, ballot stuffing was reported. Civil society activists told AAN that the ballots had already been stuffed before election day. When National Directorate of Security (NDS) operatives found out what had happened, they confiscated the stuffed boxes and arrested the IEC staff. In Zerok district, ballot stuffing was reported at the end of the election day. Observers found that the stuffing was in favour of Daulat Khan Dzadran. In Sarobi, observers told AAN that according to their observations 1,200 votes were cast during the day, but later the results showed more than 3,000 votes.

Security problems

The election took place in a relatively peaceful atmosphere. Four areas in the entire province had security-related incidents; there were casualties, but relatively few. These incidents included shelling by Taleban fighters in southeastern Sarobi, eastern Sarhauza, and northern Matakhan districts, and rockets fired at Omarkhel area in the southern part of Sharana. The rocket, fired in the afternoon of 20 October, killed one child and wounded a man. Two persons were wounded in the shelling in Sarobi district; one was an observer and the second a policeman. In Sarhauza, one policeman and a civilian were wounded. There were no casualties reported in the shelling that targeted some northern villages of Matakhan district. According to a local source who works with an NGO, people continued to go to the polling centres to cast their votes despite the shelling. There were no reports of Taleban fighters preventing voters from casting their votes, even in the remote districts where they could easily have done so.

The IEC figures and pre-election fraud

Based on IEC’s database, 186,611 eligible voters had registered during the voter registration process (see here). Out of those possible voters, IEC officials told AAN on 28 October 2018 that an estimated 38,000 people had cast their votes on election day. This represents around 20 per cent of the registered voters. The officials, however, stressed that these were rough estimations and could not be considered final, as they were based on reports from IEC workers from the sites. Some ballot boxes had yet to arrive at the provincial capital and the official count was still underway.

An IEC official said he thought it was possible that “a lot of ghost voters registered in the registration process and that only actual voters had shown up on election day.” ‘Ghost voters’, here, refers to registrations made that were not linked to actual people. Journalist Yasin had a different explanation, saying, “In the beginning, when several names were mismatching [people could not find their names on the voter list], this frustrated the people and affected voters’ participation.”

Another important explanation may be found in pre-election fraud that took place and that has remained largely unreported in the media (except some social media posts by local Facebook users). The fraud, which took place in May 2018, centred on the use of duplicate tazkeras, initially to bolster candidate registration, but later to try to increase the size of the vote banks.

When the Population Registration Department issues a tazkera, there are two original copies: one is given to the holder and the second is kept at the department. Local journalist Obaid and civil society activists told AAN that several candidates were able to buy large numbers of the originals kept at the registration department. Initially the tazkeras were used to meet the requirement for candidate application (1,000 tazkeras from supporters). Later, larger numbers were bought to ‘register’ additional voters. Initially, very few people knew about the ‘scheme’ and it was not considered a large problem, so no steps were taken to prevent it happening. When the numbers rose, NDS officials learned about it and arrested the Population Registration Department general director, Anwar Khan Katawazai, three PRD officials from the districts and three local IEC workers. They also confiscated an unknown number of tazkeras and an unknown amount of money. AAN was told that the candidates had paid several thousands of dollars, but the exact amount was not identified. (Some of the Facebook posts can be found here, here and here)

The candidates who bought original copies of the tazkeras from the PRD officials bribed local IEC officers in their districts to include the tazkeras in the voter lists and to provide them with the necessary registration stickers. In many cases, this resulted in a problem of duplication. The real holders of the tazkeras were registered in their own districts at their own polling centres, while the candidates often re-registered the same tazkeras in other districts. Most of these duplicates were taken from voters who registered in the central zone, possibly because candidates thought it would be easier to do the rigging in the absence of strong incumbent candidates. The duplicates were also most easily available here from the main PRD office in Sharana. According to local journalists, several of the candidates bought tazkeras in the process of candidate registration; but, in the process of voter registration only some influential and rich candidates were able to buy them.

After the PRD officials and IEC workers were arrested and sent to prison, the IEC officials decided to clear out the duplicated tazkeras. They removed 30,000 tazkeras from the voter database after filtering several thousand of them. This  resulted in the removal of large numbers of actual voters. As the IEC officials cancelled duplicated tazkeras, they were unable to decide which belonged to an actual voter and which was the ‘ghost’. As a result, many voters could not find their names on the voter list on election day, despite having actually registered, and were not able to vote.

