For a long time, the Afghans have been the victims of policies, ideologies and strategies imported and enforced from outside the country. An internal Afghan solution has never been a priority for the international players of the Afghan conflict. The new Obama strategy, which has two main parts: sending more 30,000 troops to gain the momentum against the terrorists, and invest huge amounts to lure the Taliban fighters to switch sides, is another part of this series.

This strategy is for the next 18 months. The key question is: what will happen after that? The Taliban is not a pure Afghan dilemma. It has local and international powers behind it as supporters. If these supporters continue to support and pay for fighting, the insurgency will never see an end. They will pay to make them fighters and you will pay to switch sides. At the end of the day, Obama, or the next US President, will have to draw another new strategy. Thus, the conflict will continue until the time the basic regional problems and issues are understood and resolved, not through foreign strategies but through local mechanisms.

As an effort to provide a further explanation of the basic problem, for example, we can discuss the role Pakistan does play in the regional conflicts and politics. This nuclear-armed country is seen as the major contributor to the international terrorism and extremism and at the same time a major front to fight against the global threat of terrorism. From the events that have been taking place within this country, we can tell that Pakistan is extremely confused over the issue of fighting against terrorism. Two days back (on Dec. 12, 2009), Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters in Lahore that the anti-terror operation in South Waziristan was over. This he said after having claimed that the military had cleared the area of local and foreign terrorists and was now in its control. But the next day, while speaking to a different audience in Karachi, he changed his statement and said that the operation was not over but will continue to an indefinite time. This created confusion and suspicion about the coordination between the political officials and the military commanders.

Similarly, there are reports that the country is widely divided on the issue of anti-terror operations. According to these reports, the powerful military, the intelligence agencies, the political-religious parties that were originally created and later supported by the establishment, are against the operations and support the extremist groups for their local as well as international agendas, while the weak political government and the liberal circles want an all-out campaign to be launched against the terror groups that are hiding and operating in the tribal areas as well as the settled and urban areas.

The reasons behind the fact that a majority of Pakistan’s military, political, and religious elements support terrorism or extremism are not very much complicated: Pakistan has a 62-year long enmity with India and its military gets benefited from this conflict. And the use of terrorist groups has proved the most effective and lethal method against India. So, unless the Pak-India conflict is solved, the military will never want to put a complete end to the terror groups. The second reason: Pakistan is not happy with the US presence in the region because that has been harming its strategic role in Afghanistan. As troubling as the Pak-India conflict is the Durand Line issue between Pakistan and Afghanistan. This conflict has deep political dimensions. A remarkable majority of the Afghans believe that Pakistan has illegally occupied the Pashtun-dominated areas. They think that the Pashtun-dominated areas of Pakistan should be a part of Afghanistan or turned into an independent state, known as Pashtunistan. Pakistan’s political powers are aware of these perceptions and know that a stable and peaceful Afghanistan may mean a re-emerge of the Pashtunistan issue. So without resolving this crucial issue, Pakistan’s political powers may never want to stop supporting the Afghan insurgency.

So reconciliation with the insurgents is okay. But there is still a strong need to look at these issues as important factors because only the solution of these problems can bring a long-lasting peace and stability to the region.

• At polling centers, the number of representatives of candidates, foreign observers and media people was higher than the voters.

• Most of the voters did not know about the candidates for provincial seats. They thought the election was just for electing the new president. After casting their vote for the presidential candidate, when the election commission employees told them that they had to vote for any of the provincial candidate too, they were surprised at first, then randomly selected one candidate from the list and voted.

• At the polling center at Habibia High School, Karta-e-3, an elderly man told me he had voted for President Karzai. Minutes later another presidential candidate, Dr. Ashraf Ghani, arrived there and, after casting his vote, started meeting with voters. The elderly man met with him enthusiastically, praised his role in the country’s development and told him that he liked him very much. When Dr. Ghani left the polling center, I asked the elderly man why he voted for Karzai if he liked Dr. Ghani that much. ‘It is simple. I like Ghani, but I voted for Karzai because he had the required experience for a president and knew how to rule the country,’ he replied.

• There were people who campaigned for other candidates but ended up voting for Karzai. One of them said he did this because he knew President Karzai was going to win. ‘I did not like the idea of my vote going to a loser.’

• A friend told me that some Pashtoon voters did not like Karzai’s policies and government, yet they voted for him just because they did not want to see Dr. Abdullah as a winner. Many of the voters of this mentality, according to my friend, said: ‘If we voted for Dr. Ashraf Ghani, Pashtoon votes will be divided and Dr. Abdullah will win the election.’

