Who Rules Afghanistan (Page 5)

Back in Kabul, the presidential elections are approaching. At 1:30 am, the night before the vote, I am awakened by a huge and close blast. The photographer Teru Kuwayama and I run out to investigate. The dark streets are empty except for packs of feral dogs. A dust storm has risen from the rubble of the city's largely destroyed west side. Soon we find the source of the explosion: Two rockets have hit our immediate neighborhood, exploding above a UN media compound. There are no casualties, but the US troops guarding the area are jumpy. "Put the fucking camera down!" shouts a soldier from behind some floodlights. We go back to bed.

The next day more violence is expected, but none materializes. Instead of tragedy, the vote plays out as farce. By late afternoon, it is clear that there is massive vote fraud under way. Most of Karzai's fourteen opponents are calling for a boycott and suspension of elections. Journalists are running back and forth across town to find the most egregious technical errors and blatant fraud. The crisis is getting so bad that President Karzai calls a restricted, invitation-only press conference.

I am rolling with some scruffy American photographers. We are not on Karzai's list, which seems to include no more than a dozen news organizations. But soon we are joined by other journalists all demanding to get in. Finally the press officer relents and we are slowly passed through layer upon layer of DynCorp security guards and across the desolate gardens of the classy but run-down Afghan presidential palace, which looks like an old European hotel. In a small, wood-paneled conference room we meet Karzai.

"The commission will look into all of these problems, but I am sure the vote was free," says the cloaked and karakol-wearing Karzai after a few jokes and greetings.

Throughout the rather intimate press conference, Karzai invokes the image of "a poor, hungry, cold Afghan woman waiting to vote. She cannot be intimidated." Questions are sparse. Karzai seems like a nervous jollier, trying to play down the election debacle with jokes about Lise Doucet from the BBC. "Where is she with her sharp questions? I am ready." He repeatedly asks for questions from "my friend Ahmed Rashid." The distinguished Pakistani journalist has one query but declines to respond to the president's further cajoling.

Finally I am called on. Citing specific examples, I ask about allegations that Karzai's campaign has used fraud and intimidation--in short, warlord tactics. The president grows angry. "What report? Human Rights Watch? They do not understand Afghan culture. Tribal culture, it is very democratic. Tribal elders cannot be intimidated. They do not know what is really going on. The tribal elders from Khost were just here. They signed a document saying everything is OK."

The UN, which essentially ran the elections, likewise does its best to calm the situation with deft spin and dulcet tones from its smoothly effective spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva. "I am not just trying to be some happy guy. I admit there are problems. But there are also genuine efforts to sort this out. Let's give it some time," he says, stopping politely on the way out of the crisis meeting, his hand holding my shoulder as if we were old friends. Before long, the crisis is being beamed back at us by the international media as a matter of "a few glitches" or "questions about ink."

Karzai insists that democracy and freedom are winning in Afghanistan. He denies that he will buy off his opponents and the warlords with cabinet posts, governorships and ministries. Never mind that this is already his government's modus operandi.

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