Afghanistan is headed for its first parliamentary polls in 30 years, but the decision to allow scores of warlords and rights violators to stand in the election could mean trouble ahead, analysts say.
Anxious to make sure the vote succeeds, both the Afghan government and the international community are putting the emphasis on stability now at the cost of addressing possible long-term problems, they say.
"From the very start, the argument was put forward that inclusion of these people was the best way to prevent further bloodshed," said Patricia Gossman, director of the Afghanistan Justice Project (AJP).
"But we are three-and-a-half years into that, and what we have seen is that inclusion has not led to greater stability," she said.
Earlier this month, Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission drew up a blacklist of 208 candidates who were to be excluded from the polls for their ties to illegal armed groups.
But when the printed ballot sheet appeared a week later, only 11 of the candidates had actually been blocked by the commission -- which said the remaining 197 had either disarmed or pledged to do so.
"The UN and the United States [believed] that to go further was likely to destabilize the provinces," a European diplomatic source said.
Diplomats and analysts are concerned that Afghanistan could elect a parliament paralyzed by alliances between warlords and drug traffickers, or filled with lawmakers pursuing their own agendas.
Warlord Abdul Hadi Dabir, a registered candidate, was arrested last week after his gunmen shot and wounded two police officers -- apparently because he had been ordered to stop building a house that contravened local regulations.
In a country awash with firearms and a strong tradition of local tribal rulers, such incidents barely raise an eyebrow.
"How do you know who have really disarmed or who is not linked to the armed groups any more?" one Western diplomat said. "It is impossible here."
In a country brutalized by decades of war -- from the Soviet occupation and mujahidin wars to the brutality of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime and the 2001 US invasion that toppled it -- violence remains a daily reality.
More than 770 people have already been killed in political violence this year, approaching last year's 850, and the impoverished country remains riven by factional and ethnic tensions fuelled by a booming drugs trade.
Warlords producing opium and heroin for the world market often outgun poorly armed government police and soldiers, while Taliban loyalists have been stepping up their attacks ahead of the election.
In a report last week, the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank said that the rule of law had been repeatedly undercut in an effort to keep the situation stable in the short term.
"The slow pace of security sector reform is likely to haunt both the elections and their results, allowing the rule of the gun to continue to undermine Afghanistan's political transition," the ICG said.
"The tendency to justify ongoing impunity in terms of stability has undermined the rule of law for far too long," it said.
But with 12 million people registered to take part in the Sept. 18 polls, which are going ahead on schedule despite the violence, many here say that even an imperfect election is likely the best way forward.
"We hardly have a choice," one Western security source said. "The parliament will be composed of the current leaders who spring from the war and the culture of weapons. It is just necessary to change things slowly."
Both Gossman and Afghan authorities acknowledge that Afghanistan's criminal-justice system is still in no state to hold war-crimes trials or to jail the worst offenders.
Whatever the outcome, the ICG said, the West should not see a "convenient exit strategy" in a flawed election.
"History has already shown the catastrophic consequences of allowing the Afghan state to wither," it said.
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