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Kabul – Britney Spears is unwittingly providing the latest evidence that the coming presidential elections in Afghanistan are shaping up to be tainted by massive voter and vote-counting fraud.
The "Oops!... I Did It Again" American pop star is among millions of supposed Afghan citizens newly registered to vote in the August 20 elections.
This time, Spears didn't do it.
She has never set foot in Afghanistan, and she has made no effort to register to vote there.
But that did not stop a Kandahar resident with a twisted sense of humor from using Spears's photo to demonstrate how it is easy to buy a usable Afghan voter registration card with any name or photo you want on it.
Spears's newly issued voter registration card is one of what experts believe may be hundreds of thousands cards purchased on the black market for as little as one U.S. dollar each.
The pop star's official Afghan voter photo I.D. card entitles her to vote in Kandahar using the name "Jamila," which in the Pashto language means "she who is beautiful."
She would be one of relatively few women in strictly conservative Kandahar with a photo on her voter I.D. card -- and perhaps the only blond voter in the country of 34 million mostly dark-haired people.
In Afghanistan, where millions of women routinely wear head-to-toe burqa covering in public, women are not required to have a photo on their voter registration card.
Analysts in Afghanistan say corrupt officials are selling the blank cards by the hundreds and perhaps thousands at a time for voting in the August contest in which President Hamid Karzai is heavily favored to win re-election.
Official records indicate nearly 4.6 million Afghans have been added to the voter rolls in recent months, with so many newly registered voters in Kandahar that the province is on the verge of having more registered voters than people.
In some provinces where the Taliban are especially active and women rarely venture outside the house, women account for as much as 72% of newly registered voters – a fact that officials and local residents say proves the registration process has run amok.
Afghan experts say voter registration cards obtained on the black market are usually used in the name of a woman because Afghan women are never required to display photo identification.
A "nightmare scenario"
Dismayed officials, candidates, and experts say the improprieties and fears of related ballot box stuffing have heightened worries about whether the elections and their results will be viewed as legitimate.
One of the top candidates challenging President Karzai, former Karzai-appointed finance minister Ashraf Ghani, has warned that widespread election fraud would produce "an illegitimate government" that would be "the worst thing" for the country.
The U.N. Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and the head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Dr. Sima Samar, recently voiced concern about voter registration improprieties while expressing hope that (unspecified) measures would be taken to prevent the use of improperly obtained voter registration cards.
"Bogus registration is already undermining the legitimacy of the process," says long-time Afghanistan expert Michael Semple. He warns "Unless effective measures are now taken to enforce one-person, one-vote at polling stations, the whole process will descend into chaos, and we shall be left with the nightmare scenario of no legitimate outcome."
Referring to the provinces where there are an inordinate number of newly registered female voters, Semple adds: "The quickest way to destabilize Afghanistan would be to generate a situation in which a candidate claims victory with the help of votes from three hundred thousand ghost women in the provinces of Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Logar, Badghis, Nuristan. This could trigger national protests against government and foreign forces."
Nevertheless, documented cases of voter fraud in the 2004 presidential elections and the 2005 parliamentary elections failed to spark major unrest or successful efforts to halt future commonplace voter registration improprieties.
Semple warns that the threat of elections-related turmoil in Afghanistan is far greater this year than in previous election years.
He points out Karzai's 2004 election win "was a foregone conclusion" in the aftermath of the toppling of the Taliban regime and in the absence of high profile competition for the job.
This year, while Karzai is favored again, polls show his popularity is down, and he faces more serious challengers.
As for the lack of outrage about voter fraud in the 2005, Semple says those were parliamentary elections in which "there was no national contest, providing no reason for people to protest about what happened in the rest of the country."
Voter fraud was only part of the problem in 2005; at least as problematic was the ballot box stuffing in which poll workers accepted and counted ballots delivered hundreds at a time by people who marked them with the voter registration numbers of cards obtained on the black market.
With black market voter registration cards available now at much cheaper prices, and with the prospect of related unprecedented levels of ballot box stuffing, analysts say the potential is high for record levels of fraud in the August elections.
How the black market in voter registration cards works
In the southern city of Kandahar, voter registration cards sell openly in a pack of 100 for $100.
In the capital city of Kabul, the blank cards are harder to find and command a higher price – $20 each.
Prices vary between $1 and $20 per card elsewhere in the country.
Experts say the black market cards are usable because corrupt officials ensure the registration number on each card is valid on the rolls of the Afghan election commission that tracks registered voters.
Other measures meant to stop people from using improperly secured voter registration cards and from voting multiple times – a finger print on the card and supposedly-permanent ink placed on a finger after voting – are easily overcome, as well, according to experts.
Asking not to be identified by name, a Kandahar resident familiar with the black market scheme explained how it works:
"The cards are obtained directly from the source - electoral commission employees. So the cards technically are all completely legit. Every card matches the system with fingerprint, name, D.O.B. and (if included) a photo. So actually all these fake cards are registered legitimately with the government. And nobody checks the fingerprint anyway. They have stockpiled the solution to wash away the 'permanent ink marker' they get on a finger when they've voted. So it's just a question of getting enough people out voting on the day. The whole card selling process is being run by people in the electoral commission itself."
An electoral commission spokesman did not respond to e-mailed questions about the alleged wrongdoing by commission workers.
Voter fraud - winners and losers
Analysts say widespread voter fraud and ballot box stuffing would most likely favor incumbent candidates because their government employees and supporters are among the tens of thousands of poll station workers and vote counters across the country.
If the election results turn out to be seriously tainted, international observers say the losers will be the Afghan people and the international community.
The winners, analysts say, will be corrupt officials and the Taliban, who have decried the elections as sham and to whom at least some disgruntled Afghans are likely to turn if the vote and the winning candidates are deemed to be illegitimate.
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