A very Afghan election 23/5/09

		A very Afghan election 23/5/09
La sfida elettorale contro Karzai e i giochi del dopo elezioni. 44 candidati tra cui due donne, ex comunisti ed ex taelbani, molti di quali "gomnaam", dei signor nessuno senza futuro. Un'analisi di Nushin Arbabzadah autrice dell'antologia: No Ordinary Life: Being Young in the Worlds of Islam. Source: The Guardian
postato il	23 Maggio 2009	analisi
A very Afghan election The Guardian By Nushin Arbabzadah 05/22/2009 Despite an array of candidates, Afghanistan's choice of president will be undermined by the US appointment of a prime minister Forty-four candidates, including former communists, reformed Taliban and professional women have registered to contest the Afghan presidential election on 20 August. The large number of candidates has puzzled the public, leading cynics to point out that Afghanistan has no end of people who believe they are capable of saving the country. According to some Afghan commentators, the minor candidates are simply a headache. They are a waste of time and money because they have almost zero chance of wining. This might be true, but we live in the times of Slumdog Millionaire, where public sympathy often rests with losers, daredevils and underdogs. Locally, the minor candidates are known as the gomnaam, a derogatory term meaning "unknown" (and hence unimportant). Yet the gomnaam also deserve a line or two, at least in acknowledgement of their madness in volunteering to lead a country with a serious security, corruption and drugs crisis. But then again, Afghan politics is not about solving the nation's crisis: everyone knows this election is all about ethnic and tribal power struggles. Hence, the three questions asked about a candidate are: Which tribe? What language? And where were you during the war of the 1980s? If the answers are satisfactory, a candidate receives automatic support from the people of the same ethnic group, regardless of ability, morals or education. The Afghan public's ethnic paranoia has created the most useless sort of politician – the kind that thrives on ethnic suspicion and conspiracy but wouldn't last a day in a healthy society. The gomnaam know they have a greater chance of being killed in a suicide attack than becoming Afghanistan's next president but this has not stopped them from registering. According to cynics, they are using the election to turn themselves from mere unknowns to men and women of repute. Be this as it may, I had a look at the list of candidates and here are a few interesting examples. The first candidates to stand out from a testosterone-filled crowd are the women Frozan Fana and Shahla Atta. The former, a medical doctor, is the widow of Hamid Karzai's first aviation minister, Dr Abdul Rahman, who was beaten to death at Kabul airport in 2002 in a riot led by stranded Hajj pilgrims. She is walking in the footsteps of another female doctor, Massouda Jalal, who ran in the 2004 election and later became women's affairs minister. The fact that Shahla Atta, a member of parliament, is also standing means that the number of female candidates has doubled since 2004 – from one to two. President Karzai might hail this as a statistical success but the number of women activists killed during his presidential term has also multiplied. The women's election ticket? They are Afghans and they are women. By contrast to these two, testosterone is in full evidence in the former Taliban governor Raketti's candidacy. The name Raketti is drawn from the Afghan pronunciation of the English word "rocket". The man in question, Mullah Abdul Salaam, used to be the Taliban's governor of Urozgan province and earned this nickname after displaying an unusual talent for firing rockets. After the Taliban's fall in 2001, Raketti joined the government side and carved himself a niche as "potential negotiator" and "lynchpin in negotiations with the Taliban". Suspicious non-Pashtun media refer to Raketti as the mysterious warlord who tricked the British into turning him into the chief of Musa Qala district, in Helmand. This is presumably because Raketti fits British officials' image of the timeless Afghan warrior. Non-Pashtun sources say he made a fool of the British, promising them to ensure peace but hiding behind walls and calling for air support as soon as the Taliban attacked. Be this as it may, Raketti is now a candidate. His ticket? You want to understand the Taliban? Talk to me, I used to be one. One of the other presidential candidates has a running mate with the unusual name of Muhammad Israel. Mr Israel, an education ministry official, is the son of an unfortunate poet called Akbar Saber. According to Mr Israel, his father's first two poems met disaster: one was lost and the other stolen. His attempts at publication were similarly ill-fated: one publishing house caught fire and another went bankrupt. Saber died without ever being published. None of these candidates has a serious chance of defeating President Karzai. The real battle will be between Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani. But whoever wins the 2009 elections probably needs to be ready to share power with the US's very own as-yet-unelected candidate for Afghanistan. This mysterious figure, whose power and position has not yet been clearly defined, might be Zalmay Khalilzad; Anwar-ul Haq Ahadi, or Ahmad Zia Massoud. Karzai's reaction to the US's attempt to undermine his power has been to suddenly transform himself from a wimp to an energetic beast, doing everything he can to reduce the power of this unwelcome rival. Be this as it may, the Afghan public is becoming aware that currently there are two competitions going on. One is the official Afghan election on 20 August, the other the unofficial US selection process which is happening without Afghan participation. The result is increased confusion and a sense of powerlessness about one's own country's future. But then again, whoever said Afghanistan was a free and sovereign country?