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“For a country that has, 

in a few short decades, 

experienced monarchy, a 

presidential republic, anarchy 

and a theocracy, democracy 

now seems to be welcomed 

as the most hopeful and even 

practical political system.”

March 14, 2014

Scott S. Smith Last Chance

E-mail: ssmith@usip.org

PEACEBRIEF169

The International Community 

and the 2014 Afghan Elections

Summary

•	 Afghanistan’s democratic development hastaken place within the tight embrace of international

support and the conception of“free and fair”electionsthat comes with it, but Afghan and international views on what to expect from elections have diverged in the past, leading to a deepening of distrust between the Karzai-led Afghan government and the international community.

•	 The run-up to the 2014 presidential elections has been shaped by this distrust. Nonetheless, with

the breakdown of the reconciliation effort with the Taliban and uncertainty about the result of

the transition process due to President Hamid Karzai’s unexpected refusal to sign the Bilateral

Security Agreement (BSA), the April 5 election isthe only remaining opportunity for a political

resolution of the continuing crisisin Afghanistan.

•	 A more complete understanding of the 2009 elections—how they were and were not a

disaster 1—can help to narrow the gap between Afghan and international expectations; and

an understanding ofsome of the changesthat have occurred in Afghan society since 2009 can

offer reason for optimism that the election will at the least create space for political elitesto

addressthe root causes of the crisis.

Whose Democracy?

Each Afghan election since 2004 hasseen the international community make claimsto have

as much stake in theirsuccess as Afghan voters and politicians do. This does not mean that

democracy wasimposed on Afghanistan by the international community.2 But it doessuggest

that whatever democracy meansto Afghans, its development hastaken place within the tight

embrace of international, and particularly western, conceptions of democracy. It also suggests

that a divergence between these conceptions harmsthe development of Afghan democracy. The

degree to which the upcoming presidential election can resolve the political crisisin Afghanistan

will partly depend on whether greater convergence can be developed between international and

Afghan understandings of democracy.

Elections were a fundamental part of the state-building roadmap that Afghans defined under

international auspices at the December 2001 Bonn conference. The electionsthat have been held

so far have not added much legitimacy to Afghan governing institutions, but they have undermined the relationship between Afghanistan and itsinternational backers, contributing to the

current political crisis.
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Last Chance: The International Community and the 2014 Afghan Elections

page 2 • PB 169 • March 14, 2014

The 2004 presidential election gave Karzai a popular mandate for the first time3and the

election the following year of a parliament gave Afghanistan all the trappings of democratic

legitimacy with which the government could make full claims to sovereignty. A series of misunderstandings then contributed to worsening the relationship between Karzai and the international community. The international community, which had intended to use the first electoral

cycle as an exit strategy from Afghanistan, instead found itself expanding its military and civilian

commitments to grapple with an insurgency that had significantly expanded.

Karzai had come to believe that his administration of the country was being undercut by

unilateral international decisions, while policymakers in the Washington and in other capitals

who had devoted significant resources to Afghanistan increasingly believed that Karzai was the

primary obstacle to his country’s stability. 4

Washington was quite public about its growing frustration with Karzai. He interpreted these

statements, along with more visible measures such as the participation of high-level U.S. officials

at the campaign rallies of opposition candidates, as evidence of an effort to unseat him through

the electoral process.5

Ultimately, the 2009 presidential election satisfied no one: the massive fraud that took place

discredited electoral institutions; the effort to addressthe fraud reduced Karzai’s vote below 50

percent and tainted hisre-election; Afghan voters perceived the result to be both the product of

local fraud and international meddling; and the international community saw the fraud as confirmation of a deeply corruptstate thatseemed increasingly unworthy of internationalsupport.

Blocked Tracks to Stability: Transition and Reconciliation

After 2009, asthe insurgency spread and the Afghan state continued to underperform, the

international community—now resolved to extricate itself from Afghanistan—developed two

strategiesto obtain a sufficient level ofstability to allow an honorable exit. The first wasthe“transition”by which international combat troops would withdraw by 2014, though the Afghan state

would continue to receive significant financialsupport for its civilian and military institutions. The

second was a“reconciliation”processto achieve a negotiated settlement with the insurgency, with

the implication that this might require changesto Afghanistan’s constitution.

These two projects were fundamentally contradictory. The former presumed an Afghan state of

sufficientstrength to maintain its current constitutional order and withstand the insurgency, while

the latter presumed an insurgency that could not be degraded by the existing state, which instead

would need to negotiate a new political order that would likely require consequential amendmentsto the constitution.

For a time, it was practically possible to implement both strategiessimultaneously without

the contradictions undermining one or the other. Two sets of negotiations were therefore set in

motion, one under the logic of transition and the other under the logic of reconciliation. Both were

held with the object of achieving a result before the 2014 presidential election and the end of Karzai’ssecond and final mandate as president. Both have failed. The reconciliation track foundered in

the sloppy opening of the Taliban“political office”in Qatar in June 2013. Then the negotiation of

the BSA between the Karzai government and the United States—which would allow the maintenance of a residual international training force and set the conditionsfor the delivery of financial

assistance to Afghanistan’s army and police—faltered with Karzai’s unexpected refusal to sign the

negotiated text.6
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Last Chance: The International Community and the 2014 Afghan Elections

page 3 • PB 169 • March 14, 2014

Elections to Unblock the Political Crisis 

As a result of these failures, the only political event that retains any potential to resolve Afghanistan’s crisisisthe 2014 presidential election. At the very least, the election could allow Afghan

political elitesto extend the political order and obtain sufficient legitimacy to pursue either or

both of the two stability tracksthat are now blocked.

