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Afghan Votes Cross Ethnic Lines

Initial results following the Afghani elections in August, appear to show that Afghans did not vote solely according to ethnicity.

It was widely expected that votes for the presidential elections on August 20, would be cast along the ethnic lines that have traditionally divided the country. Some observers now argue that the division was broken while others remain skeptical.

Initial regional results appear to show some cross ethnic voting patterns. Sitting President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, received 44.8% of the votes in four non-Pashtun Northern provinces of the country. His main rival, Dr Abdullah Abdullah who is from that region and is an ethnic Tajik received only 35.1 % of the votes.

"It’s difficult to say without seeing the final election results, how much ethnicity played a part in the overall voter pattern of the Afghan population" Candace Rondeaux, Senior Analyst with the International Crisis Group in Kabul, Afghanistan, told The Media Line.

"Going in to the election there were clear indications that ethnicity was going to be a major factor. In part because the main candidates Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah had played this up and tried to muster their local people along these loyalties" she said.

"Definitely that was the case with Karzai who tried to build a wide ethnic base" she said referring to the efforts by Karzai to pick Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik, and Karim Khalil, from the Hazara minority as his running mates in the elections.

Only days before the election Karzai allowed notorious warlord, and alleged human rights and war crimes offender, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, aka ‘Heavy-D’, to return to Afghanistan having been exiled to Turkey. Dostum has his power base in the northern part of Afghanistan and it was widely speculated that his return secured the local vote for Karzai.

It was speculated that Dostum was exiled to Turkey after becoming too much of a burden to the president. Among Dostum’s most well known crimes is the alleged massacre in Dasht-i-Leili in Northern Afghanistan. Following the fall of the Taliban in 2001, his troops locked Taliban prisoners into metal cargo containers without food or water, resulting in their suffocation.

According to the latest update from the Independent Elections Committee of Afghanistan, on August 26, more than 97% of polling material has now arrived from the polling centers to the provincial electoral offices, leaving only a few votes yet to be counted.

The main candidates in the elections are the sitting President Hamid Karzai who won the first ever election in Afghanistan in 2004, following the United States backed ousting of the Taliban in 2001. His main rival, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah served under Karzai as Foreign Minister following the fall of the Taliban.