Taliban’s election threat brings back 2009 fears
With the Taliban threatening to disrupt the April 5 presidential election in Afghanistan, it has become clear that the terrorist group has no intention of joining the political mainstream and contributing in a meaningful manner to building a stable, peaceful and democratic country. On Monday, the Afghan Taliban announced that they had ordered all their mujahideen to target election workers, activists, security personnel and Government offices, and warned the common folk against participating in the electoral process, which the group slammed as being an “American conspiracy”. The Taliban's statement is not unexpected. In recent months, there have been election-related attacks for which the Afghan Taliban have taken responsibility. In November 2013, a member of the Independent Election Commission was killed in the northern Province of Kunduz; in January, vice presidential hopeful Ismail Khan survived an assassination attempt in the relatively peaceful western city of Herat; and, in February, two aides of presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah's election campaign were shot dead — also in Herat. As early as this Monday, a motorcycle bomb killed two security personnel and seven civilians near Mr Abdullah's campaign office in Herat. It is hardly a coincidence that Mr Abdullah, a formidable challenger to incumbent Hamid Karzai in the 2009 election, is a presidential favourite this time around as well.
Even during the previous election, the Taliban had issued similar threats. They had accused the West of manipulating results and attacked election workers and voters alike. Violence and intimidation was rampant. The end result was an election with a low turnout, marred by allegations of vote-rigging and ballot-stuffing. With the Taliban continuing to play truant, even as Western combat troops who have served as Afghanistan's security bulwark prepare to return home, it is difficult to see how the upcoming election can be significantly better than the electoral experience in 2009.
Against this backdrop, it is astonishing that the both the Afghan Government and the international community have sought to reconcile with the Taliban. Some argue that the time for fighting is over but since the Taliban remain a force to reckon with, a peace deal with the militant outfit is the only way forward. Even if this were the case, there is no looking away from the fact that the Taliban are simply not interested in any such arrangement. Apart from the direct threat to the election, back-channel talks with the group over the past few years have produced precious little. late last year, for example, the Taliban reportedly sent ‘feelers' to the Karzai Government — some say this is what has led the President to delay signing the Bilateral Security Agreement with the US — which turned out to be false signals. The international community's efforts in this regard have been equally ineffective, if not worse, as last year's Doha debacle proved. The only silver lining here is that the Taliban today have much less popular support that they did before the war. Also, Afghanistan now has state institutions which, though weak and vulnerable, are at least in place. Viewed together, it is unlikely that the Taliban will be able to take over Kabul like in the 1990s. But they remain dangerous enough.