Afghans showing enthusiasm for first presidential election

The United States took more than a century to refine its democratic system.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Saturday, whether the Taliban or the warlords like it or not, Afghanistan will have its first presidential election.
It's a moment that many Afghans have been waiting for their whole lives: a chance to sweep away the spent 50-caliber cartridges of a violent history -- from kings to communists to religious zealots -- and to choose collectively the future direction and leadership of their country.
Most Afghans are clearly enthusiastic about this election. Some 10.6 million are registered to vote in a country believed to have only 28.7 million people -- and many say they will cast their vote no matter what the risk.
Yet it is still not certain that the Afghan people know what they are getting into. Democracy is a way of life, a rock pile of rights and responsibilities that people will either build into a foundation for society or will leave as a pile of rocks.
Are the Afghan people -- who have a centuries-old feudalistic culture where decisions are made by tribal chiefs and kings -- ready for democracy? It may seem an unfair and condescending question.
But with the entire foundation of the Bush administration's post-9/11 foreign policy resting broadly on the notion that all men "yearn to be free" and narrowly on the successful democratic transformations of Afghanistan and Iraq -- not to mention the nearly 18,000 U.S. servicemen risking their lives here -- it's a question worth asking.
What's expected
Many longtime observers here say that it may take years for Afghanistan to turn into something that Westerners would consider a democracy, just as it took Western democracies themselves centuries to evolve into their current states.
"Let's look at America; we didn't start out with one man, one vote," says David Garner, a political scientist and former USAID development officer with 30 years of experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "From 1789 to 1865, we had slavery. From 1789 until 1917, we didn't let women vote."
"Somehow we think that in a country like Afghanistan, a 225-year process can be completed in 10 months because we know what's good for them. You have to recognize the existence of traditional social structures for what they are, and build on them."
Voter education programs, implemented by the United Nations, have aimed at telling Afghans that their vote is secret. Yet, according to one survey, the education efforts have reached only 14 percent of Afghan voters.
Flaws such as this have led many press and human rights organizations to be critical of the election process. Among other problems, pressure from Taliban insurgents and from factional warlords could persuade many voters to vote a certain way, or not at all.
Apparent voter fraud is also a concern. The 10.6 million registrations exceeded the United Nation's estimate of 9.8 million eligible voters. Registration topped estimates in 13 of 34 provinces -- four of those by more than 140 percent.
U.N. officials concede that multiple registrations are "probable" and that President Karzai may be violating the letter of the law by using U.S. military helicopters -- i.e., foreign assistance -- for travel to campaign events.
Other opinions
The darkest assessment may be the refusal of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send election monitors to Afghanistan, because "the present conditions in Afghanistan are significantly below the minimum regarded by OSCE ... as necessary for credible election observation."
The United Nations, for its part, agrees that this election will have its flaws, but says these flaws are manageable.
"The degree of freedom and fairness is adequate to allow the will of the Afghan people to be translated at the polls," says Manoel de Almeida e Silva, spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. The main point, he adds, is that "we are seeing the emergence of a pluralistic system that offers voters a gamut of choices" for its leadership.
If the West and Afghan human rights activists have high expectations and low hopes for this election, the Afghan voters themselves seem to feel the reverse. For them, this is an unusual chance to participate in a historic event, and if things don't change all that much, well, it's better than war.