Post-election problems

Some reports of problems came out after the election was completed in Paktika. On the day after the elections, Taleban fighters confronted voters in some districts and asked them why they had voted on election day. A local journalist told AAN he received a call from a local Taleban fighter in Kharbin area. “The Taleban fighter told me he would kill me if he found me outside Sharana city,” he said. When asked why the Taleban would threaten him after the election was over, he said, “They might have just intended to frighten people; otherwise, these threats after the election are meaningless.” In Matakhan district, Taleban fighters threatened teachers who had worked for the IEC on election day and told them they would beat them if they collected the money the IEC was supposed to pay.

IEC head Harun Bawar, confirming the Taleban threats, told AAN that teachers from Khairkot had indeed called him and told him they did not want to receive their pay, for fear of being beaten. In other places, sources told AAN, local Taleban told IEC workers to share the money they would receive from the IEC. There were also rumours that the Taleban wanted to punish IEC workers for their work. Some of the staff who went to Kharbin area to meet the Taleban, had reportedly been beaten.

Another problem was that one female candidate, Hila Mujtaba, accused the Paktika governor, Elyas Wahdat, of mistreating one of her observers at the governor’s house. Her observer, Zahir Khan, in a video report told Ariana News that the “governor personally beat me and put me in his private custody for five hours” (see the video here). In the same report, the governor’s spokesman, Muhammad Ayaz, rejected the accusations as baseless. He told an Ariana TV reporter: “There has been nothing done like this. We have rules and everything should go according to the rules.”

The third problem was that on 30 October 2018, the prosecutor’s office in Sharana detained five local reporters for publishing Mujtaba’s allegations. These journalists were detained for five hours at the prosecutor’s office. One local reporter, who did not want to be named, told AAN, “The prosecutor’s office people asked the journalists why they published the reports and said that they had crossed the privacy limits, but they did not explain whose privacy.” The reporters’ response was that they had published both the allegations and the reaction of the governor’s house and that this should have not been problematic. One of the detained journalists, elaborating on the threats they received at the prosecutor’s office, said: “They told us they would put their feet in our mouths and silence us forever.” Paktika’s governor, in a separate meeting with a group of journalists, told them he would ask the prosecutor’s office why the journalists had been detained for five hours.

Conclusion

The IEC’s move to address pre-election fraud resulted in the disenfranchisement of an unknown number of voters whose takers had been misused. It may also have scared away other voters. Similarly, the claims that all polling centres were open and opened on time meant that polling was not extended – into the evening or to a second day – as happened in most of the country. This may also have deprived voters of the opportunity to vote. Otherwise, the election, from local reports, appears to have gone relatively smoothly. There were some reports of ballot stuffing, rigging and interference, particularly in the remote areas. There were a few security incidents. Overall, however, the election appeared to have presented new opportunities: a new slate of candidates, campaigning where this had not happened before, tazkeras for people who had never had one before, and some actual turnout. Many voters and observers expressed cautious optimism over the quality of the election in their province. The preliminary results, once released and to the extent that they match what was observed on election day, will bring more clarity.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert and Thomas Ruttig

(1) Paktika’s provincial centre, Sharana (which is the north of the province), is located about 160 kilometres southeast of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul. It borders Zabul to the southwest, Ghazni to the west, Paktia to the north, Khost to the east and the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan to the south and southeast. The population figure of almost 1.5 million is based on the 2018 statistics of the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

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The Perimeter functions perfectly and has passed all stages of preparation and verification, the system can be used only if all of Russia's other nuclear weapons are destroyed as a result of the enemy's attack. This Russian system of automatic nuclear retaliation in the West is known as the Dead Hand.

The Perimeter system was put in operation in the USSR in 1985. In a nutshell, the system ensures the automatic launch of nuclear missiles in case of a nuclear attack against Russia, even if there is no one left to be able to give such an order. All the available data about the work of the system is served with such words as "probably," "possibly," and so on. No one knows how the system works exactly. In general, the Perimeter is a form of artificial intelligence that evaluates a multitude of factors about a nuclear attack on the basis of information received from radar stations, space satellites, seismic activity, etc.

Nuclear-capable missiles will thus be launched from silos, mobile launchers, strategic aircraft, submarines to strike pre-entered targets, unless there is no signal from the command center to cancel the attack. In general, even though there is little information available about the work of the Perimeter, one thing is known for sure: the doomsday machine is not a myth at all - it does exist.

