A20 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019
BY SUSANNAH GEORGE
AND SAYED SALAHUDDINkabul — Afghanistan’s election
commission said it will miss the
Saturday deadline for announcing
initial results from the country’s
presidential election last month.
Hawa Alam Nuristani, head of
the Independent Election Com-
mission, apologized for the com-
mission’s failure to announce the
results on time.
“Regrettably, the commission,
due to technical issues and for the
sake of transparency, could not
announce the presidential elec-
tion initial poll r esults,” s he said.
She gave no timetable for when
the results would be announced
but said she hopes it will be “as
soon as possible.”
The delay comes amid deepen-
ing political uncertainty following
the Sept. 28 vote. The front-run-
ners, President Ashraf Ghani and
chief executive Abdullah Abdul-
lah, said they expect to win and
indicated they will not accept de-
feat because of suspected flaws in
the voting process.
Inconclusive election results
marred by fraud in the previous
presidential election in 2014 near-
ly tore the country apart. A politi-
cal crisis was averted only after the
United States brokered a power-
sharing deal between Ghani and
Abdullah.
Both men have said securing a
peace deal to end the country’s
18-year war is a top priority, but a
heavily contested vote would un-
dercut any Afghan government’s
standing in peace talks with the
Ta liban.
While talks with the Tali-
ban were scuttled by President
Trump in early September, the U.S.
special representative for Afghani-
stan met with Taliban leaders in
Pakistan earlier this month. Offi-
cials in Washington and Kabul as-
sert that the U.S.-Taliban talks are
on hold and could be resumed.
The United Nations and the U.S.
Embassy have called on all candi-
dates to respect the electoral proc-
ess and wait for official results
before declaring victory.
Without naming any of the
campaigns, Nuristani said “a num-
ber of observers... are illegally
disrupting the process of the elec-
tions.” Each presidential cam-
paign was permitted to send ob-
servers to polling stations across
the country on election day, and
the campaigns have observers pre-
sent during the process for count-
ing votes.Fraudulent votes
Ever since Afghanistan began
holding elections following the
20 01 ouster of the Taliban, the vot-
ing has been riddled with fraud.
The most recent election aimed to
change that with the u se of biomet-ric devices that collect v oter data.
The devices required a photo-
graph and fingerprint from each
voter and would only accept votes
during the hours when the polling
station was supposed to be open.
The technology appears to have
complicated the vote-counting
process, but it has the potential to
result in a cleaner vote. Hundreds
of thousands of votes that were
cast without biometric informa-
tion are expected to be disquali-
fied.
One Afghan election official
said as many as 500,000 votes
from hundreds of polling stations
are expected to be discarded be-
cause t hey lack corresponding bio-
metric information. The official
spoke on the c ondition o f anonym-
ity as he was not authorized to
speak to the media.
Officials from Ghani’s and Ab-
dullah’s campaigns say a transpar-
ent, clean vote is what is most
important to them. Najib Danesh,
an official from Ghani’s campaign,
said he hopes the commission
doesn’t “sacrifice accuracy and
transparency over speed.”
Both campaigns say they have
referred several cases of fraud to
the election commission.
In an interview with The Wash-
ington Post before the election,
Abdullah warned that a fraud-
marred election r esult “will b e con-
tested” and that his supporters
would n ot be willing to “sacrifice” a
legitimate victory at t he polls.Low turnout
Afghanistan has seen steadily
declining turnout since the coun-
try first held national elections in
2004 following the Taliban’s oust-
er. Initially, numbers announced
by the election commission sug-
gested around 2.7 million Afghans
cast a vote on Sept. 28, less than a
third o f registered voters.
However, if hundreds of thou-
sands of votes are discarded,
that turnout figure could drop l ow-
er. In the first election after the
Ta liban was ousted from power,
turnout was about 70 percent.
Afghans interviewed by
The Post c ited violence and fears of
fraud as the main reasons they
were staying away from the polls.
The vote was marred by violence,
although not to the degree that
many feared. The Ta liban pledged
violence to disrupt the vote and
carried out several large attacks in
the lead-up to Sept. 28.
In t otal, e lection-related attacks
killed 85 and wounded 373 civil-
ians, according to the United Na-
tions. Casualties were fewer than
Afghanistan’s 2018 election, but
the low turnout figures suggest
that the Ta liban’s campaign in the
lead-up to the election succeeded
in keeping people home.
