Fall 08
Ethnicity, Corruption and Voting Behavior in Afghanistan
David Esmati
Abstract. Throughout Afghanistan’s tumultuous decades of war, the constant tug of power among the various ethnicities has made the country one of the most misunderstood places in the world. In a country of roughly 30 million people, Afghans have fought many foreign powers and civil wars trying to establish a representative government that is legitimate and effective. As the international community begins to withdraw their troops by the end of 2014, the stalemate war between the Taliban and the Afghan National Army has once again forced the Afghan government to provide a leader who can form a coalition government embodying the various ethnicities present in the state. Ethnic conflict is still a key variable in understanding Afghanistan’s political landscape. This paper addresses whether the Afghan people actually vote on the basis of merit and qualifications of the individual candidates, or whether they simply favor one candidate over another because they share the same ethnic background. The study assesses Afghanistan’s 2009 elections to highlight variables other than ethnicity which may affect voting behavior. The study concludes that Afghan people do vote along ethnic lines. It also indicates that during the 2009 election, Hamid Karzai had a larger payoff from corruption than did Dr. Abdullah.
New York University- International Relations Esmati
Introduction
In the last decade, Afghanistan has experienced tremendous changes both politically and economically. Since the fall of the Taliban, the Afghan people have had the chance to work alongside the international community in building the country’s infrastructure, state and government. Afghanistan had its first democratically held election in 2009, after more than a decade of civil war. Previous leaders were either killed or forced out of power and exiled.1
Nonetheless, the election of 2009 was the first time that Afghanis went out to voting booths and elected their leader, sparking debate in the country regarding ethnicity, cooperation and the willingness of people to choose a leader who might not be from their ethnic background. For this reason, the issue of ethnic conflict and coexistence will play a major role in the de-escalation of violence and efforts toward further development. Over the course of Afghanistan’s history, the majority of internal conflicts have resulted from ethnic tension, but the issue of ethnicity often has been overlooked throughout development efforts. Time after time, Afghanistan has spiraled into political chaos, with billions of dollars in humanitarian aid lost to corruption and inefficiency. In order for the Afghan people to have a government that can address their political and economic needs, ethnic tension must be at the forefront of any prospective leader’s agenda.
It is also important to note that unlike in the United States, there are no major political parties to provide the candidates with an anchor to build on the party’s political ideologies.2 For those who decide to run for President and other senior level positions, Afghanistan’s political nature and the non-existence of a political party force politicians to rely on ethnic support and ethnic-led initiatives to win their constituents’ votes. It is thus critical to assess the role of ethnicity and how it affects both the political and social nature of voters. My hypothesis is that due to the lack of
Afghan national identity, Afghanistan’s 2009 election involved ethnic voting and levels of
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Esmati corruption benefitting one ethnicity more than the other. This paper analyzes these matters by providing a political background and historical context of the many ethnicities in Afghanistan. It then discusses the Afghan civil war after the withdrawal of the Soviets, along with the present tensions among the many ethnicities. Following the ethnic tensions, the election of 2009 will pull together the variables of ethnicity among voters to examine the voting behavior of Afghan citizens. Data analysis will highlight whether the two leading candidates of the 2009 election –
Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah – have received votes based on their merits or on their ethnicity, along with other attributes such as the literacy rate of the population, and which ethnicity benefitted more from corruption.
Ethnicities of Afghanistan
Figure 1 Source: Afghanistan Election Data
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Over the course of history, Afghanistan has experienced significant foreign influence and threats to be conquered by the Turks, Persians, Russians and British. The geography of the state has piqued the interests of Western powers due to its strategic location in Central Asia.
