Officials: Election could sap Taliban

WASHINGTON (AP) — Today’s election in Afghanistan won’t end the eight-year fight against the Taliban, bring U.S. troops home sooner or ensure a competent democratic government.

Officials say it could, however, help stem the recent political gains of the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist movement that ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s and gave refuge to Osama bin Laden.

That hopeful result depends on whether the voting is seen by ordinary Afghans as legitimate — no certainty in a country whose army and other institutions were built and paid for largely by the U.S. and other foreigners. Many Afghans take it for granted that the election outcome has been predetermined, even though U.S. officials and international groups have taken pains to stress their neutrality.

The election comes at a point of weak U.S. public support for the war amid rising U.S. casualties. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Wednesday found that a majority of Americans see the war as not worth fighting.

Karl Eikenberry, the retired three-star Army general who became U.S. ambassador to Kabul in May, said in an e-mail exchange with The Associated Press on Wednesday that the elections can be an important step toward achieving the key U.S. goal of preventing Afghanistan from again sheltering al-Qaida.

“This election is vital to strengthen the connections between the Afghan people and their leaders,” Eikenberry wrote. “Only by doing so will the violence that afflicts their country eventually be contained and will Afghanistan never again become a haven for international terrorism.”

There is a risk, however, that rising violence — during the balloting or in the weeks to follow — could undermine rather than strengthen the legitimacy of the Afghan government. So the fact that millions could cast their vote in the midst of a war may not, by itself, ensure a step toward political stability.

“Whether the election is seen as legitimate, whether the election leads to violence — those things will have just as much impact on the political situation” as the balloting itself, said Nora Bensahel, senior political scientist at the RAND Corp., a largely government- funded think tank.

Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan during the first post-invasion presidential election, in 2004, said it would be perilous to predict whether the election will improve stability.

“The degree to which the results of the election are accepted by the people of Afghanistan as legitimate is an absolute unknown right now,” he said, adding that the vote could lead to “significant destabilizing.”

Incumbent President Hamid Karzai is expected to win re-election, although he is seen as weak by many Afghans and faces the possibility of a run-off election if he fails to gain at least 50 percent of the vote.