A publication of Afghanistan watch Number 6, September 31, 2009 Sixth Note The core subjects raised during past two Lately an agreement has almost been This issue also reviews four issues of weeks about election transparency were: emerging between international transparency in the election, transitional how to count votes, investigation of community and the government of justice, reconciliation and negotiation with complaints by Elections Complaints Afghanistan about negotiation with the Taliban and corruption in the Afghan media. Commission, formation of a coalition opponents of government. However the Two exclusive interviews with Sibghatullah government, Paris meeting, predictions core issue is how the process should be about the final election results and Sanjar, Head of Policy and Transitional carried out and how can the opponents be justice Focal Point of President’s Office and reactions from Karzai’s rivals. encouraged to come to a negotiation table. The media also pointed out different Hafiz Mansoor, Editor in Chief of Payam Transitional Justice: Mujaheed Weekly and former member of aspects of negotiations particularly lack of The issue was reflected in the Afghan media Jamiath Islami Afghanistan are also results and highlighted the lack of a on one occasion during this period. The included. The subject of interviews is justice comprehensive strategy for the negotiation news is related to Karzai’s press conference and reconciliation. with the Taliban. that was held right after the declaration of Election Transparency: preliminary election results in Kabul. Karzai Corruption: Just like five previous issues election called the criticisms about the presence of There was no burning and core issue about transparency was a burning issue in the war criminals in his government an corruption during past two weeks. Different outdated issue and regarded these issues related to corruption have been Afghan media during the past two weeks. The partial final election result was criticisms as a conspiracy by the enemies of highlighted in the media during the past two announced and Hamid Karzai is leading with the people of Afghanistan. weeks. Almost all have criticized government 54 percent of votes. However the final and Negotiation and Reconciliation with Anti‐ of Karzai of corruption and are quantitatively ultimate election results are still pending. government forces: similar to the previous weeks. Sooner or later Transitional the criminals justice is a will be brought political project the court The implementation of transitional justice that was due to I believe we have misused the beautiful word justice by put into effect until 2009 was not implemented. I responsibly transitional justice. Although everyone favors justice; however say unless there is a strong executive force and government transitional justice is a political project and they want to with a strong legislative force in Afghanistan and the people suppress their political rivals. This project will bring tensions are encouraged towards national solidarity and reconciliation and uprisings instead of establishing security. I believe this we can never be able to implement the action plan of project has brought no benefit for our people; instead it has government. been a controversial and divisive project for today and tomorrow of our country. Page 20 Page 14 The Truth is a bi‐weekly publication of the Afghanistan Watch supported by the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). It is intended to provide a snapshot of how the Afghan media and candidates for Presidential and Provincial Councils Elections debate and approach these key issues facing the country: transitional justice, corruption, elections transparency and negotiationsPURL: with the https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/706b18/ armed insurgents. If you wish to subscribe please send an email to [email protected] or visit our website: www.watchafghanistan.org Inside This Issue Transitional Justice Uncertainties nullify uncertainties 9 Karzai: Old issues should not be repeated 3 Holbrooke: Do not jump amid election results 9 Negotiation with armed position Groups Election Could Go To Second Round If Frauds Are Pursued 9 America struggles to form a coalition government 9 New War Strategy in Afghanistan 4 Who Is The Winner Of Elections? 9 The foundations of negotiation with the Taliban 4 Forming coalition Government means returning to past 9 The Taliban Parallel Government 4 The people of Badakhshan province in a meeting with Abdullah: Americans wants a puppet president in Afghanistan! 4 Neglecting frauds will complicate the situation 10 Negotiation with the Taliban a repetitive and futile effort 4 Elections concerns raised in meeting between Emphasis on eradicating violence in Afghanistan 5 British Ambassador and Balkh Governor 10 Hamid Karzai congratulated Eid 10% of the votes will be recounted 10 for the people of Afghanistan and the world 5 Iran respects the vote and elections of Afghanistan 10 The Commander of NATO: No Foreign Intervention is allowed in elections! 