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	Afghanistan's Long Road to Peace by Andrew North Reuters / IRIN News / BBC News, Kabul Afghanistan   September 18, 2005.   Landmark poll: Afghans are voting in the first national assembly election in 30 years. (Reuters)   Afghans begin voting in landmark poll   Polls have opened in Afghanistan's landmark national assembly and provincial elections and turnout is expected to be high despite threats of violence and a boycott call by Taliban insurgents.   The polls are being held amid tight security nearly four years after US-led troops drove the hardline Taliban from power.   It is nearly a year since Hamid Karzai won a presidential election the Taliban vowed but failed to disrupt.   About 12.5 million Afghans are registered to vote in the UN-organised elections for a Lower House of Parliament and councils in all 34 provinces.   Enthusiasm appears high and some people have queued from early in the morning at the 6,000 polling centres nationwide.   "I came early to take my turn," Qari Salahuddin said as he waited with about a dozen other people outside a polling station in the eastern city of Jalalabad. "We are very happy. I am so happy, I couldn't sleep last night and was watching the clock to come out to vote."   The chairman of the Afghan-UN election commission, Bismillah Bismil, urges Afghans to come out to vote, stressing that the ballot is secret. "We pray to God that today we have a peaceful, stable and acceptable election," he said. "As we have repeatedly said, your vote will be secret ... only God will know who you voted for."   The elections are the final part of an international plan to restore democracy that was agreed after the Taliban's 2001 overthrow.   Kabul, 2 Sep 2005 (IRIN)   Afghanistan: Electoral observation effort gearing up.   With a little over two weeks to historic parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of observers are set to monitor the internationally-supported poll, the joint UN-Afghan electoral body announced this week.   According to Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), 2,200 independent observers and more than 30,000 political party and candidate agents have been accredited to scrutinise the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) and provincial council elections.   "Almost 34,000 national and international observers will provide a thorough oversight of the electoral process," the JEMB's Mohammad Nazari, said, adding that the electoral observation operation would continue until final election results were announced.   Around 12.4 million Afghans are eligible to vote on 18 September in two simultaneous elections for the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga contested by 2,777 candidates and in 34 separate provincial council elections contested by 3,025 hopefuls.   Observers are hopeful that the comprehensive electoral observation will reduce the chance of warlords and regional strongmen intimidating or coercing voters. Some candidates and voters have reportedly been threatened by armed groups.   "Every step of the polling and counting process will be open to the scrutiny of observers as well as political party and candidates' agents. Importantly, observers and agents will be able to follow convoys carrying ballot boxes to count centres, where they will be able to monitor ballot boxes 24 hours a day," JEMB chairman Basmillah Basmall said.   A total of 197 international observers have also been accredited to oversee the election, including representatives from the European Union (EU), the watchdog group Human Rights Watch (HRW) as well as members of the diplomatic community in the capital, Kabul. EU observers will deploy to 29 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.   20 August 2005 (BBC News)   Just under 12 million people will be eligible to vote in September's elections.   There is hope in Afghanistan that the forthcoming parliamentary elections will mark another step away from decades of bloodshed. But in Kabul, Andrew North is frequently reminded of the country's violent past.   It was a spring evening last year. Haji, the night-watchman at the BBC house, was carrying a pot of green tea to his room. There was a large thumping bang, somewhere in the direction of the American embassy and the Nato peacekeeping force headquarters.   Haji looked up briefly. "Rocket," he said, and with a weary smile carried on to his room. In fact, we had had a series of these random strikes over the past few weeks.   In most cases causing just minor damage and casualties, but plenty of alarm to anyone unlucky enough to be nearby when a rocket landed. Disgruntled former mujahideen factions, Taleban, no-one was quite sure who was setting them off. But they were not going to keep Haji awake.   How could it be otherwise for someone who used to see rockets landing by the hundred, day after day, when he was working as a BBC driver during the bloody factional fighting that raged over Kabul in the early 1990s. Often he used his car as an ambulance to ferry away the dead and injured.   These days, many outsiders often think it is the Taleban who were responsible for most of this country's troubles, forgetting the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal.   For people in Kabul at least, the worst memories come from that time, when mujahideen factions took control of the city, then proceeded to tear the city apart in internecine warfare. Perhaps 50,000 people died. It was the Taleban who brought it to an end.   And one reason many Afghans worry about these forthcoming parliamentary elections is that a significant number of those running were commanders and senior figures in those factions, some accused of direct involvement in atrocities.   