KABUL, (Reuters) – President Hamid Karzai’s campaign and chief rival Abdullah Abdullah both said yesterday they had won Afghanistan’s election, with U.S. officials warning the candidates to keep a lid on simmering tensions.
Both camps said unofficial counts by campaign workers showed they had won enough votes from Thursday’s election, which went ahead despite Taliban threats of violence, to avoid a potentially destabilising second round of voting in October.
The election is a major test for Karzai after eight years in office, as well as for U.S. President Barack Obama’s new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan.
Karzai’s campaign manager, Deen Mohammad, said early results showed Karzai had won a majority. “We will not get to a second round,” he told Reuters.
Abdullah, Karzai’s former foreign minister, dismissed the Karzai camp’s victory claim and said he was on track to win in the first round after Thursday’s vote, which went ahead despite sporadic Taliban violence.
“I’m ahead. Initial results from the provinces show that I have more than 50 percent of the vote,” Abdullah told Reuters. Official preliminary results are not due for two weeks. Obama, who has sent thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, praised the vote as a move in the right direction. But he warned that Taliban violence may continue as official results are finalized.
“Over the last few days, particularly yesterday, we’ve seen acts of violence and intimidation by the Taliban, and there … may be more in the days to come,” he said at the White House.
Election observers say a second round between Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, and Abdullah, who draws support from Tajiks in the north, risked dividing the country along ethnic lines, and that disagreement over the outcome could lead to civil unrest. U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said he was sure the outcome would be disputed and told candidates to keep a lid on tensions.
“We always knew it would be a disputed election. I would not be surprised if you see candidates claiming victory and fraud in the next few days,” said Holbrooke, who met Karzai and Abdullah in Kabul yesterday.
Abdullah urged “calmness, patience, a sense of responsibility” from his supporters. “Violence should be avoided in any circumstances,” he told Reuters at his home in Kabul.
Polls conducted before the election showed Karzai in the lead but suggested he would not gain the outright majority needed to avoid a run-off.
Afghan and U.S. officials breathed a sigh of relief after the relatively peaceful election, which had been marked by a dramatic escalation in violence in the weeks leading up to the vote.
The 6,200 polling stations are required to make their results available to the public as they tabulate them to prevent fraud.