Afghanistan shares a border to its West with the Islamic Republic of Iran and with Turkmenistan, both of which have abundant oil and natural energy resources. On the North, Afghanistan shares a border with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, also energy-rich states. In the East and South,
Afghanistan shares a controversial border with Pakistan. Rough estimates of the ethnic composition today are as follows: Pashtuns 44%, Tajiks 25%, Hazara 10%, and Uzbek 8%
(Simonsen, 2006). Since these groups are scattered all over the country, it is evident that by looking at the map of ethnicities, there is a concentration of Pashtuns in the South; and of Tajiks,
Hazaras and Uzbeks predominantly in the Northern Parts of Afghanistan.3
Pashtuns consist of the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan; historically, they have been the most politically influential. They comprise about 30 tribes, each consisting of a clan or its own lineage. Of the 30, the “five major groups or confederations (are) the Durrani, Ghilzai,
Karlanri, Sarbani, and Ghurghscht.”4 Most of the Durrani are found in the southwest, from Farah to Kandahar. The Ghilzai reside in the southeastern areas, usually from Kabul to Kandahar. The nomadic (kuchee) lifestyle of Pashtuns has led to negligible literacy rates, with the majority of people living in rural areas. Despite the numerous conquerors of Afghanistan, Pashtuns have showed little interest in following the policies or guidance of external actors. Their strict tribal loyalty has retained their independence and has led them to reject foreign intervention (Wiebke and Frost, 2011).
The Tajiks are predominantly of Central Asian origin, sharing a kinship with neighboring
Tajikistan. Compared to the Pashtuns, the Tajiks relay “their loyalty to families and community
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Esmati and live in settled communities rather than leading a nomadic lifestyle.”5 Of the many ethnicities,
Tajiks have been able to jockey for power with the Pashtuns. Rulers from the “Tajik led
Afghanistan under two brief periods: (i) for nine months in 1929 under Habibullah Khan and (ii) from 1992 to 1996 under President Burhanuddin Rabbani.”6 The Tajiks aligned themselves with the Northern Alliance group, which cooperated with the United States and the international community in an effort to oust the Taliban regime.
The Hazaras live mainly in the mountainous central provinces of Afghanistan and are present in the provinces of Jowzjan and Badghis. Since most Hazaras are Shi’a Muslims, they have “historically experienced discrimination and have been seen as the traditional underclass of
Afghan society.”7 As a result of political and social repression, the Hazara have managed to unite and form their own resistance groups that protect their interests; their survivability depends on these groups constantly fighting to maintain their own lands (Harpviken, 1997).
Lastly, Uzbeks are situated mainly in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. Much like the Turkmens, Uzbeks do not consider Farsi as their first language. Instead, they speak Uzbeki, a
Turkic-based language that closely resembles Turkish. Additionally, most Uzbeks are involved in the agricultural facet of Afghanistan, growing mainly grain and vegetables. They live on arable land and are able to buy and sell agricultural products. As a result, “Uzbeks are the successful businessmen, silver and goldsmiths and leatherworkers of Afghanistan8.” For these reasons, Uzbeks in the past decade have been striving for greater political participation and have called for a federal Afghanistan and autonomy for the Northern provinces.
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Afghan History
After the fall of the Safavid Empire, Ahmad Shah Durrani, regarded as the founder of
Afghanistan, took control of Kabul and a vast surrounding area that had belonged to the Persian
Empire,9 under whose rule the Mongols, Persians, Turks, and Hindus had been living together.
Once Durrani came into power, and believing in ethnic superiority, he filled the army and municipal positions with ethnic Pashtuns. By having a Pashtun majority in all positions of power, the Durranis led a campaign to rid Hazaras of their land and “dispossess the Hazaras of their land and give it to members of their own tribes.”10
On the other hand, the Tajiks saw the rise of the Pashtuns as a direct threat. The Tajiks pledged their loyalty to the Britons and the Russians. In 1892, the British invaded Afghanistan through the route of India. Seeing this as an opportunity to rebalance power in Kabul, the Tajiks,
Uzbeks and Hazaras supported the British in trying to overthrow the Pashtun-led government.
