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Hamid Karzai’s main challenger has had enough of governance by patronage.
By ANN MARLOWE
Kabul, Afghanistan
It was midnight this past Sunday when I left the house of Abdullah Abdullah, Hamid Karzai’s leading challenger for the presidency of Afghanistan. Twenty or so men were still waiting to see the candidate, some sitting cross-legged in the grassy courtyard.
When I arrived at 10:30 p.m., one dignitary after another filed into the meeting room: a finance executive, a counter-narcotics official, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, and a female professor at Kabul University. Lesser notables spilled out into the courtyard of the concrete villa, some in Western garb, some in traditional dress. Earlier, the diplomat brother of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud came to pay his respects.
These Afghans don’t believe the line the foreign press is pushing—that Mr. Karzai has the election sewn up. With 10 days until the vote, they’ve come to offer help or cut deals, believing that they’re backing the winner.
Dr. Abdullah, 49 years old, is an ophthalmologist and a former foreign minister of Afghanistan who entered politics by organizing medical care for the Afghan resistance after the Soviet invasion in 1979. He’s running on a platform of overhauling the 2002 Afghan Constitution. He advocates a parliamentary system, political parties, and direct elections of mayors and provincial governors. (They’re currently appointed by the president.)
Dr. Abdullah has single-handedly turned this election into a much-needed referendum on governance. How much direct democracy is enough? When is a people “mature” enough to elect its leaders? Is legitimacy derived from an election, from performance, or from the power of the gun? These are questions that resonate in Afghanistan as much as they do for Americans considering the merits of democracy promotion overseas.
Until recently, Dr. Abdullah’s main rival was his former colleague in Mr. Karzai’s cabinet, former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani. In recent weeks, Dr. Abdullah has pulled ahead significantly. There are 38 other candidates—one of the symptoms of the flawed Afghan electoral process Dr. Abdullah wants to fix. Currently, all it takes to get on the presidential ballot is 10,000 signatures.
While there’s no official poll, the radio station Salam Watandar, in a poll conducted via mobile phones, put Dr. Abdullah at 33%, Mr. Karzai at 27%, the eccentric parliamentarian Ramazan Bashardost at 13%, and Mr. Ghani at 11%.
Mr. Ghani, 60 years old, has focused his campaign on bread-and-butter issues. As finance minister, he started the much-lauded National Solidarity Program for rural development, which introduced economic policies like privatization, a flat tax and a rational tariff system. He is an expert on development economics, and is renowned for his incorruptibility.
But it isn’t clear that Mr. Ghani’s solutions match Afghanistan’s most pressing problems. Foreign journalists tend to focus on rural Afghan poverty. Yet the standard of living for those in towns and cities (about one-third of the population) has improved greatly after nearly a decade of 5%-10% annual GDP growth.
Afghanistan expects 8.5% GDP growth in the fiscal year ending March 2010, up from 3.5% last year, according to Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal. Afghans are natural capitalists, and, thanks in part to Mr. Ghani, they have laws that allow them to prosper. What they lack is laws that allow them to govern themselves effectively.
Mr. Ghani told me in an interview on Aug. 5 that he believes the problem isn’t with the constitution but with corruption. Dr. Abdullah told me he disagrees. He points to the single nontransferable vote electoral system, in which requirements for candidates are so low that dozens compete for one slot. This system has produced members of parliament with only a few percent of the vote. There’s also the lack of accountability of governors and mayors.
Dr. Abdullah’s fundamental point is that good institutions are more important than goodwill. “Even if a person does not want to abuse power,” Dr. Abdullah tells me, “others around him will.” This is a not-so-veiled reference to Mr. Karzai’s brothers. One is an alleged drug dealer and another allegedly demands kickbacks. Then there’s Mr. Ghani’s brother Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, the wealthy chief of the Ahmadzai tribe and an MP notorious for his belligerence.
When I met Mr. Ghani at his compound, he wore shalwar kameez (the traditional Afghan pants suit) and looked like the elegant tribal aristocrat he is. He noted that his Ahmadzai tribesmen have always served as peacemakers between warring tribes.
But there was no stream of Afghan dignitaries, and no feeling of urgency. Mr. Ghani uses “politicized” as a dirty word. The truth is that Afghanistan needs more of the messiness of vibrant political parties and fewer aristocrats supposedly above politics.
The dozens of men and a few women at Dr. Abdullah’s house are motivated by ambition, patriotism, ethnic and personal loyalties, greed and vanity, and they’re cobbling together policies out of the collision and conjoining of individual interests. The scene suggests that Afghan society is capable of mobilizing itself.
When Dr. Abdullah walks in to the meeting room at his compound, all rise. The candidate is also wearing shalwar kameez, topped by a costly looking brown leather mesh jacket. His most memorable feature may be his liquid eyes, but he has an appealing gentleness and speaks in a low, calm voice.
He lacks Mr. Ghani’s ease in interviews. While Mr. Ghani gives pithy quotes—”Afghanistan is not a laboratory for regime change”—Dr. Abdullah tends to go on for too long. He prefers the anecdotal to Mr. Ghani’s abstract epigrams. This may serve him well with Afghanistan’s mainly illiterate voters.
Dr. Abdullah is running an innovative campaign, crisscrossing the country in gatherings that draw thousands of supporters. “I am back among the people, this is the part I enjoy the most,” he says.
Mr. Ghani seems more comfortable in small groups. On unannounced appearances in the poorer parts of Kabul on Aug. 6, he sat in traditional style on the sidewalk talking with 30 or 40 men. Populist, but an inefficient way to reach 17 million registered voters.
In our interview, Dr. Abdullah focuses on the strength of good institutions: “A man said to me that this country won’t work unless you bring back the system of Daoud Khan.” In 1973, the Afghan prince and long-term Prime Minister Daoud Khan overthrew the monarchy and set up a highly repressive, pro-Soviet government. “On the surface, things were OK then. But the system that seemed strong was weak. And when Daoud was killed [in 1978] it fell apart.” For Dr. Abdullah, this is an example of the fallibility of individuals.
Though Dr. Abdullah is less systematic than Mr. Ghani when he discusses the economy, he makes some practical points. “There are no rules to prevent monopoly. Privatization is being done in a random manner. There are no employees’ rights. There is a waste of money in donor projects through multiple subcontracting,” he says.
“There has to be equitable development,” he continues. “The idea was to have development in areas that are not stable,” alluding to the massive infrastructure works by the U.S. Army and U.S. AID in the eastern border provinces. “But by developing those areas that are stable you expand the area of stability.”
I ask Dr. Abdullah if he thinks he’ll win. In typical Afghan fashion he dodges the question. But the people that have gathered here at midnight aren’t here for their health.