Notwithstanding the obvious need for this election to go well, the run-up has exposed for the

first time a fault-line between Karzai and Afghan political elitesthat will complicate the election’s

outcome. In particular, by refusing to sign the BSA until after the contest is finished, Karzai is working against the interests of the rest of the elites and raising the stakes of this election.

Signing the BSA before the election would have imposed obligations on the international

community, binding its members even if the election were conducted poorly. Without a signed

agreement, the elections bear a greater burden to demonstrate that Afghanistan meritssustained

internationalsupport. Poorly-run elections and a botched political transition would give weight,

perhaps decisively, to those in western capitals who argue thatsupporting Afghanistan’s government issimply a waste of money.

Understanding 2009

If the future rests on holding a successful election, then the experience of 2009 is not encouraging.

That year, more than 20 percent of the votes cast were invalidated due to fraud, and the process of

invalidation led to several months of crisis and brinkmanship. 

A more nuanced understanding of the 2009 election, however, as well asseveral positive

developmentssince then, providessome basisfor cautious optimism. It could also help bring international expectations more in line with realistic improvementsin Afghan electoral performance.

First, obscured in the open dispute about fraud in 2009 wasthe fact that the Independent Election

Commission (IEC) had become a surprisingly competent institution at the operational level. The

problem with Afghan elections was not technical failure but rather crass political interference.

Second, the IEC has demonstrated that it can withstand political pressure from the palace and

uphold the law. In 2009, the IEC complied with an order issued by the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) to rescind itsinitial decision to include fraudulent ballotsin the final count. It could have

constructed a plausible legal argument to reject the order on groundsthat it was a solely Afghan

body whose legal mandate wasfound in the Constitution, while the ECC was only authorized by

the electoral law and had foreigners as a majority of its commissioners. In the 2010 parliamentary

election, the IEC withstood months of pressure and defended itsindependence and the official

electoral result against an attempt by the palace to engineer a different outcome. There is hardly

any other Afghan institution that hasfaced such pressure and resisted it in the name of institutional

independence and the rule of law. The same cannot be said of the judiciary, for example.

Third, new factorsin 2014 could improve the quality of the election. These include farsuperior

electoral preparations(including legislation enacted by parliament rather than by decree); a more

organized and coherent political opposition; a more urbanized and perhapsinformed Afghan

population; and the critical fact that Karzai cannot run again and so hisinfluence over electoral

institutions after the first round should be much lessthan it wasin 2009.

Finally, anecdotal and some polling evidence both suggest that many Afghans are proud that

their country hasjoined the ranks of democratic states,7 however imperfect their elections have

been. For a country that has, in a few short decades, experienced monarchy, a presidential repub-
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Last Chance: The International Community and the 2014 Afghan Elections

page 4 • PB 169 • March 14, 2014

lic, anarchy and a theocracy, democracy now seemsto be welcomed asthe most hopeful and even

practical politicalsystem.

Can It Happen?

An election seen aslegitimate by both Afghans and the international community—based on

realistic expectations—would create a chance for new ideas of governing to end some of the

most pernicious political practices of the past, improve the partnership with the international

community and perhaps provide a sufficient basis of legitimacy on which to negotiate a political

solution with the Taliban. It could, at last,set the stage for reconciling the contradictory policies of

“transition”and“reconciliation.”

Pessimists might argue that all thisistoo much to ask of a traumatized population with little

democratic experience. Realists would counter that we have reached a point where an election

that demonstrates both inclusiveness and integrity isthe best one can hope for. For once, however,

the international community, Afghan political elites and a large number of Afghan citizensseem

far better aligned on what isrequired from this election, as well as more realistic in their expectations. Hopefully, the Afghans will also be more determined to make the most of what might be the

final opportunity to rescue themselvesfrom a political implosion and entrenched crisis.

Notes

1.	 I owe thisfelicitous phrasing to Anna Larson and Noah Coburn’sstudy,“Why the 2009 Elections

were (and were not) a Disaster”(Kabul: AREU, November 2009).

2.	 AsI’ve argued previously,several defining features of Afghan society indicate an innate

disposition toward a democratic form of government. See Scott Seward Smith, Afghanistan’s

Troubled Transition: Peacekeeping, Politics, and the 2004 Presidential Election (Boulder: Lynne

Rienner, 2011), p. 11-14.

3.	 At Bonn, Karzai wasselected to lead the country as an interim president by a small group of

Afghan elites. This wasratified by a representative but not directly elected national assembly

in 2002.

4.	 Both the recent memoir of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Bob Woodward’s

Obama’s Wars, demonstrate high levels of dissatisfaction with President Karzai’sleadership

in Washington. See Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (NewYork: Alfred A.

Knopf, 2014), and Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars(NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 2010).

5.	 These suspicions have recently been confirmed by Robert Gates;see Duty, p. 358.

6.	 For my take on this debacle,see: http://www.usip.org/olivebranch/

conundrum-afghanistan-karzai-has-little-gain-going-back-doha.

7.	 “For many [Afghans], the fact that Afghanistan was holding elections, even if imperfect, was a

signal to the rest of the world about Afghanistan’s desire to turn away from itsreputation as

an insular and violence-prone state and to embrace what many perceive asinternational (and

also Islamic) values.”Anna Larson and Noah Coburn,“Justifying the Means: Afghan Perceptions

of Electoral Processes”(USIP Special Report 326, March 2013), p. 15.

About This Brief

Scott S. Smith is the Director for 

Afghanistan and Central Asia Programs at the U. S. Institute of Peace. 

He has written and commented 

frequently on Afghan elections and 

democratization. He is the author of 

“Afghanistan’s Troubled Transition: 

Peacekeeping, Politics and the 2004 

Presidential Election.” This Peace 

Brief is based on a paper prepared 

for a conference in Kabul on February 27, 2014, that was hosted by the 

Afghan Institute of Strategic Studies.