Bazarak, November 13: The fiefdom of Afghanistan’s vanquished presidential challenger is seething with anger after Hamid Karzai won another five years in power following a fraud-tainted election.
The poor, mountainous Panjshir province, where icy winds whip through the craggy valleys in winter, is festooned with campaign posters of former foreign minister and eye surgeon Abdullah Abdullah, who campaigned for change.
Even more ubiquitous are pictures of the resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated by al Qaida on September 9, 2001 after surviving more than two decades of war against the Soviets and the Taliban in his Panjshir fortress.
Abdullah, who has a house by the Panjshir river, was his spokesman.
Massoud’s father-in-law, Kaka (uncle) Tajuddin, who fought by his side, speaks of “anger.” The word features a lot in the Panjshir.
“At the first presidential election in 2004, Karzai had already won thanks to fraud. Thank you international community for the money, but if I had power, I’d use it for other things,” said the man in his 60s, heavy with irony.
Abdullah, with a Pashtun father and Tajik mother, won 68 percent of the vote in Tajik-dominated Panjshir, compared with 29 percent cast for Karzai, whose power base lies in southern Afghanistan’s Pashtun heartland.
In Panjshir, as elsewhere in Afghanistan, traces of war are many — rotting tanks and ruined homes, souvenirs of the losses that helped bring down the Soviet Union and forced villagers to flee into the mountains.
Anger and frustration aside, nobody wants to fight.
“We will take up arms no more, never again,” said Tajuddin.
“I’ll just encourage people not to take part in elections anymore,” he added. “We have been through worse situations in the last 30 years, so we won’t let ourselves worry too much”.
The Panjshir is one of the only regions with no political and militant violence. The Taliban, whose insurgency has encroached increasingly into parts of the north and west, has steered clear of these valleys.
Abdullah, who pulled out of the second round of the presidential election claiming there were no guarantees against a repeat of massive first-round fraud, keeps a large house in the valley although his wife and son are based in India.
“I want peace in the country, violence brings nothing,” said Mohammad Hanif, a vegetable seller of 59.
“I’m sad that Abdullah didn’t win. His rights weren’t respected and he has skills. He would have been better than Karzai.”
In Shahabah, a village surrounded by snow-capped mountains, Maulana Mohammad Daoud, a 38-year-old grocer, is the exception. He supports Karzai.
Not far from his shop, a large building with colonnades, several storeys high, is under construction. Villagers say it will be a palace for Mohammad Qasim Fahim, former Tajik warlord and future Karzai vice president.
Maulana has an original take on why this particular electoral victory, in a country as corrupt as Afghanistan, is a “good thing.”
“The people around Karzai already have full pockets. If someone new comes along, it would take years for his friends to enrich themselves and start doing things for us.”
In the provincial capital Bazarak, just a slightly larger version of the mud-brick villages elsewhere in the valley, Mohammad Saleh, 45, is angry.
“Karzai stole victory from Abdullah,” he told AFP.
“It isn’t the moment to take up arms now there is democracy. If we do, what will be the difference between us and the Taliban?”
The deputy governor of Panjshir, Abdul Rahman Kabiri, says Afghans are well aware of foul play but accept it as a reality.
“People know about fraud but they haven’t reacted because they know that these things happen in Afghanistan,” he said.
–Agencies