Afghan poll faces monitor crisis

By Andrew North BBC correspondent in Kabul

Continuing violence is driving away foreign observers

A top election observer body has said Afghanistan's security situation makes it impossible to monitor its first-ever polls, due in October.

In a report obtained by the BBC, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said it was not safe for "meaningful" monitoring.

The OSCE added that examining the elections too closely at this stage could actually undermine the process.

It also appears there will be few other monitors to fill the gap.

The current and anticipated conditions in Afghanistan are significantly below... the minimal necessary for any meaningful election observation OSCE report

Large numbers of observers have been a feature of elections in countries recovering from conflict or turmoil, helping to ensure free and fair voting.

Examples in recent years include Cambodia, East Timor and Bosnia.

The Afghan authorities and the United Nations, which is organising the polls, were hoping there would also be a significant foreign monitoring presence in Afghanistan.

But the Vienna-based OSCE - which has monitored elections in many emerging democracies - has decided its staff face too great a risk here if they try to do their usual job.

No-go areas

"Current and anticipated conditions in Afghanistan are significantly below those regarded by the OSCE as the minimal necessary for any meaningful election observation," it says in an assessment carried out by an exploratory team which came to the country in July.

Afghanistan is due to hold a historic free election

"Freedom of movement is heavily circumscribed," the report concludes.

"There are large no-go areas for the international community."

Instead, the organisation is sending what it calls an election support team, just a handful of people who will avoid any comment on the conduct of the polls.

Since the report was written, security has worsened.

More than 20 people have died in violence in the past five days alone - much of it blamed on suspected Taleban or other militants, which the organisation says pose a "considerable threat".

The risk for anyone involved with the process suffering "injuries or indeed deaths must be considered in the medium to high category", the OSCE team reported, given the numerous threats to the election issued by militants, including the Taleban.

Relief monitors?

Many Kabul-based analysts are not surprised at the organisation's decision.

Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit - who has been following the build-up to the October polls closely - says it confirms his doubts about holding the elections now.

Foreign monitors poured into Cambodia for the vote there

"If we are saying it was too dangerous an environment in which to send monitors and observers," he says, "then in my estimation, it was too dangerous an environment in which to be holding elections."

However, now elections are going ahead, Mr Wilder says it is essential to try to build up a larger domestic monitoring effort.

One idea, he suggests, is to train some of the thousands of relief workers around the country to act as stand-in monitors.

But time is running out, with polling day in less than six weeks' time.

So far, there is just one significant Afghan observation effort - the newly formed Free and Fair Elections Foundation for Afghanistan (Fefa) - backed by the American-based National Democratic Institute, and funded by the US government's development agency USAID.

Chairman Mohammed Saeed Niazi says they are training 1,500 Afghan observers - but admits that will give them the capacity to "observe only 12% of polling stations".

And this will only be in towns and cities, not in the rural areas where most people live.

By comparison, in Cambodia's parliamentary election last year, every voting station was covered by some 20,000 foreign and local observers.

'Short-changed'

Other international bodies are not filling the gap left by the OSCE.

Other countries holding their first elections got a lot more peacekeeping troops than Afghanistan Andrew Wilder director of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit

The European Union has sent a small team of election experts. But, like the OSCE, they will not comment on the process.

The US-funded Asia Foundation is backing an observation mission from the Thai-based Asian Network for Free Elections (Anfrel). But it will have less than 50 staff.

By polling day, there may be fewer than 100 foreign election experts here.

United Nations spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva admits they were hoping for more - both foreign and local.

But he insisted: "Free and fair elections are not determined by the number of observers." And he added: "Let's be very clear, we are not talking about a perfect process."

That is something you hear from many others involved in organising the polls, warning people not to expect Afghanistan to meet international election standards on its first try.

But Andrew Wilder says things could have been better - the country has been short-changed by the international community, he argues, in terms of security as well as monitoring.

"Other countries holding their first elections got a lot more peacekeeping troops than Afghanistan," he argues.

'Double-edged'

In their report, the OSCE team raise another issue: whether too much scrutiny of the Afghan political process at its current stage of development could actually be detrimental.

Monitoring is a "double-edged sword," the report says, "enhancing credibility where the process receives favourable comment, but challenging public confidence if observation identifies substantial failings".

As things stand now, the OSCE says monitoring the Afghan elections in the way it has others "would not be fair, helpful or constructive".

However, there is also a feeling among some election organisers - who did not want to be named - that the monitoring body may have been too perfectionist in its stance.

That the OSCE is expecting Western standards of political organisation in a country that has never had a proper election and which is still struggling with poor communications, widespread illiteracy and poverty - not to mention the security problems.

Continuing conflict

At the heart of this may be an emerging debate over how Afghanistan should be classified right now - is the country still in conflict or post-conflict?

Many governments and other organisations often refer to it as a "post-conflict country".

The OSCE disagrees in its report: "Afghanistan has not yet advanced to post conflict status."

Of course, compared to the Russian invasion in the 1980s and the subsequent civil war in the 1990s, Afghanistan is unquestionably safer.

But in the past year, an estimated 1,000 people - including aid workers, government officials, soldiers and insurgents - have died in violence.

Thousands of American troops remain here and are involved in daily clashes with insurgents.

The country is far from secure.