However, the British appointed to the throne a Pashtun named Abdur Rahman, who saw this as an opportunity to once again get rid of those who tried to challenge Pashtun supremacy. By bringing in western military equipment, and with the aid of the British, Rahman instilled absolute
Pashtun control in Afghanistan which continued with the reign of Abdur Rahman’s grandson,
Aminullah. However, Aminullah’s reign came to an end in 1928, with the rise of Habibullah
Kalakani, a Kabuli and a Tajik. The Tajiks seized control of Kabul and for the first time in three centuries, gained home rule.11
The Tajik rule of Afghanistan was short lived. Mohammad Nadir Shah, a Pashtun who had joined Kalakani to overthrow Aminullah, favored a Pashtun-led government. By overthrowing Kalakani in ten months, Nadir Shah began the “Pashtunization process,” in which he made “Pashto the language of administration, censored Farsi media, exiled Farsi speaking
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Shah’s cruelty caught up with him in 1933, when a Hazara student assassinated him.
Following Nadir Shah’s death, his son, Zahir Shah, seized control of Kabul. During his reign, Afghanistan witnessed the rise of regional powers, such as the independence of Tajikistan from the Soviet Union and the creation of a Muslim India under the new name of Pakistan. Zahir
Shah isolated Afghanistan to keep them from intervening in regional affairs and maintain control of his Pashtun-dominant government.13 He reached out to Moscow in hopes of military aid. In return, the Soviet Union provided military weapons and allowed Zahir Shah to maintain his ruthless rule. On April 28, 1978, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDP) was created to overthrow Zahir Shah and install a government that represented all ethnicities in
Afghanistan. History once again repeated itself, leading to a division in the PDPA between the
“Tajik Parcham Faction and the Pashtun Khalq faction.”14 The Pashtun Khalq faction overpowered the Parcham Faction and came into power, allowing Hafizullah Amin to take control. Much like his previous Pashtun counterparts, he began the “Pashtunization process” and started to use the military, which was now equipped with Soviet weaponry, to rid Afghanistan of ethnic minorities.15 To control the volatile situation, the Soviet Union needed an outlet to get rid of Amin and bring a pro-Soviet leader into Kabul. This led to Hafizullah Amin’s killing, by the
Russians on December 23, 1979. His successor, Babrak Karmal, a Tajik, sought Moscow’s support, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the same month. The invasion quickly forced all ethnicities to put aside their cultural and ethnic differences and take up arms to defend their homelands against the “infidel.” The “Mujahedeen” used guerrilla warfare to fight the
Soviets on every front, killing 13,310 Soviet soldiers and wounding 35,478.16 The unexpected unity among the many ethnicities, in addition to U.S. weaponry, delivered a devastating blow to
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2002).
Afghan Civil War
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan witnessed a political vacuum, without any one ethnicity or party in control over Kabul. The victorious Mujahedeen front deteriorated into civil war, reverting to the model of ethnic superiority. In 1992, Ahmad Shah
Massoud, a Tajik, rose through the ranks to lead the Tajik forces. Simultaneously, Abdul Rashid
Dostum, head of the Uzbek forces, entered Kabul to deflect Massoud and his forces from capturing Kabul.17
While Massoud was battling Dostum in Kabul, the Pashtun movement was gearing up to lead a major offensive to take control of Afghanistan, starting in the Southern region. This movement, known as the Taliban, directed all the hate propaganda towards Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities, blaming them for the political vacuum and the turmoil in the country. The Taliban believed ethnic cleansing was necessary to bring stability to the region. After pushing the Tajiks,
Uzbeks and Hazaras out of Kabul, the Taliban led a full-out attack on both the cultural and social aspects of these groups. They destroyed any form of Persian or Farsi music, books, films, newspapers and culture. Once again, the Pashtuns started the “Pashtunization process,” massacring over 8,000 Hazaras in August of 1998,18 conveying the message that the Pashtun majority would look to seize control of all areas in Afghanistan.19 The radical Taliban regime enforced strict Islamic Sharia Law as the law of the land. Seeing the Taliban as a major threat, the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, under the name “The Northern Alliance,”20 defended the ethnic minorities from the Taliban. With Ahmad Shah Massoud as their leader, the Northern Alliance managed to push them back from the North to the center of Afghanistan.
