Afghanistan Elections Conundrum (17): Voters disenfranchised in Faryab Author : Ali Yawar Adili Published: 12 October 2018 Downloaded: 12 October 2018 Download URL: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-admin/post.php Almost two-thirds of voters in Faryab will not be able to vote in the 20 October parliamentary elections after insecurity prevented them from registering. Since voter registration ended in early July, the government has seen an even further loss of control and more than a dozen additional polling centres have since closed. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili recently visited Faryab and (with input from Kate Clark) wonders how inclusive an election is possible in a province now largely controlled or threatened by the Taleban. He also reports concerns that because of insecurity in this Uzbek-majority province, they will have a much smaller ‘vote bank’ and less clout in next year’s presidential elections. (A breakdown showing Faryab’s polling centres and registered voters can be read in an annex.) AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in the Election Conundrum series will be added to it. Maimana city is in the full flow of election campaigning, with 62 candidates competing for nine seats (with three reserved for women) in Faryab province. The city is papered with campaign posters and it is easy to come across candidates talking to voters. There is a concentration of activity in Maimana because it is one of the few places where candidates are able to campaign. 1 / 11 One indication of how much the city is surrounded was the advice given to the author when he wanted to drive to the suburb of Imam Sahib, just twenty minutes from the centre: “Don’t go. It is too risky.” Two candidates described to us the difficulty of reaching voters. Incumbent MP and commander, Fatahullah Qaisari, said he was hoping to reach his home district on a government (ANSF) helicopter; the road was not safe for him to travel. Another, the veteran journalist Muhammad Hassan Serdash, is one of the candidates who have managed – in a limited way – to operate across frontlines: I was the first candidate who posted his posters in Qaisar district. I sent my posters through Tamir Keprak (Iron Bridge in Uzbek) where the Taleban have checkposts. I had contacted the Taleban asking them to allow my campaign posters to be transported [to Qaisar] and they asked for the number of the vehicle. I provided the number and they allowed the vehicle to go to Qaisar. Mullah Qamar, brother of Qari Salahuddin [Ayubi, the former Taleban shadow governor in the province], an Uzbek from Tir Shadi Almar holds sway there. However the future may, potentially, not be so easy for him. The Taleban told me that they would not harm me in their areas because I was a journalist,” Serdash said,” but once I become an MP, I would become their enemy. I told them that I would be a fair MP and speak against the Taleban if their land-mines killed the people. Faryab is one of the most contested provinces in the north-west. As we wrote earlier this year, it is “strategically important as it connects the western parts of the country with the north – it was through Faryab that the Taleban moved to capture Mazar-e Sharif in 1997 and 1998 and from where anti-Taleban forces came to re-capture the city in 2001.” The Taleban have fought hard to capture territory, so much so that earlier this year, both the government and its international supporters were alarmed that the Taleban were threatening to capture the provincial capital (see AAN’s previous analysis here) That means a majority of the population will not be able to vote in the upcoming elections. Security-related election statistics – a tale of disenfranchisement In 2014, Faryab province had one of the highest audited turnouts in the country (and one of the highest proportions of women voters) (see details here). It gave a clear majority to Ashraf Ghani (65.6 per cent): Jombesh-e Melli’s leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum featured as number two on Ghani’s ticket and his party was able to get the vote out in a province where Uzbeks are the largest ethnic group (more on which later). This election will be very different and the reason for that is the steady loss of territory to the Taleban in the last four years. 1) Most polling centres inaccessible because of the insurgency Faryab has 14 districts including its provincial capital, Maimana. (1) The Independent Elections Commission (IEC) has allocated a total of 238 polling centres spread across the province. However, when the IEC closed voter registration on 6 July, only 108 centres, fewer than half 2 / 11 had managed to register voters. 