Relative calm of Afghanistan election raises questions about Taliban strength

A bigger-than-expected turnout in Afghanistan’s presidential election, and the Taliban’s failure to derail the vote, has raised questions about the capacity of the insurgents to tip the country back into chaos as foreign troops head home.

The Taliban claimed they staged more than 1,000 attacks and killed dozens during Saturday’s election, which they have branded a US-backed deception of the Afghan people. Security officials said that was a gross exaggeration.

There were dozens of minor roadside bombs, and attacks on polling stations, police and voters. But the overall level of violence was much lower than the Taliban had threatened.

And, despite the dangers they faced at polling stations, nearly 60 per cent of the 12 million people eligible to vote turned out, a measure of the determination for a say in their country's first democratic transfer of power, as President Hamid Karzai prepares to stand down after 12 years in power.

“This is how people vote to say death to the Taliban,” said one Afghan on Twitter, posting a photograph that showed his friends holding up one finger – stained with ink to show they had voted – in a defiant gesture.

In Kabul there was a palpable sense on Sunday that perhaps greater stability is within reach after 13 years of strife since the fall of the Taliban’s hardline Islamist regime in late 2001. The insurgency has claimed the lives of at least 16,000 Afghans civilians and thousands more soldiers.

"It was my dream come true," said Shukria Barakzai, a member of Afghanistan's parliament. "That was . . . a big punch in the face of those who believe Afghanistan is not ready for democracy."

And yet this could be the beginning of a long and potentially dangerous period for Afghanistan as it will take weeks, if not months, to count votes in a country with only basic infrastructure and a rugged terrain.

Although the Taliban failed to pull off major attacks on election day, some fear insurgents are preparing to disrupt the ballot-counting process which kicked off on Saturday night.

In the first such attack since polling closed, a roadside bomb killed two election workers and one policeman and destroyed dozens of ballot papers on Sunday, police said.

Observers believe it is too early to conclude from the Taliban’s failure to trip up the vote that it is now on a backfoot.

More than 350,000 security forces were deployed for the vote and rings of checkpoints and roadblocks around the capital, Kabul, may well have thwarted Taliban plans to hit voters and polling stations.

It is possible the Taliban deliberately lay low to give the impression of improving security in order to hasten the exit of US troops and gain more ground later. After all, they managed to launch a wave of spectacular attacks in the run-up to the vote, targetting foreigners, security forces and civilians.

Indeed, they remain a formidable force: estimates of the number of Taliban fighters, mostly based in lawless southern and eastern areas of the country, range up to 30,000.

Borhan Osman of the independent Afghan Analysts Network argues that the insurgency does not appear to be winning, though the Taliban might argue it has already exhausted the United States’ will to fight.

In a report, Osman said support for the Taliban was fading in regions where they had counted on help from villagers, and they appeared to lack the strength to besiege major towns or have frontal battles.

“So far, they have rather focused efforts on hit-and-run attacks, among other asymmetric tactics, which can bleed the enemy but is usually not enough to knock it down,” Osman said.

There could, though, be an opportunity for the Taliban to reassert themselves if – as happened in 2009 – the election is marred by fraud and Afghans feel cheated of a credible outcome. Early reports suggest this election was far smoother than the last one. Still, there were many instances of ballot-stuffing and attempts to vote with fake cards.

Around 14 per cent of polling centres did not open, most in the provinces where the Taliban presence is strongest.

There is also a risk that, if a final result is delayed for several months, a strong possibility if there has to be a run-off between the top two candidates, this would leave a political vacuum the Taliban could exploit.

“An ambiguous electoral outcome breeds uncertainty, which can grow the gap between the government and its citizens and leave a bigger opening for the Taliban to cause trouble,” Diplai Mukhopadhyay, an Afghanistan expert at Columbia University in New York, said in an e-mail to Reuters.

In 2003, the US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld suggested the war in Afghanistan was in a "clean-up phase". But the Taliban bounced back. Indeed, Taliban attacks were muted during Afghanistan's first election in 2004. By early 2005, US generals were saying the militants were on the run, only to regret their optimism later as casualties mounted.