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As a result, Afghanistan erupted into a bloody ethnic civil war between the Northern
Alliance and the Taliban. Surrounding regional players quickly chose sides. Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan provided aid to the Northern Alliance by providing a military base and weaponry. The
Taliban were backed by Pakistan, with Islamabad funding the Pashtun rebels.21 The fight continued for at least a decade. The civil war came to an end only when the Taliban decided to protect Osama Bin Laden along with the occurrence of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, forcing the United States to intervene. The U.S. geared up to fight terrorism and ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan, leading to the appointment of the interim government headed by Hamid Karzai in December of 2001(Simonsen, 2006).
In the election of 2004, there were too many external variables to address the issue of ethnic composition, since the elected leader had strong backing from the United States and the international community (Simonsen, 2004). The election of 2009 was a landmark because, for the first time, two candidates went head to head knowing they each had an equal opportunity to take the seat. This is key to an effective election, because candidates in the 2004 election knew that the United States and the international community had favored Hamid Karzai simply because they needed some form of a central government in Afghanistan to avoid another political vacuum. As a result, the candidates began to drop out of the election and join the government of
Hamid Karzai.22 The elections of 2009 also had a well-represented pool of candidates that included the broad spectrum of Afghans throughout the region.
2009 Elections
The 2009 presidential election had serious contenders for the first time. After the toppling of the Taliban regime and the appointment of Hamid Karzai as President, the Afghan people began to doubt the political and economic decisions their current leader was making on their
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Esmati behalf. The Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Turkmens were once again cautious about the Karzai administration because of Karzai’s Pashtun background (Rohrbacher, 2012). Thus, the 2009 election enabled Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern Alliance’s former Foreign Minister, to run against Hamid Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kart-e-Parwan, Kabul, son of a Pashtun father and a Tajik mother. Growing up in a war-torn country, Dr. Abdullah had graduated from Kabul
University’s Department of Medicine in 1983. His stance against corruption and desire to end the drug trade allowed Dr. Abdullah to become part of the Northern Alliance as their spokesperson for regional matters.23
On the other hand, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, was born in the village of Karz, near
Kandahar, of the Popalzai Pashtun Tribe. He went to Habibia High School and traveled in 1976 to India as an exchange student at Simla University, majoring in International Relations and
Political Science. He obtained his Master’s degree in 1983.24 The UN-sponsored Bonn
Conference on December 5th, 2001 elected Karzai as Chairman of the Interim Administration of
Afghanistan. He was then voted in as President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on
October 9th, 2004 (Simonsen, 2005).
The brief biographies of Dr. Abdullah and Hamid Karzai convey a lack of Afghan national identity. After Hamid Karzai took oath of office on October 9th 2004, the ethnic minority groups once again felt marginalized. They wanted a non-Pashtun leader because of the atrocities committed by the previous Pashtun leaders (Rohrbacher, 2012). Of course the Pashtuns again wanted a Pashtun Afghan President since they believed they were the rightful rulers of the country (Wiebke and Frost, 2011). With this in mind, the 2009 election was the only way for the
Afghan people to voice their concerns and choose a leader who represented their interests. The
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Esmati lack of Afghan national identity led to constituents choosing the next President of Afghanistan on the basis of ethnicity.25
Data Analysis
The effect of ethnic voting in Afghanistan’s 2009 election, based on the literature and the existing theories provided is due to the lack of Afghan national identity and foreign intervention.
Afghan national identity means that an individual will consider himself first by nationality rather than by ethnicity. This is key in hypothesizing about the variables affecting the outcome of the
2009 elections. The lack of Afghan national identity, as the empirical evidence states, has been rooted in Afghan history for hundreds of years. The constant tug of power between the Pashtuns,
Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras has forced many Afghans to identify more with their ethnicity than their nationality.
