Afghan warlords face election ban

By Andrew North
BBC News, Kabul

Many warlords have still not disarmed

Several candidates in Afghanistan's forthcoming elections who are still commanding militia groups will be disqualified, officials say.

More than 20 alleged 'commander candidates' are in the frame, although the final number excluded is expected to be much lower.

Campaigning for Afghan parliamentary and provincial polls, due to be held in September 18, is already under way.

Afghan electoral rules bar members of "unofficial military armed groups".

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It is a surprising move because all 5,800 candidates have already been vetted by the Election Complaints Commission (ECC) and the ballot papers printed weeks ago.

Dismay

Just 11 people were excluded for being linked to illegal armed groups when the candidate list was published in July - from 208 originally facing such complaints.

Campaigning for the polls is already underway.

The ECC says many of these complaints could not be substantiated.

In a nation where militia commanders have held sway over Afghans' lives for decades and where many are accused of war crimes, the decision was greeted with dismay in many quarters.

"It is surprising," commented the Erada daily in one of many caustic newspaper editorials, how many candidates "are known criminals whose hands are stained with the nations' blood."

Even the United Nations, which is jointly running the elections, has acknowledged widespread "disappointment" and "disillusionment" with the vetting process, in a regular political rights report it carries out with Afghanistan's human rights commission.

The ultimate answer to such concerns, say election officials, is the secret ballot.

The fear is that such staples of democratic elections may be no defence against powerful commanders in their local areas.

"Is it just an alibi?"

"Afghanistan has been under the shadow of the gun so long, even their mere presence can be enough to intimidate people," says Frances Vendrell, the European Union's special envoy to Afghanistan, who has taken a close interest in the issue.

That is why many Afghan commentators wanted to see these militia leaders removed by the centrally-run vetting process before they could get on the ballot.

Grant Kippen, the ECC's chairman, rejects accusations the body is trying to make up for being initially too lenient.

Some critics charge that the vetting process was flawed from the start

He says they are considering new accusations that certain individuals have not done enough to disarm. "At any point in time, any person or organisation can bring forward a complaint."

Some international officials involved in the election process believe it is not the ECC who should be facing criticism.

Although it was the EEC that announced which commanders were to be barred, its decision was based entirely on the recommendations of a shadowy body known as the Joint Secretariat.

Set up earlier this year, it is responsible for overseeing Afghanistan's various disarmament initiatives.

It brings together a number of security organisations - among them the NDS, Afghanistan's intelligence service, Ministry of Defence and Interior officials and representatives from the US military, Nato and the UN.

"There will be conflict"

Many of those involved in the election process accuse the Joint Secretariat of being interested only in stability, rather than on how many weapons or militia fighters an accused candidate might control.

In many ways, putting stability first defines the whole approach taken by the government of President Hamid Karzai over the past few years towards militia commanders.

Better to have them inside where they can be watched and co-opted, goes the thinking, rather than on the outside causing trouble.

But in the long run, argues Professor Wadir Safi of Kabul University, this risks "much more trouble in the future, and less stability", if many of these commanders win seats and significant power.

Joint Secretariat officials were reluctant to discuss how they decided who and who not to reject.

But from talking to several of those involved, a picture emerges of a relatively arbitrary process.

It started with the candidate list being compared against a giant data base of every militia commander and his assets, run by the UN-backed disarmament programme.

But names that matched up were not automatically excluded.

Details on the database had to be re-checked. Some information was wrong, or out of date.

But ultimately "each decision was a different political judgement," said Basil Massey, deputy head of the UN disarmament programme, which had an observer rather than voting role at Secretariat meetings because it was the information source.

"There were no set criteria," Mr Massey said.

Another source gave a similar account, that decisions on who to exclude were made "keeping in mind political and ethnic rivalries".

Asked if this meant a relatively weak commander in one area with a small number of weapons under his control would be excluded, while another commander in a neighbouring province with more weapons and power kept on the candidate list, the source answered: "Yes"

Lt Colonel Tony Feagin, the US coalition representative on the Secretariat, denied that security and political implications was the sole arbiter.

"We only excluded people we had evidence on," he said.

He said the US role in the process was minor. "The final decision was made by the Afghans," Lt Colonel Feagin said. "We were there to provide balance."

Asked what meant, he said: "To make sure there was no political or ethnic bias in the decision."

When the Joint Secretariat presented its first list of exclusions in July, the BBC has learned from several sources that the ECC did question it.

"We were ready to be more aggressive," said one.

"We put the question 'what if we don't accept these 11 names?'" In other words, what would happen if they pushed for more candidates to be struck off.

The answer that came back from the Secretariat, this source said, was: "There will be conflict".

One senior official involved in organising the elections asked, "what has changed?", with these decisions being reviewed all over again just weeks before the election.