Raymond Barrett

Sunday Business Post
By Raymond Barrett

Eight people were killed in the Afghan capital, Kabul, last week when Taliban gunmen attacked a guesthouse used by United Nations international staff. The three attackers – who were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, machine guns and grenades – also died during a fierce fire fight with security guards early last Wednesday morning in the centre of the city.

The incident brings to 23 the number of aid workers killed in Afghanistan so far this year, and comes barely a week before a controversial presidential run-off election due to take place on Saturday between the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

The violence has heightened concerns about further attacks on polling stations and election officials as the election draws near.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon condemned the killings before a meeting of the UN security council in New York, but implied that further attacks were a possibility. ‘‘Increasingly, the UN is being targeted, in this case precisely because of our support for the Afghan elections,” he said. The targeting of UN staff has been uncommon in recent years, given their relatively small presence in the country.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force is by far the most significant international presence in Afghanistan, with 61,000 troops from 42 nations.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) reports fielding a staff of about 1,500, (80 per cent of them Afghans), of whom140 are believed to be directly involved with the election preparations.

In the aftermath of the killings, Unama is conducting a security review, and many non-essential foreign staff have been ordered to take leave until after the elections. There are also plans to move personnel to more secure compounds that offer greater protection from such attacks.

A Taliban spokesman later warned that the targeting of the UN workers was deliberate, and a warning to all foreign non-governmental organisations not to assist in the election process.

The Taliban views Karzai as a puppet of the United States, and insists that any elections held under ‘‘foreign occupation’’ have no validity.

Karzai was initially credited with outright victory after the first round of voting on August 22. But after widespread accusations of ballot stuffing and electoral fraud, the country’s independent election commission later reduced his share of the vote to 49 per cent, just below the 50 per cent threshold needed to win outright victory and a second term in office.

The president’s reputation took a further hammering last week when reports surfaced that his brother has been on the payroll of the CIA for several years while simultaneously being involved in the blossoming Afghan opium trade.

Such widespread corruption in the Afghan government has bolstered the popularity of the Taliban in some parts of the country, with the result that many international observers believe an untainted electoral mandate is vital if Karzai’s central government in Kabul is to enjoy legitimacy in the years to come.

But with an ethnically-diverse population of around 30 million spread across remote and mountainous terrain, providing adequate security during this round of elections is going to stretch the resources, not to mention the credibility, of an already beleaguered president in desperate need of some good news.