To analyze whether constituents voted on the basis of ethnicity, the study consulted the
2009 election results available from the Independent Election Committee of Afghanistan.
However, despite the several regression models, it is not possible to determine definitively if people of one ethnicity are voting for the candidate who shares their ethnicity. This conclusion can be only an estimate. The study has taken into account several variables. As for the number of votes for Karzai and Abdullah, the votes are counted at the district level. The Master polling center list takes into account 6,969 polling centers within the 34 provinces, including every polling center ID. The compiled results include the associated province and district, the total votes won for Karzai/Abdullah for that given district, the percentage of the population living in rural areas, the total population for the given district, the literacy rate of the district, the number of highlighted states to have fraudulent votes, and the ethnic majority of the district.
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Figure 2 Source: Afghanistan Election Data After compiling all of the variables, a regression analysis was conducted:
Y = β0 + βxX + βzZ + βxzXZ + ε
X is the ethnicity of the candidate and Y is the number of votes tallied for the candidate, which is the dependent variable. Z accounts for all the control variables such as the literacy rate and percent rural. The regression tested the correlation between the Pashtun voters who favored
Karzai and the Tajik voters who favored Abdullah as well as the correlation between the ethnicity of the district and the votes in the district. The reasoning behind this is the historical connection as explained in the previous section of the paper, that ethnic minorities such as the
Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Turkmen would like to see a Tajik leader who can represent their interests rather than a Pashtun leader who will once again marginalize any ethnicity except their own. The log of the percent Pashtun and the log of the percent Tajik were taken to normalize
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Esmati each candidate’s variables. The closer to one, the more individuals voted on ethnic lines. Given the previous assumption, the following results were concluded:
Summary Statistics
Figure 3
Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Votes for 388 .435 .496 0 1 Karzai Votes for 388 .329 .470 0 1 Abdullah Rural 388 .903 .261 0 1
Lit. Rate 388 .21 .11 0 1
Corruption 388 .108 .199 0 1
Ordinary Least Squares Regression and with Fixed Effects
Figure 4
Votes for Karzai Coefficient Coefficient (Standard Error) (Standard Error) .354*** .353*** Log % Pashtun (.021) (.021) .086** (-.038)** Percent Rural (.039) (.082) -.001*** -.001*** Literacy Rate (.000) (.0009) .014* 0.122* Corruption (.076) (0.122) - .029* Corrup.* Log % Pashtun - (.132) R2 = .461 *** significant at 1 percent ** significant at 5 percent * significant at 10 percent
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Figure 5
Votes for Abdullah Coefficient Coefficient (Standard Error) (Standard Error) .379*** .367*** Log % Tajik (.022) (.023) -.048** .014* Percent Rural (.041) (.084) .172*** .0008 Literacy Rate (.043) (.0009) -.023* -.048** Corruption (.067) (.067) - .416*** Corrup.* Log % Tajik - (.404) R2 = 0.462 *** significant at 1 percent ** significant at 5 percent * significant at 10 percent
This table reveals several outcomes that can explain the voting behavior of the 2009 election. On the “Ordinary Least Squares Regression” table, the votes for Karzai column depicts that the Pashtun ethnicity heavily favors Hamid Karzai due to his Pashtun background, the same scenario for Dr. Abdullah. Furthermore, a coefficient of .3544 with a standard error of .0210 states that for a 10 percent increase in the percentage of Pashtun voters, Hamid Karzai received a
3.5% increase in vote for that given district. On the other hand, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, having a coefficient of .379 and a standard error of .022, signifies that for a 10 percent increase in the percentage of Tajik voters, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah received a 3.7% increase in the number of votes for that given district. In addition, with a Percent Rural of .086 and a standard error of .039, for a 10 percentage point increase in the number of people in rural areas, Hamid Karzai’s votes increased by about .9% percentage point. As for Dr. Abdullah’s percent of rural, a coefficient of
.379 with a standard error of .0227 conveys that for a 10 percentage point increase in the number of people in rural areas, Dr. Abdullah’s vote’s decreased by about .05%. The table also notes that
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Esmati with a -.048 coefficient and a standard error of .041, the majority of Dr. Abdullah’s votes came not from rural but from urban areas. Interestingly, the literacy rate variable explains the percentage of the voter’s literate for each candidate. Hamid Karzai’s -.0016 literacy rate compared to Dr. Abdullah’s .1724, conveys that Dr. Abdullah’s voters, roughly, were more literate than Hamid Karzai’s.