The specialist is convinced that the United States can easily destroy Russia's nuclear arms. Without the INF Treaty, the USA will be able to deploy as many ballistic missiles as possible in Europe. According to Yesin, the Americans will thus be able not only to destroy Russian nuclear weapons, but to intercept them if Russia launches missiles to retaliate. The attack led to a massive nuclear exchange between the two countries that caused irreparable damage to the two states and claimed the lives of more than 400 million people.

Russia must revise its nuclear doctrine as soon as possible.

Source : Pravda.ru

Tag: RussiaINF TreatyPerimeter

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On 6 November, following a meeting at working level, the four Principals of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), the European Defence Agency (EDA), Europol and the Computer Emergency Response Team for the EU Institutions, Agencies and Bodies (CERT-EU), met at CERT-EU's premises.

The purpose of the meeting was to update each other on relevant developments, and assess the progress made under the MoU, which provides a cooperation framework aiming at leveraging synergies between the four organisations to achieve a safe and open cyberspace and to promote civ/mil synergies. 

The four partners also agreed on a roadmap prepared by the MoU working group with concrete activities and deliverables throughout 2019, which will be reflected in their respective work programmes. 

The initial focus will be on working closer in the areas of training and cyber exercises, building the cooperation capacity and the improved exchange of information on respective projects and events with a view to complementing the work of the four partners and avoiding the duplication of efforts, considering also broader EU initiatives in the cyber domain. 
 

Ken Ducatel (CERT-EU), Udo Helmbrecht (ENISA), Steven Wilson (EC3), Jorge Domecq (EDA)

 
"Following the signature of this MoU in May, I am pleased that we swiftly moved to turn this into action. Our objective is to promote civ/mil synergies in the cyber domain, considering also relevant EU initiatives, to support Member States in the development of the cyber capabilities they need, building on complementarities and avoiding duplication", said Jorge Domecq, EDA Chief Executive.

The Principals agreed that this was a major milestone in entering a new era of working together and an important first step in putting the cooperation framework into practice.
 

More information:

• Four EU Cybersecurity organisations enhance cooperation (EDA news May 2018)

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Kunduz province faced serious security issues during and after Election Day. The turnout was far lower than expected. This was mainly due to an almost unprecedented level of Taleban violence compared to most other provinces on that day. Three districts were deprived of their rights to vote in their entirety, while six others had a patchy election as, due to the insecurity, some polling centres (PC) frequently kept opening and closing. AAN’s Obaid Ali, who observed the election in neighbouring Takhar, looks at the electoral challenges in this key province of Afghanistan’s northeast (with input from Thomas Ruttig).

Threats and Election Day violence

The parliamentary election on 20 October 2018 in Kunduz province suffered from serious security threats and acute violence. In the last two weeks prior to the elections, the Taleban leadership issued a series of four statements warning people not to take part in the election. In the first, issued on 8 October, they reiterated their April call for an election boycott. The next statement targeted specific groups of people warning them to avoid being involved in the election. On 17 October, they called on university professors, schoolteachers and others in the education sector not to support the elections process. The two following statements were even tougher; one by the preaching, guidance and recruitment commission, and one by the military commission. The first of these, issued on 18 October, called on tribal elders, religious scholars and mosque preachers to stand against the election and to prevent people from taking part. Ten, on 19 October on the eve of the elections, the military commission warned people to “do not allow your homes, guest rooms, schools, religious seminaries, clinics and workers be utilized by the organizers of this vile process.” It said the “intelligence teams of the Islamic Emirate” would be “closely monitoring all development” as a “participation in this process” would amount to “aiding the invaders.”

In Kunduz province itself, people have limited access to the internet and little awareness of the Taleban’s official statements. So, local Taleban officials delivered these statements and warnings directly to the people. In Dasht-e Archi and Qala-ye Zal districts, for example, which are areas under their control, the Taleban’s shadow district governors appeared in mosques during Friday prayers and announced the Taleban leadership’s position on the elections. In other Taleban controlled areas in Kunduz, their fighters individually talked with local elders and mosque preachers, asking them to prevent people from taking part in the elections.

During Election Day and the day after, the Taleban invested much energy in order to disrupt the polls. According to Rasul Omar, head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) for Kunduz, the Taleban fired mortars at polling centres (PC) in most parts of the province. In several PCs, he said, IEC workers fled to safe places because of the shelling. He told AAN “70 per cent of the total of [89] polling centres were under serious attacks by the Taleban.” He added, “Even inside the city we had serious security issues.” He said Taleban fired mortars against 20 of the 35 PCs that operated inside the city. Abdulbaqi Nuristani, the police chief for Kunduz province, told AAN that frequent mortar fire lasted from the early morning of the Election Day until late into the night.

