‘Whoever wins, there should be peace’

Ishaq Timuri, 20, scans the campaign posters in front of his carpet shop on Chicken Street, Kabul’s busy tourist shopping hub. Timuri, who was too young to vote in Afghanistan’s last polls four years ago, is determined to exercise his choice this time round. “My main concern is security,” says the young businessman, the bulk of whose income comes from expatriate customers as well as foreign soldiers posted in Afghanistan. Timuri’s elder brother often travels to Herat to source carpets and kilims for the store. “Now, the road has become so unsafe that each trip is an expedition. Besides the Taliban, you can get kidnapped just for driving a nice car. Maybe this will change, with the elections.”

Amidst threats of insurgent violence, widespread fraud as well as dubious records of some candidates, on August 20th Afghanistan will vote for its next president in what will be, its largest electoral exercise since the defeat of the Taliban. Over 40 candidates, including 2 women, are in the fray, and around 17 million people have registered to vote.

“It is a vital turning point for the country,” says Khoja Nizamuddin,50, shelling almonds outside his curio shop in Kabul. While the rest of his family moved to Pakistan during the civil war, Nizamuddin continues to live in Kabul. Like the last time, he intends to vote for the incumbent Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun with ties to the royalist clans of Kandahar. Despite being derisively labelled ‘the mayor of Kabul’ by critics for his limited control over the rest of the country, Karzai has emerged as the frontrunner in the race. “He is a good man, but he was put in difficult situations by warlords as well as the foreigners,” says Nizamuddin. “He is the most likely to win, because he is the only one who can stop this war.”

Agrees Zeba Amiri, 20, “Karzai knows how to be a president, and knows how the government works. It will take a lot of time for a new president to figure this out.” Amiri, a teacher, points out that the administration has rebuilt a lot of schools across the country.

Karzai’s main challenge comes from Dr Abdullah Abdullah, an ophthalmologist who was part of the mujahideen faction led by the charismatic Ahmed Shah Massoud in the Panjshir valley. Dr Abdullah, who served as Karzai’s foreign minister until being sacked in 2006, is seen as a leader of the north, especially the ethnic Tajiks. “He is an honest and incorruptible man,” says Maleeha, a TV producer in a government-run channel. “If the results are according to our votes, and if there is no fraud or conspiracy, then he will certainly win.”

Unlike the 2004 polls, the forthcoming elections will be the first to be coordinated by the Afghans themselves, under an Independent Elections Commission. In addition to the presidential elections, there are about 3,000 candidates vying for provincial council seats across the country.  Part of the anticipation has been created by Afghanistan’s emerging media, which has been buzzing with news related to the elections. In a first, the country’s largest private TV channel, Tolo, has been conducting debates between candidates. For young voters like Fatima Hassanzada, these have been crucial in helping make up her mind. “I will vote for Ramazan Bashardost (a candidate from the minority Hazara community) because he has higher education, and he wants to fight corruption,” says the student. Her greatest hope, she says, is that the education system will improve. “We need jobs so people don’t have to go to Pakistan and Iran to work,” she says.

While young voters like Hassanzada are cautiously upbeat about the exercise, there is also a feeling that this election may well be Afghanistan’s last chance at achieving stability. “Whoever wins, there should be peace,” says Nizamuddin. “For the past four decades I have seen almost every kind of government come and go, but I have had just one demand. I am a businessman. I just want my shop to run.”