The literacy rate between Karzai and Abdullah’s voters are opposite, signifying that
Hamid Karzai’s constituents are from rural areas and do not have access to adequate education.
As seen in figure 2, the majority of those who are of Pashtun ethnicity are situated in the
Southern region of Afghanistan. However, Dr. Abdullah has won more votes from urban areas primarily in the Northern region, where constituents have a higher literacy rate. Comparing the two literacy rates shows that voting based on ethnicity has played a greater role in areas with a lower literacy rate.
In addition to ethnicity, the reported level of corruption throughout the 2009 election was staggering. The Independent Election Commission highlighted stations where more than 600 or more votes to a single candidate at or above the 95% mark were believed to be fraudulent.
Figures 4 and 5 illustrate the corruption levels for the two major ethnicities during the elections.
In order to formulate the two variables, the number of highlighted votes was divided by the total votes for a given district. After determining a corruption index at the district level along with the majority ethnicity, the study then multiplied the corruption index and the majority ethnicity to assess whether or not Hamid Karzai (Pashtun) or Dr. Abdullah (Tajik) favored more from the corruption levels. Although the corruption coefficients in figures 4 and 5 are not as strong as my hypothesis had initially predicted, they do suggest corruption favoring a certain candidate.
Hamid Karzai’s corruption coefficient of .014 and a standard error of .076 compared to Dr.
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Abdullah’s corruption coefficient of -.023 and a standard error of .067 suggests that Hamid
Karzai favored roughly more from corruption. The corruption coefficients indicate that for every
10 percent increase in the percentage point of Pashtun voters, Hamid Karzai benefitted .14% in votes from corruption, whereas Dr. Abdullah suffered .23% in votes from corruption.
Furthermore, the study conducted a regression to see the marginal effect of corruption when the ethnic majority is identified to support Karzai or not. A coefficient of .122 is suggestive enough to indicate that there was a linkage between corruption levels and ethnicity. Finally, the study multiplied corruption and the log percentage of the two main ethnicities to get another perspective. By including the corruption variable in the same regression as the literacy rate, percent rural and ethnicity, the regression assessed the interaction of corruption in regards to the independent variables listed above. The listed coefficients for this interaction once again suggest
Hamid Karzai profiting from the corruption levels. This outcome sheds light on Hamid Karzai’s administration of the 2009 election. The Independent Election Commission reported that the majority of the corruption allegations had been reported in the south and southeast regions of
Afghanistan. Figure 6 shows the highlighted stations with fraudulent votes, and that both the coefficients and the highlighted stations support the claim that Hamid Karzai (Pashtuns) had a slightly greater payoff from the corruption at the district levels compared to Dr. Abdullah
(Tajiks).
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Figure 6 Source: Afghanistan Election Data Conclusion
Overall, the 2009 election once again brought to the surface the tensions that had not been addressed during the British and Soviet invasion. Even after the civil war and the United
States’ intervention, the ethno-demography of Afghanistan makes it a complex region to understand. The election of Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun once again worried the ethnic minority groups in Afghanistan, because of the atrocities committed in the past by Pashtun leaders. Ever since the creation of the Afghan state, the ethnicities have been constantly in a state of war amongst themselves or with external actors. The Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Turkmen throughout Afghan history have been battling the Pashtuns for a justly representative government. The Pashtuns, seeing this as a threat to their right to being the true “Afghans,” have on every occasion challenged the ethnic minorities. By controlling the majority of the
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Esmati government, military and external relations, the Pashtuns have been able to marginalize most people who are not from the same ethnicity. Pashtun leaders such as Ahmad Shah Durrani,
Abdur Rahman, Aminullah Khan, Mohammad Nadir Shah, Zahir Shah and the recent Taliban have brutally ruled Afghanistan in hopes of fulfilling the “Pashtunization” process.