Zabihullah Majedi, a parliamentary candidate in the province, is also the head of the Journalists Association there. He said more than 100 mortar rounds hit PCs in Kunduz city alone. He said the Taleban inflicted serious casualties on IEC workers and voters. According to him, 15 people were killed and 110 others were wounded in the city because of the shelling. Local journalists in Kunduz confirmed this range of election-related casualties. Rahmatullah Hamnawa, a journalist in Kunduz, told AAN he had recorded more than 120 casualties in Kunduz city. He added that this included police, IEC workers and civilians.

Kunduz was possibly the province most affected by Election Day violence issued by the Taleban. (1) In neighbouring Baghlan, 62 casualties were reported by local government officials, while in Kabul there were 79 election-related casualties reported.

Mursal Setayesh, a civil society activist in Kunduz, told AAN that, due to the Taleban’s mortar shelling, most women feared going out to cast their votes. She said that, apart from the insecurity, the IEC works also had technical difficulties that reduced the number of people who could vote and added “In many PCs voter registration lists were missing and people had to search different PCs to find their names in order to cast votes.” Therefore, she said many female voters left the PCs without casting votes. Speaking to AAN, Karima Sediqi, a female member of the provincial council in Kunduz, said female voters’ participation in this parliamentary election in Kunduz was lower than that in 2010. She added that insecurity was the major factor that reduced the female turnout in Kunduz city. Both Sediqi and Setayesh said the same was the case in the districts where men did not allow their female family members to go out to vote for security reasons.

The Taleban also mined roads. On 23 October 2018, when the author returned from Takhar and travelled through Kunduz, he noticed that parts of the main Takhar-Kunduz highway had been destroyed by explosive devices planted at the roadside during the election days. There were also burned out military vehicles and destroyed police checkpoints visible on that highway.

The Taleban’s ability to inflict a high level of Election Day violence has resulted from a badly deteriorating security situation in the province over recent years. Currently, the Taleban control three districts of Kunduz. In three more districts, the government presence is limited to the district centres and a few villages around the district governor’s compounds. In the remaining three, the government and the Taleban each hold almost half of the districts (read AAN’s previous analysis about security in Kunduz here and here).

Elections in Kunduz city

The parliamentary election in Kunduz city was held in a chaotic environment. There were fears immediately before Election Day that the Taleban might overrun the provincial centre for another time (read media report here). Most of the 35 PCs in the city were targeted by Taleban mortar and rocket fire.

According to journalist Hamnawa, many parliamentary candidates provided transportation for voters to get to PCs. He told AAN that the parliamentary candidates, together with their agents, frequently visited PCs to mobilise people to take part in the election. Speaking to AAN’s Farhad Nuri, a shopkeeper in Kunduz city, said most of the shops in the city ran out of mobile credit cards. “Candidates and their agents bought up all mobile credit cards to call people and to encourage them to vote.” Nevertheless, Hamnawa said, most people preferred to stay away from voting due to the threats and the violence on Election Day.

Impact on turnout

Provincial security officials confirmed that insecurity had caused serious challenges for people wishing to cast their votes. However, Police chief Nuristani told AAN that the Taleban had failed to disrupt the election. He said the security forces “managed to protect the PCs” and – counter-factually, given successful Taleban attacks on two PCs in Imam Saheb – that they “repelled the Taleban’s attacks.” Candidate Majedi added, “Despite of serious risks men and women came out to cast their votes.” Many locals, nevertheless, told AAN that most of the PCs across the province faced serious security challenges to their operation.

Also, the turnout figures from the districts, as suggested above, speak another language compared with the officially given figures and the security officials’ optimistic statements. The Taleban threats before and their attacks on Election Day meant voter turnout figures were much lower than expected – only between 32,000 to 35,000 people voted across the province, according to the Provincial Independent Election Commission (PIEC). (In the 2010 parliamentary election, some 115,000 votes in Kunduz were considered valid by the IEC.) (2) The official 2018 turnout figures represent between 18.8 and 20.6 per cent of the 169,802 registered voters, of whom men were 108,832, women 60,843 and Kuchis 127 (see IEC data for registered voters in Kunduz here), and only seven per cent of the estimated population in voting age. (The number of registered voters was only about 34 per cent of the voting age population; the total population of the province is 1,091,116, according to Afghanistan’s Central Statistic Office, see p25 here).