130 others had reported no registration. In one whole district, Kohestan, which has a total of 14 polling centres, there are no registered voters. It has long been inaccessible due to the insurgency and was one of 32 districts which IEC employees carrying out an assessment of polling centres across the country in the second half of 2017 could not get to. (The national average for polling centres that were inaccessible to the IEC because of insecurity is 24 per cent – 1,744 out of 7,180. See AAN’s previous reporting about the exercise here)and for a list of the completely inaccessible districts, see footnote 2). 2) Less than half of the estimated voting population registered The preliminary list of registered voters (the author got a copy from the IEC provincial office in Faryab) showed a total of 197,976 people (110,869 male and 88,849 female) had registered to vote. This preliminary list had to go through a verification process at the IEC’s headquarters for detecting underage, duplicate and multiple registrations, and the final list is slightly lower (by about four per cent). (The IEC’s final list shows the number of voters per polling centre, as well as the total numbers of the voters in each district and at the provincial level and can be read here). (3) That figure is lower than estimates given earlier to AAN by a provincial IEC official, who thought about 10 per cent might be fraudulent, and candidate Serdash who thought “that 70,000 [out of the preliminary list of voters] were based on fake tazkeras, mainly in Qaisar, Maimana, Andkhoy, Juma Bazar and Dawlatabad.” Such gaps raise some questions about the robustness of the final voting list. The main problem though is the absolute very low number of registered voters in the province. It is low relative to both the estimated voting population and the number of voters in the 2014 presidential elections. The IEC has given the following figures for Faryab: 189,566 total registered voters 104,454 male 84,974 female 138 Kuchis Assuming that at least half of the population in the province is over 18 – the minimum voting age – it appears that just 36.7 per cent of those eligible to vote have registered. (4) Guest author Scott Worden placed Faryab among six provinces in which less than 40 per cent of eligible voters had registered. (The others are Farah (26% or eligible voters registered), Badghis (31%), Kunar (33%), Uruzgan (33%) and Kunduz (34%).) The sharp fall in registered voters compared to the last election four years ago is also clear. The preliminary results of the 2014 runoff presidential election showed a total of 331,123 votes cast: 217,895 (66%) for Dr Ashraf Ghani and 113,228 (34%) for Dr Abdullah. The final runoff results reported 296,202 (197,118 or 67%) for Ghani and 99,084 or 33%) for Abdullah.. (This means that 34,921 votes (10.54%) were discarded as a result of the post-second round audit.) (5) Taking the final results as a baseline, that would mean a drop between voters in 2014 and 2018 registered voters of 36 per cent. This is despite strong population growth, estimated by the 3 / 11 Central Statistics Office at 3.5 per cent. 3) More polling centres closed since registration Since voter registration was completed in early July, the Taleban have gained yet more territory, meaning more polling centres have closed and more voters will not be able to exercise their franchise. Earlier this month, IEC provincial officials told that a total of 15 to 17 out of the 106 centres that had registered voters were now closed because of Taleban gains. The breakdown was as follows: Almar, two out of five centres that had registered voters closed Belcharagh district, four out of 11 polling centres that had registered voters are now closed Gurziwan, one out of three centres closed Pashtun Kot district, four out of nine centres that had registered voters (in Gaday-e Qala and Sar-e Howz) closed Qaisar, five out of 19 centres that had registered voters closed (in Khwaja Tipchaq, Chichaktu, Chaharshanba Uzbekiya, Hazara Qala and Yaka Pesta-ye Afghaniya) Qaramqul district, between five to seven out of eight centres that had registered voters closed 4) Displacement of the population According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), from 1 January to 23 September 2018, a total of 30,282 Faryabis were forced to leave their places of origin. (This is 12 per cent of almost a quarter of a million Afghans displaced by conflict across the country in the same period.) The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Faryab told AAN on 11 October that 13,809 families had fled their homes in the period between April and July this year and that the displacement “continues as the fighting is continuing.” NRC also said that some of the displacements had been caused by drought or a combination of drought and conflict.