[email protected]
[email protected]Outcome of Afghan
election stays in limbo
as results are delayed
BY STEVE HENDRIX,
RUTH EGLASH
AND SUFIAN TAHAumm al-fahm, israel — Mo-
hamed Mahamid had just
stepped out to buy cigarettes
when the Mazda 5 raced by, spray-
ing the bullets and chaos that
have become nearly routine in
Arab towns like this.
He dashed back to his auto
parts store. His son Ibrahim, 25,
was aiding terrified shoppers at
the tobacco kiosk when the Maz-
da came back for a second pass.
Ibrahim was fatally shot twice in
the back, a collateral casualty of
someone else’s f amily feud.
“He was just an innocent; he
did nothing wrong but be on his
own street,” Mohamed said a
week after his son’s d eath.
Ibrahim was one of more than
75 Israeli Arabs killed in violent
attacks so far this year, a spike of
nearly 50 percent over 2018. The
wave of violence has prompted
outrage in the country’s Arab
communities, near-daily protests
and accusations that law enforce-
ment protects some Israelis more
than others. On Tuesday, another
man was shot dead right after an
anti-violence protest.
Israel’s Arab minority, 20 per-
cent of the country’s population of
about 9 million, accounts for
more than half of deaths from
violent crime. Arab citizens say
they are under siege in areas
awash with illegal weapons,
nightly gunfire, organized crime
and revenge killings. They com-
plain the violence is allowed to
fester even when neighbors try to
enlist police help. In this city of
57,000, only two of last year’s
11 killings were solved, according
to Mayor Samir Mahamid.
Israeli Arabs say such a crime
wave would never be tolerated in
the country’s Jewish neighbor-
hoods, where fatalities are rare
and police are praised for high-
tech crime-fighting. Ibrahim’s
brother Yosef, who raced to his
side, said it took more than
20 minutes for police to arrive and
even longer for the ambulance.
“They could have helped him,
but he died before they came,”
Yosef said, sipping coffee with his
father and uncles in front of their
house. “If you call emergency in
Te l Aviv, they are there in two
minutes.” P olice could not provide
information on the response time
after Ibrahim’s s hooting.
Israeli Arab politicians are
sprinting to keep up with the pop-
ular outcry that has thousands of
citizens, many of them schoolchil-
dren and families, protesting in
cities throughout the country. In
most cases, Israeli police have
stood by as throngs blocked traffic
and carried signs in Hebrew and
English reading “Enough is
enough” a nd “We want peace.”
Many said their Jewish neigh-
bors have been understanding,
even when they are inconven-
ienced.
“We feel sympathy, and that’s
been different this time,” said
Yousef Jabareen, a member of the
Israeli parliament from Umm al-
Fahm who handed out water to
drivers blocked by the protest that
followed Ibrahim’s f uneral.
Jabareen, a former law profes-
sor who studied the American
civil rights movement at George-
town University, said the dispari-
ty in policing reflects the second-
class status of Arabs in heavily
segregated Israeli society.
Arabs have the right to vote and
other privileges of citizenship, but
their neighborhoods are typically
more crowded and receive less
funding for schools and infra-
structure, Jabareen said.
“It is not only that the police
have neglected Arab citizens of
Israel, it is the government as a
whole,” said Ruth Lewin-Chen of
the Abraham Initiatives, a non-
profit that promotes equality be-
tween Jewish and Arab citizens.
Israeli officials acknowledge
that police have neglected Arab
neighborhoods for decades. That
has begun to change, the officials
say, w ith the hiring of more police,
including Arab recruits, and the
opening of seven stations in af-
fected areas, with two more
scheduled to open before the end
of the year. Prime Minister Benja-
min Netanyahu recently respond-
ed to the protests with a promise
to spend more on law enforce-
ment in Arab neighborhoods.
“We have started an operation
to deal with the violence, but it’s
only been three years to fix what
was not dealt with for more than
70 years,” said Maj. Gen. Jamal
Hakroosh, head of Arab Israeli
policing for Israel’s National Po-
lice. He is the first Arab to be
appointed to such a high rank in
the force.
Hakroosh said police have also
boosted their efforts to collect
illegal weapons and are working
with the army to stop the flow ofguns from the West Bank. Police
plan next month to begin asking
people to turn in their weapons,
no questions asked.
“I hope people will return the
guns,” Hakroosh said. “In the past,
similar operations did not work
because we did not have support
from the community leaders.”
Police say one of the biggest
barriers in Arab communities is a
lack of trust and cooperation. Wit-
nesses clam up, crimes go unre-
ported. One police commander
told a criminologist at Hebrew
University that Arab residents
sometimes actively thwart inves-
tigators, according to a review of
his research in the daily Haaretz.