Of the official 32-35,000 voters, only 8,750 participated in the districts (plus possibly some few in Khanabad and Aqtash districts, but where the district governors refused to give figures). This is around one quarter of the provincial total, meaning that three quarters of the turnout came from Kunduz city.

Technical and organisational problems leading to more disenfranchisement

Apart from the insecurity and violence, technical issues and shortcomings of the provincial IEC workers were the other factors that negatively affected the turnout. Several local journalists in Kunduz told AAN that, in most of the PCs, voter registration lists were not available. This forced people to visit other polling centres in order for them to find their names and be able to vote. The use of the biometric voter verification devices and the lack of experience of the staff in handling them was another factor that meant casting a vote took a long time and resulted in long queues. Waiting for a long time in an insecure situation, and with frequent shelling, made many voters return home without casting their votes.

However, it has remained unclear how many ballot boxes and votes would be invalidated. Muhammad Sediq Samim, the head of the Kunduz Election Complaints Commission (ECC), told AAN that they had already suggested a recount of votes in some PCs in insecure areas. According to him, 239 complaints have been registered for reasons including: “manipulations, fraud, and IEC workers’ were campaigning for some specific candidates.” Samim also said that, in some PCs, there was some ballot box stuffing inside the city and in some districts, but he refused to give the exact locations. Observer organisations also have not been ready to share their findings with AAN thus far.

The ECC call for recounting might result in votes being invalidated in some Kunduz PCs. This would reduce the turnout figures that PIEC announced even further.

Election in Kunduz’s districts

Rasul Omar of the provincial IEC told AAN that voters in three districts, Qala-ye Zal, Gulbad and Gultepa, were not able to cast their votes. In Gulbad and Gultepa, there had been no voter registration at all due to insecurity (see here).

Further, Omar said 18 out of the total 54 PCs in the remaining six districts were closed and six other PCs, in Khanabad and Imam Saheb districts, only operated for half a day because of the Taleban’s intense attacks. This meant that 36 PCs – only two thirds of the total – opened in the districts, and some for only a part of the time. (In 2010, 8.4 per cent of all planned polling stations in Kunduz were reported closed on election day by the IEC, see AAN report here; no figures about polling centres available.)

The election did not take place in three out of a total of nine districts of Kunduz due to insecurity: Qala-ye Zal, Gulbad and Gultepa. AAN interviewed the governors of the six districts where elections were held to obtain an overview of the turnout (district population figures from the Central Statistics Office, p25 here and IEC voter registration figures here). The figures below, according to district governors, are the officially numbers taken from the PCs where the result sheets were published after counting. The final breakdown of the turnout will be released by IEC. AAN tried to corroborate these figures, but the independent election observer organisations declined to share their figures. None has officially published their reports as yet; and only the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) held a press conference on 28 October.

Dasht-e Archi district

In Dasht-e Archi, a heavily contested district, the government presence is limited to the district governor’s compound and a few nearby villages. Therefore, the voters were either local government officials or those who live in the government-controlled areas.

Afghanistan’s Central Statistic Office (CSO) estimated the total population of Dasht-e Archi at 92,576 people. During the voter registration between May and June 2018, the IEC registered 9,277 people as voters; ten per cent of the population. The turnout, however, was far lower. According to Nasruddin Sahdi, the district governor, Taleban threats and a lack of sufficient training of the IEC workers to use biometric devices negatively affected the turnout. Speaking to AAN he said, Taleban targeted four PCs that operated in the district by shooting rockets and machine guns at them. Therefore, he said the turnout in the district was as low as 400 voters – this is only 4.3 per cent of the registered voters and less than one per cent of the voting age population. (3)

Chahrdara district

In Chahrdara, another contested district, to the west of Kunduz city, the government only controls a small part of the district centre. Therefore, the IEC had opened only one PC in the government-control area and this had remained closed until 11:00 am.

Turnout remained very low. According to district governor Zalmai Faruqi, the Taleban blocked most of the roads leading to district centre to prevent people from reaching the PC. He told AAN that the Taleban also fired mortars and rockets targeting the district centre. According to Faruqi, the number of voters was 450 people, ie 12.5 per cent of the registered voters and around one percent of the population in voting age. The total population of the district, according to CSO, is 80,196 people. The IEC had registered 3,598 voters, 4.4 per cent of the total population.