Due to hundreds of years of ethnic tension amongst the Tajiks and the Pashtuns, the split in voting also can be explained by the historical geographic settlement of the different ethnic tribes during the creation of the state. The empirical evidence released by the Afghan election board suggests a lack of physical movement in Afghanistan, for example, Tajiks migrating from the North to the South, or the Pashtuns from the South to the North. Based on the evidence, the ethnic composition of Afghanistan has not changed vastly, but closely resembles that of a decade or two ago.
However, even after the 2001 intervention by the United States, Afghanistan’s political and ethno-demography has stayed mostly the same. A prime example is the 2009 Presidential election. The results from the study conducted on the election support the claim that the people of Afghanistan are voting based on ethnicity lines than on campaign platform or personal attributes. The difference in the constituents’ literacy rates for Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah
Abdullah point out that those who voted along the lines of a Pashtun running against a Tajik, voted solely based on ethnicity, stripping away the candidates’ merits or personal beliefs. With this in mind, the 2014 elections will once again test the Afghan people’s will. Hamid Karzai cannot run for a third term, allowing a wider range of candidates to try for office. The Afghan people throughout history have identified themselves first by their ethnicity and second by their nationality. The entire world is watching the upcoming elections to see if history will repeat itself or whether the Afghan people will accept a new leader who may or may not be Pashtun.
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Cullather, Nick. "Damming Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State." Oxford Journals. Journal of American History, 2002. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Harpviken, Kristian Berg. "The Emergence of Non-State Military Formations in Afghanistan." Transcending Traditionalism: The Emergence of Non-State Military Formations in Afghanistan. Peace Research Institute of Oslo, 1 Aug. 1997. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Johnson, Thomas H., and Chris M. Mason. "Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan." Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan. Foreign Policy Research Institute, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Lamer, Wiebke, and Erin Foster. Afghan Ethnic Groups: A Brief Investigation. Rep. Civil Military Fusion Center, Aug. 2011. Web.
Riphenburg, Carol J. "Ethnicity and Civil Society in Contemporary Afghanistan." JSTOR. Middle East Institue, 2005. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Rohrbacher, Dana. "Congress of the United States House of Representative." Letter to Zalmay Khalilzad. 21 June 2012. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. United States House of Representatives. June 2012. Web. Oct. 2013. 19 Esmati Simonsen, Sven Gunnar. "Addressing Ethnic Divisions in Post-Conflict Institution-Building: Lessons from Recent Cases." Security Dialogue 36.3 (2005): 297-318. Sage Publications. Security Dialogue, 14 Sept. 2005. Web. Oct. 2013. Taubman, Philip. "Soviet Lists Afghan War Toll: 13,310 Dead, 35,478 Wounded." The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 May 1988. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. 20 Esmati APPENDIX 1Riphenburg, Carol J. "Ethnicity and Civil Society in Contemporary Afghanistan." JSTOR. Middle East Institue, 2005. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. 21 Esmati Journal of American History, 2002. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. 22 Esmati Least Squares Regression Hamid Karzai Dr. Abdullah Abdullah 23 Esmati Ordinary Least Squares with Fixed effects for Regression Hamid Karzai Dr. Abdullah Abdullah 24 Esmati Corruption Hamid Karzai Dr. Abdullah Abdullah 25 Esmati Corruption Marginal Effects Hamid Karzai Dr. Abdullah Abdullah 26 Esmati Corruption and Log % Ethnicity Hamid Karzai Dr. Abdullah Abdullah 27