“They remove the closed-circuit
cameras, collect the bullet shells,
wash down the scene,” the com-
mander said.
“ There is a culture of tribes and
the families remain silent, like a
brick wall,” said Mordechai Ke-
dar, a researcher of Arab societies
at B ar-Ilan University.
The mistrust is no surprise,
Arab leaders say, when most of
their constituents view the police
as an extension of a government
that doesn’t v alue them.
“ People see the police as part of
the mechanics of discrimination,”
said Jabareen.
S ome Jewish Israelis view Arab
culture as inherently violent.
They point to a history of revenge
attacks, clan feuds and so-called
honor killings.
This month, Israel’s public se-
curity minister, Gilad Erdan, was
criticized by Arab leaders when
he told a Jerusalem radio station
that the violence stemmed in part
from “cultural codes.” He said,
“A rab society, and I say this sadly,
is a society that is very, very vio-
lent.”
E rdan said critics took his com-
ments out of context. In an inter-
view, the minister said he has
made tackling violence in theArab community a priority, citing
the boost in Arab officers, new
stations and programs to stem the
flow of guns. But he said Arab
leaders need to do more to make
the police more effective in their
towns.
“Because of the national con-
flict between Jews and Arabs,
some in the Arab community be-
lieve that cooperating with the
police means supporting Israeli
sovereignty,” said Erdan. “But the
Arab leadership needs to embrace
the police and help them become
a positive force in their society.”
A few days after his radio com-
ments, Erdan met with Arab lead-
ers and discussed ways to address
the violence, including a plan to
target o rganized crime.
“ There was some progress and
it’s important for us to continue
the conversation with the police
and the minister,” said Ayman
Odeh, a parliament member and
leader of a coalition of Arab par-
ties. “But it’s still not enough and
we will continue the battle.”
In Umm al-Fahm, Mayor Mah-
amid agreed that Arab citizens
must be ready to change. “It is not
just a matter for police,” he said in
an interview in city hall a few
blocks from where Ibrahim was
shot. “We have to take this issue
back to the house, to the parents.”
Mahamid said he’s expanding
an informal network of communi-
ty mediators to broker peace be-
tween disputing families and
wants to recruit 25 more imams
and teachers to short-circuit the
cycle of shootings.
Such an effort might have
saved Ibrahim.
“Everybody knew about this
feud and no one stopped it,” his
father said, fingering prayer
beads, his eyes rimmed in red.
“A nd Ibrahim is the one who is
dead.”
[email protected]
[email protected]In Israel’s Arab towns, anger at police is growing
AHMAD GHARABLI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Earlier this month, Israeli Arabs protest a wave of violent crime in their neighborhoods that has left
more than 75 people dead. They accuse law enforcement of protecting some Israelis more than others.BY MARY BETH SHERIDANculiacán, mexico — They w ere
out there somewhere. Everyone
knew the Sinaloa cartel members
dominated this northwestern
Mexico city. The gang once led by
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán had
influenced its politics and busi-
nesses for decades.
But what happened last week
in Culiacán was unprecedented.
When Mexican authorities tried
to detain one of El Chapo’s sons,
hundreds of gunmen with auto-
matic weapons swept through the
city, sealing off its exits, taking
security officials hostage and bat-
tling authorities.
After several hours, the be-
sieged government forces re-
leased Ovidio Guzmán López,
who was wanted on U.S. federal
drug-trafficking charges.
“We always knew [traffickers]
fought and killed each other. But
there was never an attack on the
civilian population,” said Alicia
Guzmán, 52, who runs a candy
store near a traffic crossing
blocked by the gunmen. She and
her family scrambled to their
nearby home when the cartel
members roared up, and cowered
inside for hours.
The offensive in Culiacán has
sparked intense criticism of the
crime-fighting strategy of Presi-
dent Andrés Manuel López Obra-
dor. And it has exposed one of the
country’s foremost problems: the
government’s slipping control
over parts of the territory.
There are an increasing num-
ber of areas “where you effective-
ly have a state presence, but
under negotiated terms with
whoever runs the show locally,”
said Falko Ernst, the senior Mexi-
co analyst for the International
Crisis Group.
The Culiacán assault, captured
on cellphone videos that zipped
around social media, “visualizes
it very forcefully,” he said.
Thursday afternoon’s attack
came on the heels of several
incidents highlighting the ability
of organized-crime groups to
challenge the government. On
Monday, gunmen ambushed a
convoy of state police in the west-
ern state of Michoacán, killing 14.
Last month, the Northeast car-
tel ordered gas stations in the
border city of Nuevo Laredo to
deny service to police or military
vehicles, leaving them desperate
for fuel.