Aliabad district

In Aliabad, the government presence is larger compared to Dasht-e Archi and Chahrdara and they control almost half of the district. The CSO estimates its total population at 51,455 people. According to IEC data, 7,815 people were registered as voters. This is less than two thirds of the voting age population.

District governor Emamuddin Quraishi told AAN that the turnout was between 2,700 and 2,800 voters, ie 34.5 to 35.8 per cent of the registered voters and slightly over 20 per cent of the total voting age population. Quraishi said “Taleban fired mortar rounds and rockets against the PCs during the Election Day; most voters did not take a risk to get out and to cast their votes.” There were eight PCs in Aliabad, and six of them were open.

Imam Saheb district

Imam Saheb, another contested district in northern Kunduz, also faced serious security threats. The Afghan government controls almost half of it. The remaining half is either control by the Taleban or else is heavily contested by them. The CSO estimates its total population at 220,256 people. The IEC recorded a high number of registered voters, 41,147 people.

According to district governor Mu’in Saedi, the Taleban carried out attacks against PCs in several parts of the district. He told AAN that the Taleban overran two PCs, Ab Forushan primary school and Abdulrahman Turk primary school, and took away election materials, including biometric devices. A further three PCs, out of a total of 19, remained close because of insecurity. Saedi said the turnout was low, with between 4,000 and 5,000 voters. That would be between 9.9 and 12.1 per cent of the total registered voters (between 3.6 and 4.4 per cent of the total voting age population).

Khanabad district

Khan Abad is another example where the government’s presence is larger than the Taleban’s, but where there was a low turnout. The CSO estimated the population at 150,544 people, of which the IEC registered 22,840 people as voters (less than one third of the voting age population). During and after the Election Day the Taleban launched rockets and shot with machine guns at the district centre to disrupt the security. As a result, one PC remained close and two others, out of a total 14 PCs, operated for some hours only in the morning of the Election Day.

District governor Hayatullah Ameri told AAN that insecurity was the major factor that prevented many voters from casting their votes. He refused to share information on the number of voters. However, he said the turnout was “very low.”

Aqtash district

Aqtash is a newly established district largely controlled by the Taleban. The CSO gives a total population estimate of 26,629 people. The IEC registered 4,781 people as voters. According to district governor Zabihullah Aimaq, there were two PCs in the district and both operated on Election Day. Aimaq said there were “good elections” in his district. He refused to give further details about the turnout and security during the Election Day. Haji Fazel, a local from Aqtash, told AAN that, because of Taleban large presence in the district, most people did not take part in the election. He added that the two PCs were both located in government-control area.

Qala-ye Zal district

Qala-ye Zal had 2,583 voters registered by the IEC, but no election took place because of general insecurity and Taleban attacks against the district centre. As a result, all three PCs that were supposed to operate in the district (all in its centre) reportedly remained closed.

Gulbad and Gultepa districts

Both Gulbad and Gultepaare newly established districts that are entirely under Taleban control. Therefore, neither voter registration, nor parliamentary election, took place.

Large voter disenfranchisement in rural and urban areas

Kunduz’ low turnout and its high degree of resulting voter disenfranchisement was caused mainly by the Taleban’s aggressive stance towards the election and high-level of actual violence on Election Day. These problems were exacerbated by the same technical and organisational problems reported from elsewhere in the country. However, the Taleban threats and violence failed to entirely stop Kunduzis from taking part in the election.

The combination of security and organisational problems strongly impacted not only Kunduz’s rural, but also its urban, population. The urban-rural divide observed by AAN in other provinces also manifested itself in Kunduz, as a large majority of voters came from the provincial and some district centres.

The question remains as to whether a larger number of people will take part in the presidential election scheduled for April 2019, if the security situation does not significantly improve.

 

(1) In the 6 November 2018 UNAMA civilian protection special report “2018 Election Violence” that was released while this text was under work, Kunduz province is not mentioned. According to this National Democratic Institute report, already the 2010 parliamentary elections were “plagued by election day violence.” It quotes candidates saying voter turnout was “extremely low”, particularly in Chahrdara and Dasht-e Archi.

(2) Read AAN impressions from the presidential elections in 2014 here and here.

(3) According to the World Bank, nearly two thirds of Afghanistan’s population is below 25 years of age. This gives a countrywide voting age population of around 50 per cent. We use this percentage here roughly, in order to show orders of magnitude, rather than the exact figures.