‘between the dragon and his wrath’, 1994–2017female members were nominated and not elected by popular vote. When
the Loya Jirga convened some five hundred individuals, including former
mujahidin commanders and members of Afghanistan’s National Directorate
of Security, turned up despite not being formally nominated or elected.
After scuffles with isaf personnel, fifty of the most powerful command-
ers were admitted to the sessions where they occupied the front seats of
the assembly taking note of individuals who criticized the government
and intimidating delegates by their presence. Around seventy delegates,
disgusted at the manipulation on display, walked out and boycotted the
proceedings. The Loya Jirga was then opened by Zahir Shah, even though
he had no official position in government, and monarchist delegates signed
a petition in favour of reinstating the ex-king as head of state. Under pres-
sure from American and un officials, however, the king declined the offer
and his nomination was withdrawn. Rabbani, the former president, also
stood down in the face of hostility from Pushtun mujahidin and so the
Loya Jirga voted to retain Hamid Karzai as president.
Presidential elections held in 2004 were also marred by what the un
diplomatically termed ‘irregularities’. Karzai was again re-elected, but only
with a narrow majority and amid widespread evidence of ballot rigging,
intimidation and bribery. The parliamentary and provincial elections that
took place in September the following year were equally noteworthy for
‘irregularities’, and voter registration was so poorly policed that thousands
of Afghans had no difficulty in obtaining multiple voting cards and voting
in multiple locations.
The electoral system adopted after 2001 was wide open to manipul-
ation. The un recommended Afghanistan adopt a form of proportional
representation, but President Karzai insisted on the British system of a
single, non-transferable vote, or ‘first past the post’, while at the same time
he rejected the formation of political parties. This meant that a multiplicity
of individual candidates representing one party were able to stand in the
same constituency: in many constituencies the ballot paper ran to several
pages with voters having to choose between hundreds of names, or the
logos, of candidates. Many of the 249 members who were eventually elected
to the Wolusi Jirga received less than 15 per cent of the popular vote.
The credibility of the elections was further undermined by the govern-
ment’s failure to conduct a nationwide census, as agreed under the Bonn
Agreement, the plan being deliberately stymied by the bureaucracy for
ethno-political reasons. When it came to drawing up electoral bound-
aries, the Afghan Electoral Commission (aec), which was controlled by
Karzai loyalists, used guesstimates extrapolated from the partial census of