Human rights groups and many Afghans say they should be standing in the dock, not in a new parliament. It is a highly sensitive issue.   Government officials privately express anger and frustration at such calls, asking how they can possibly meet such demands without sparking renewed turmoil.   The chance to do so, they argue, was missed in 2001 after the overthrow of the Taleban when the US allowed them to return to their old fiefdoms.   As for the accused mujahideen commanders themselves, they accuse their accusers of lack of gratitude for the sacrifices they made to eject the Soviets. But the issue will not go away, especially if many of these people do succeed in winning seats.   Many Afghans believe, only when there is an accounting for the recent past including alleged crimes committed by the communist and Taleban regimes, as well as by mujahideen groups, can the country truly move on.   As the correspondent here now, it can be difficult to appreciate this, especially with the focus these days on the Taleban-led insurgency in the south and east.   For two years, the experiences of my Afghan colleagues put things very sharply into perspective.   Haji has been with the BBC here since 1992, Sultan the housekeeper since 1995. And their reaction, or lack of it, to the occasional rocket, or bomb attacks we get now in Kabul, serious though they are, provides a kind of reality check on where things are now, despite the continuing violence.   Of my eight Afghan colleagues in the BBC house and office, only two did not lose relatives in the fighting of the past quarter century. One saw his mother and sister die in front of him after his home was rocketed. Sultan's 11-year-old son was killed by flying shrapnel.   Waseh, one of the BBC drivers, lost his brother and four other family members when the plane they were in was shot down. When the Taleban came to Kabul, they kidnapped the cousin of our other driver, Waleh. He thinks he was sent to the front, but never heard from him again. They also closed down our office here for almost a year, kicking out one of my predecessors, Kate Clark. But throughout, Sultan stayed to look after it until it was re-opened in late 2001.   Two of the BBC's staff have been killed. One murdered during the civil war, just after conducting an interview, it is believed by a mujahideen group. Another in a plane crash. The list goes on.   If you wonder why, it is at least partly because this is possibly the longest-running BBC bureau in a conflict zone. What that also means is that they are uniquely tuned to danger. All those who have worked here, have stories of being saved by their quick thinking and resolve.   Outside Afghanistan it is the correspondent, of course, who gets the credit. Rarely do people realise how important are local staff on the ground, especially when you are covering a story about a country in conflict or one trying to leave it behind. But in Afghanistan, my Afghan colleagues are the real BBC.
	Democracy in Burma: Does Anybody Really Care? by Amitav Acharya   September 21, 2005   "Burma needs UN help for democratic reform", by Peter Lloyd. (ABC News)   A new report has called for United Nations intervention to bring democratic reform to Burma.   The report was commissioned by former Czech president Vaclav Havel and retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu.   They compared the situation in Burma with seven other countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Rwanda, in which the Security Council had previously intervened with military force.   The pair said the situation in Burma was "far worse" and labelled years of quiet diplomacy as a failure.   The report said Burma's problems now reach beyond its borders and pose threats to the region and the international community. It recommended that the UN Security Council adopt a resolution compelling Burma to work with Secretary General Kofi Annan in implementing a plan for national reconciliation, the release of political prisoners and a restoration of a democratically-elected government.   Singapore: 1 September 2005 (Yaleglobal)   ASEAN wants to push the issue under the carpet, while the West is content with grandstanding..   A July 2005 agreement among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that Burma would relinquish its turn at the chairmanship has averted a major diplomatic crisis for the organization. Western nations, including the United States and the European Union, who attend the annual ASEAN meetings as "dialogue partners," had threatened to boycott the 2006 meeting if Burma was in the chair.   Founded in 1967, ASEAN now includes 10 countries of Southeast Asia. Under its rotational leadership, Burma, which joined the group in 1997, was due to assume the chairmanship of its Standing Committee in 2006.   The Western dialogue partners of ASEAN are protesting against continued political repression and human rights abuses by the Burmese regime, which has ruled the country since 1962. The regime has refused to accept the result of the 1990 national election, which was won by the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). The party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has since spent most of her time under detention.   By giving up its claim to lead ASEAN in 2006, the junta managed to take the heat off the question of domestic reform. And ASEAN avoided a Western boycott of its 2006 meeting. But without more focused action by ASEAN and the international community to move Burma towards democracy, the move will be little more than ASEAN's traditional practice of sweeping problems under the carpet.   The discussion in Laos was not about how to improve the political situation in the country. The issue was Burma's leadership, rather than membership in ASEAN. ASEAN has not made Burma's continued membership of the association subject to political reform.   