10 The plan of negotiation with Taliban is on the table 5 Karzai is under pressure to share power 10 Elections Transparency Considering frauds and manipulations, there Where were the election observers on the day of 6 should be a run‐off 10 Afghanistan, passing through crucial periods 6 UN asked for investigations of election frauds 10 In ten districts of Ghazni province 6 The declaration of final partial results of polling stations 10 In Paris Conference: Widespread fraud in the election 6 Corruption Dishonest candidates will be pursued by law 7 Fight against corruption can establish a healthy system 12 Moral charter approved to fight corruption in the country 12 Victory with Fraud 7 Ponder required on widespread corruption 12 Expelled Spy: the source of rumors of verbal 7 Seven years of governance in Afghanistan 12 500 serious elections complaints to be 7 Hamid Karzai from Bush’s Mandella to Obama’s ECC in a historical test 7 Head of Narco‐State 12 The probability of weeks delay in the final results 7 Minister for Public Health: Foreigners do not fulfill their promises 13 Widespread Election Fraud, Caused Abdullah to 7 Aids wasted because of lack of coordination Announcement of Preliminary Election Results: 13 8 Strong Criticism by Governor of Balkh: Partial Recount in the Afghan Votes 8 The central government is crook and corrupt 13 Based on the decision of the ECC votes from 83 The meeting of British Ambassador and Governor polling stations were declared invalid 8 of Balkh behind closed door 13 Concerns about the declaration of 91 percent Corruption, the basic problem of Afghanistan 13 results of votes 8 Karzai is alone! 8 Exclusive Topics Transitional justice is a political project 14 Sooner or later the criminals will be brought the court 20 PURL: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/706b18/ No 6, September 31, 2009 Transitional Justice Karzai: Old issues should not be repeated Afghanistan Daily, No 898, Page 1, Sep 19, 2009 Regarding war criminals, Hamid Karzai said that Afghans are called by different names and today we should not repeat the old issues once again. We should not be hoodwinked by the foreigners because it will create tensions. 3 |Page http://www.watchafghanistan.org PURL: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/706b18/ No 6, September 31, 2009 Negotiation with armed Opposition Groups New War Strategy in Afghanistan Sorosh Millat Daily, No 162, Page 2, Sep 3, 2009 It is said that the US Military and officials in White House are contemplating a new war strategy in Afghanistan as the findings of General Stanley Mc. Chrystal the US military commander in Afghanistan reported that the security situation is worsening and deteriorating every day. However Afghans are wondering how useful the new strategy would be in Afghanistan. Undoubtedly, if the Taliban were treated as a political and social power in Afghanistan and were encouraged to participate in the political and social structure of Afghan society our country would be in a new threshold and we would not observe the critical and deteriorated situation that Mc. Crystal talks of. In reality, if the American strategies were on time and their decisions have been practical and enforceable focused on the reconstruction of economic infrastructures and for the disputing parties. It has increased their popularity reduction of poverty, there was no need of a new beginning and amongst people to consult them for their cases. In contrast their policies would not have gone wrong. There has been a people believe there are no hopes for settlement in state courts relation between critical economic situation and deteriorating and a case can go on for years and one has to wander around in security situation in Afghanistan. different offices and pay a lot of bribes. Although we can not take the governance of Taliban as a model ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ The foundations of negotiation with the Taliban and example however as the current government is sunk in the corruption and weaknesses, the Taliban style administration can Mandegar Daily, No 120, Page 2, August 31, 2009 be considered as an option. Author: Dr. Mohyeddin Mehdi ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ Peace with Taliban does not mean sharing political power with them, because participation in the political power of the Americans wants a puppet president in Afghanistan! country is to accept and move along with the process which Rah e Nejat Daily, No 1260 Page 3, Sep 12, 2009 started with the fall of Taliban and is moving ahead quickly and with great hopes. Karzai emphasized on the peace negotiation with the Taliban and promised to put it into effect during first 100 days of his The principles of negotiation with the Taliban or any other term in office. The President also said the support of Afghans is armed opponent group should not result into the violation of more important than killing Taliban and, said, he believed doctrines of development, national unity and advancement. The terrorism is different from rebellion.