• Turnout was low but very few of the voters who went to polling centers had any fears of the Taliban attacks. They were excited and many of them waited for many hours outside the polling centers to have some information about the results.

• A television crew wanted to show their audience that the turnout was high. So they lined up the voters, including those who had polled their votes, and filmed the scene.

The U.N. and the U.S. wasted no time in declaring the election a success. True that the violence during the election process was not of much significance, in terms of its inability to hinder the process completely, but the fear that the Taliban were able to instill into the hearts of the voters before election day resulted in a low turnout across the country; even lower than expected in southern and southeastern provinces where the insurgents have control over several districts. They had threatened to cut off fingers found with the voting ink on.

Polling center at Chehal Satoon. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan

According to latest reports, the vote count has been completed, the official results are yet not out, but both President Hamid Karzai and his rival Dr. Abdullah Abdullah claimed victory over one another last night. Other candidates blamed officials for rigging on a massive scale. Of course, irregularities, flaws in the process and other problems were reported from all over the country.

The country as well as the world is now impatiently waiting for the results to know who the winner was. Unofficial results and surveys show Mr. Karzai and Abdullah neck-and-neck in some provinces and Mr. Karzai much ahead in others. Two strong possibilities emerge as a result: a runoff if none of the candidates had the required votes; and a tension if one candidate got the majority votes and the other refused to accept his victory; this is the case most likely if President Karzai was declared a winner.

This is a very complicated situation now. By now it is clear that the winner is either Karzai or Abdullah. If the official announcement of the results provokes the failed one of them and it incites violence or stirs up tension which will eventually end up as a conflict between the Pashtoons and the Tajiks, or between the South and the North, it will divide the country and will harm the efforts against terrorism immensely, not only in Afghanistan, but in the whole region.

In the north, the notorious warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, has backed President Karzai in the election, while a powerful Governor of the Balkh province, Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor, campaigned for Dr. Abdullah. A tension on the election results may provoke Gen. Dostum and his Uzbek militia to act violently. He is already unhappy with the U.S. embassy statements about his return from Turkey. But in general view, his return contributed to the perception that the election was contested on the ground of warlordism, not democratic manners. This increased some people’s contempt towards the election process in Afghanistan.

With these uncertainties prevailing in the election aftermath, the international community, particularly the U.N. and the U.S., need to recognize the need of a broad based strategy that is acceptable to both sides and, more importantly, workable and effective in situations of this nature. This step is particularly important because if a conflict arises from this tension, it will have very unsuccessful and disastrous results for a ‘successful’ election.

 Child labor is one of the troubling core problems of the South Asian countries, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan, where a cold-blooded insurgency has paralyzed the already weak system. The insurgents, who fight in the name of religion, have undoubtedly proved their strength in waging wars, but they have, unfortunately, never worked for or talked about problems like child labor and violence against women.

 In the first photo, taken in Peshawar in March 2009, two school-age children work hard to earn bread for their families. In the same time, social and political developments and changes have brought a new hope to some of the war-hit people. In the second photo, two children joyfully browse the contents of their laptop computers distributed to them by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, in Isteqlal High School, Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (Photos by Abdulhadi Hairan)

After many efforts by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the government of Pakistan eventually announced to extend the stay of Afghan refugees for more three years in the country that itself faces a flow of IDPs due to the rising militancy and a war-like situation.

Najmuddin Khan, the Pakistani Minister for Refugees’ Affairs, made this announcement in Islamabad on Thursday and said the deadline that was going to expire by the end of this year will now be extended until 2012; the security situation in Afghanistan would have been hopefully improved by then.

 The government had issued the registered Afghans in Pakistan refugee status cards valid until the end of 2009. According to news reports, the Minister said the decision will be announced formally after an upcoming tripartite meeting of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the UNHCR, in Kabul.

 Though many people expected this decision, yet it was the cause of immense satisfaction for those who did not want to return to Afghanistan right now – some because of the deteriorating security situation and some due to personal reasons.

 Besides this good decision, which was a legitimate right of the Afghan refugees living in the country for almost two decades, we demand the government of Pakistan to order its police not to treat the helpless Afghan refugees in uncivilized way. Several reports suggest that the police have been beating and humiliating the Afghans just because they are Afghan refugees. That is the worst impression of Pakistani state that the returning Afghans carry with them.