But never had Mexicans seen a
city of nearly 1 million people
openly seized by a cartel — forc-
ing the cancellation of school
classes, the closure of the airport
and the postponement of a pro-fessional soccer game.
“It was a political defeat, a
security defeat, and a defeat of
perception — of the way Mexicans
view their own government,” s aid
Gustavo Mohar, a former top se-
curity official who is now a con-
sultant.
López Obrador took office in
December vowing to depart from
previous governments’ reliance
on the military to fight organized-
crime groups, a strategy blamed
for tens of thousands of deaths.
He promised to invest in social
programs addressing the root
causes of violence, such as pover-
ty and unemployment.
“Hugs, not bullets,” was his
phrase.
But the leftist quickly pivoted
and created a national guard, asort of militarized police. His
government has also continued
to work closely with U.S. authori-
ties on anti-narcotics operations,
and attempted to detain orga-
nized-crime leaders.
Ricardo Márquez, another for-
mer senior Mexican security offi-
cial, said the government’s ac-
tions had generated incentives
for the violence to continue.
“The fact that they first say
they’re not going to go against
organized crime, and then go
after it and fail, is a double incen-
tive for these groups,” he said.
López Obrador defended the
decision to release the suspect,
saying it was made “to protect
citizens. You cannot fight fire
with fire.”
In Culiacán, many residentsappeared supportive of his deci-
sion.
“We don’t know what kind of
massacre would have happened”
if the suspected drug trafficker
wasn’t r eleased, said Guzmán, the
shop owner. (She is not related to
Ovidio Guzmán.)
Culiacán is a vivid example of a
city where the government’s con-
trol has eroded over time. It is the
storied heart of Mexico’s drug-
trafficking industry, the capital of
a state where marijuana and pop-
py grow in abundance and char-
acters such as El Chapo have long
been folk heroes. The former
head of the Sinaloa cartel is serv-
ing a life sentence in the United
States after being convicted in
February of drug trafficking and
other charges.
But his organization remains
among the most powerful in Mex-
ico, with his sons playing key
roles in its management, officials
say.
Culiacán doesn’t look, on the
face of it, like a city controlled by
organized crime. The gunmen
who carried out Thursday’s at-
tack have vanished. Traffic is
flowing along the endless ave-
nues packed with small shops
and restaurants.
But locals see the signs of the
narcos’ presence everywhere: the
gas stations run by one notorious
trafficker, the empty office build-
ings suspected of being money-
laundering vehicles, the baseball
caps emblazoned with 701 — El
Chapo’s n umber on the Forbes list
of billionaires a decade ago.
The poorest residents live in
shacks on dirt roads. The wealthi-
est live in La Primavera, a city-
within-a-city featuring an artifi-
cial lake and golf courses, closed
off to most Culiacán residents by
private guards. It’s hardly sur-
prising that residents are lured by
the seemingly easy money of drugtrafficking.
Along with that wealth,
though, comes violence. Shoot-
outs involving cartel members
are not uncommon.
“There have been manifesta-
tions of their muscle, the force
they have, but it never got to these
levels,” s aid Oscar Loza, a human
rights activist. “The blockades
were military-style. They t ook the
city by assault.”
If some city residents approved
of López Obrador’s decision to
free Ovidio Guzmán, others were
indignant.
“Delinquents shouldn’t have
power. How is it possible they do
whatever they want?” asked
Lourdes Martínez, 49, who works
in a pharmacy near the crossing
blocked by the gunmen.
“The cartel controls the city,”
she added.
Some security experts said,
however, that Thursday’s vio-
lence shouldn’t be taken as a sign
that the government was over-
powered by organized crime
groups. Senior officials have ac-
knowledged serious flaws in the
operation, saying it was carried
out by lower-level personnel
without informing their superi-
ors.
Alejandro Hope, a security
analyst, said the government
failed to sufficiently plan or have
enough personnel on hand for the
operation.
“But it’s not been overtaken in
terms of its capacity to fight,” he
said. “The point is that the state
hasn’t organized itself to effec-
tively confront criminal groups.
This was an improvised opera-
tion, planned poorly and execut-
ed terribly.”
[email protected]Gabriela Martínez and Kevin Sieff in
Mexico City and Marcos Vizcarra in
Culiacán contributed to this report.Cartel assault on Mexican city shows dangers of government’s slipping grip
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Soldiers patrol in Culiacán, Mexico, on Friday. After authorities detained one of Joaquín “El Chapo”
Guzmán’s sons, gunmen stormed the city, and the government released him to avoid further violence.