Afghanistan Elections 2009: Updated

Voting is now over for this year’s national elections in Afghanistan. To cover the voting, and the run up to the election, I have collected a list of media reports focused on Afghanistan’s 2009 election, along with relevant extracts from most of the items. Please see:

Afghanistan Elections 2009

In addition, at different points during the day on 20 August, articles from the international media concerning Afghanistan’s elections were posted to my Twitter feed, also streamed in the sidebar of this blog, and now included at the bottom of this post.

Also watch news videos of the Afghan election on:

OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY TV

or OA TV: election.

Live Twitter coverage provided by:

PAJHWOK Afghan News

Live blog coverage provided by:

BBC NEWS

The GUARDIAN (UK)

The NEW YORK TIMES’ “At War” blog

As a creature of U.S. imperial policy, these elections are what a number of scholars and commentators have called, or would call, “demonstration elections,” after Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead. In this post, more is provided in connection with the concept of demonstration election, including with specific reference to Afghanistan.

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Afghan Election Tweets

See also: #afghanelection, #afghanistanelection, #afghan09, and #Afghanistan
See also: partial list of Twitterers on the Afghan election

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Open Anthropology was listed in first place for Google search results of blogs covering “Afghanistan elections 2009,” and was on the front page of all search results for “Afghanistan elections” and “Afghanistan elections 2009.”

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2 thoughts on “Afghanistan Elections 2009: Updated

  1. Election Fraud

    I don’t know that I buy into the whole “demonstration elections” thing, but the hand of our current government is easily seen in the inept way fraud was carried out in the Afghan election this time around. I firmly believe that even if the results were verified to be 100 to 1 against the current winner, it would have been awarded to him anyways.

    1. Maximilian Forte

      I would tend to agree with you on these points, and we can see some evidence for them. However, a demonstration election performs a counterinsurgency role as well, and one of the persistent themes to be repeated during and after these elections has been about “stabilization” against the forces of the Taleban. The elections are defended in terms of the war against the Taleban, rather than the achievement of a meaningful democracy. So the idea of “success” is built on seeing a turnout inspite of Taleban attacks, of “voters defying the Taleban,” and so forth.

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