KHAWAJA CHASHT, AFGHANISTAN—“No, nobody has told us about the elections,” says Lalgul. “And nobody bothered to ask. Nobody has given us a card to vote.”
With his sunburned face and patriarch’s beard, Lalgul looks older than his 30 years. He gestures to his temporary home: a small tent camp on a sun-baked stretch of the Shomali plain, where a flock of fat-tailed sheep and a few camels are lazing in the dust. Lalgul and his family are Kuchis, ethnic Pashtun nomads making their trek to winter pasture in the southeastern province of Laghman.
So does he want to vote?
“Wali na?” (Why not?) replies Lalgul.
It’s election week in Afghanistan. On Oct. 9, millions of Afghans will head to the polls to take part in the country’s first direct presidential elections.
Afghan officials—and their U.S. patrons—are pointing to Saturday’s vote as a major step toward restoring peace in Afghanistan. Over 10.5 million Afghans have already registered to vote, well in excess of expectations, and U.S. and NATO troops are stepping up security around the country to make sure the elections happen.
Unfortunately, the nomads who live in this desolate place aren’t sharing in the triumph.
“Nobody helps the Kuchi,” Lalgul complains. “Nobody has given us a [voter registration] card, nobody has told us about the elections, nobody thinks about our lives.”
His speech is interrupted by the hacking cough of one of his sons.
“Nobody has come here to vaccinate our children,” he adds. “Not even a single needle.”
Just north of Kabul, Shomali was once a lush and fertile area, famous for its orchards and vineyards. But a quarter-century of war and a long drought has left much of Shomali an arid wasteland.
“There is nothing left because of the drought, there is nothing green, no feed for the animals,” says Lalgul. “In the end, we may have to go to Iran or Pakistan or somewhere else.”
Despite their itinerant way of life, these Kuchis are not cut off from the world. They have a radio and have heard of the elections. But they don’t know when they will be held.
“We were happy when we heard about the elections,” Lalgul says. “We are happy to have a central government in Afghanistan. … But again, nobody thought about our rights, and nobody thought about the areas where we have to take our animals.”
Holding elections in Afghanistan is a daunting task. The Joint Electoral Management Body, an Afghan-U.N. election commission, is hastily hiring, training, and swearing in over 125,000 officials to run the country’s polling stations. The process—printing ballots, hiring poll workers, training election officials—is projected to cost $102 million.
The election process was designed in part with Afghanistan’s large population of nomads and displaced people in mind. Once an Afghan voter receives their voter registration card, he or she can vote at any one of over 25,000 polling stations in the country. Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan will also be entitled to cast ballots at special polling centers.
According to Andrew Wilder, the director of the Afghanistan Research & Evaluation Unit, an independent research group, the elections are being held under an “artificially determined deadline” encouraged by the Afghan government and the Bush administration, which is keen to show a foreign-policy success before the November elections.
“The Joint Electoral Management Body has been pressured to do the impossible, and as a result, I think we have a deeply flawed process,” he said. Indeed, the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium, a group comprised of Afghan and international organizations, recently conducted an extensive poll that found that only 14 percent of Afghans surveyed had received any voter education. Many of those polled had only limited knowledge about the democratic process.
Election officials here concede that some people in mountainous or remote desert areas will be left out of the process. But Khawaja Chasht is just over an hour outside Kabul. A major U.S. base, Bagram Airfield, is not far away.
But for Lalgul, the voter registration deadline has already passed.
Down the road, however, the story is more optimistic. On the outskirts of Khawaja Chasht, several brick factories send black plumes into the stark blue sky.
Fathigul, one of the brick makers, came from Jalalabad to make some money.
“Yes, I’ve heard about the elections,” he says. “We hope that it can bring peace.”
He registered to vote, as did his co-workers. Asked which candidate he’ll support, Fathigul says, “We will vote for the one who is a good person, who can serve the people of Afghanistan.”
Is President Hamid Karzai that kind of person?
“He is a good person,” Fathigul says.
In Kabul, people on the street are more informed about the process. Walls in the city are blanketed with election posters, and candidates have been holding regular press conferences.
At a bus stop near the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, a burka-clad woman named Afghangul says she’ll cast her vote for the incumbent.
“Yes, why not?” she says. “We’ll vote for Karzai.”
Afghangul has a government job and a vested interest in the process. Lalgul the nomad barely has any schooling and says he’s worried his children will be worse off than him.
“They don’t know about books and how to read,” he says. “I hope the government will help us with schools or will provide books for our children.”
When it’s time to leave, a tall, brightly smiling Kuchi boy grasps my wrist.
“Stay,” he says.