ASEAN has been reluctant to push Burma towards political reform out of deference to its doctrine of non-interference. The Burmese junta has started drafting a new constitution, due to be completed in 2007, which it says would lead to political liberalization. Presumably, this would make Burma eligible to assume the leadership in ASEAN.   ASEAN members agree and hope that this will be the case. But its Western partners dismiss the constitution-drafting process. Suu Kyi and her party have boycotted the National Convention drafting the constitution, whose delegates were hand-picked and tightly controlled by the junta. The Bush administration in May 2004 stated that because "Rangoon's constitutional convention has not allowed for substantive dialogue and the full participation of all political groups, including the NLD, it lacks legitimacy." If approved by a popular majority in the electorate in a free and fair referendum – which is by no means guaranteed – the constitution would still accord the military a privileged position in the political system, including sole claim to the presidency.   ASEAN's role in Burma has been very different from its role in the Cambodia conflict during the 1980s, when it led efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the dispute, which resulted in the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991. That conflict was originally a civil war, although it had been internationalized by Vietnamese intervention and occupation of Cambodia. There has been no outside intervention in Burma, which is one justification for ASEAN's hands-off policy. But Burma has proven to be a major embarrassment for ASEAN.   ASEAN's diplomatic options in dealing with Burma are limited by intra-mural differences within the grouping over how to deal with the junta. Some members – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore – are increasingly concerned about the group's relationship with Western nations, if not its international public reputation per se. Thus, these ASEAN countries want to see the association play a role in nudging the junta to reform. Others, like Vietnam, stick to the principle of non-interference, and are worried about setting a precedent of allowing regionalist pressure for domestic political reform – a precedent that would likely come back to haunt them.   ASEAN's capacity for inducing political reform in Burma is also constrained by the fact that the junta has secured backing from both China and India, its two most powerful neighbors, playing them against one other. Hence, the junta can ignore any demand for political change that ASEAN may bring to bear on it.   China and India are critical to any intervention by the international community in Burma. But is the West really interested in advancing political change in Burma? There is no serious diplomatic effort ongoing today – of the kind one finds in Sri Lanka or Aceh – that might help bring about political reconciliation in Burma. The Bush administration snubbed ASEAN by canceling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attendance at the Vientiane meeting. But this posturing was almost entirely cost-free, thanks to good bilateral relations with key Asian nations, as indicated by a separate Rice stopover in Bangkok before the Vientiane meeting. Diplomatic snubs and economic sanctions are no substitute for a policy of seeking a solution to Burma's political woes.   Burma's strategic location or economic potential may be apparent to India and China, but not to the US. Burma is not regarded by the Bush administration as a terrorist haven, although it claims to side with the US on the war on terror, supposedly against extremist elements among its Rohingya muslim minority. When asked by the author as to why the US is not actively seeking a role in the Burma problem, a senior official in the first Bush administration replied that because there is no significant domestic interest or constituency in the United States pushing for such a role. The administration's democracy-promotion agenda does not extend to Burma, despite the fact that Secretary Rice named Burma as one of six "outposts of tyranny" during her Senate confirmation hearing in January.   Yet, a diplomatic effort backed by the US and involving Burma's giant Asian neighbors would be necessary and timely. Denying Burma the chairmanship of ASEAN is good posturing, but it does not advance the cause of democratic transformation in the country. If the US could engage in six-party negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea to deal with the North Korea problem, why should it not encourage a similar move involving China, India, and ASEAN to deal with the Burma issue?   The international community needs to prove that while taking a moral high ground on Burma's crisis; it must also offer concrete ideas and approaches to advance the democratization and national reconciliation process beyond the current policy of sanctions and boycott. A necessary step in that direction would be a new diplomatic initiative to persuade the Rangoon regime to broaden the constitution-drafting process – with the participation of freed opposition leaders and a firm time-table for internationally-supervised elections. Such an initiative could be spearheaded jointly by ASEAN, China and India, with the backing of the US and the EU and other members of the international community.   Ultimately, ASEAN must come out of its non-interference closet and address the issue head-on. Otherwise, its hands-off approach will continue to cloud its legitimacy and credibility as a regional organization with a mandate for seeking "regional solutions to regional problems."   (Amitav Acharya is Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University). Visit the related web page
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