Vagueness and political shrewdness are the qualities that characterize best Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's presidential candidate. He has so far concealed his real name, refusing to divulge it before he wins the election. Many questions also remain regarding his past. These range from issues surrounding his years as an ophthalmologist, up to when he became one of the two candidates vying for the presidential seat at the Golestan Palace.
Any keen observer of Afghanistan’s internal affairs would know that Dr Abdullah, a former Secretary of State, has always been part of the Tajik alliances in Afghanistan. He has always introduced himself as a Tajik from Panjshir (the province of Ahmad Shah Massoud – a military commander of the Northern Alliance). His presidential aspirations, however, have since led Dr. Abdullah to change his storyline. Through his website, he has been striving to portray a more unifying image about himself, notably by presenting his father as a Pashtun from Kandahar, and his mother as a Tajik from the Panjshir.
Given the shortage of specialists in Afghani affairs and the difficulty of communicating within Afghanistan, the Internet became a major channel to diffuse information about the elections. As a result, a large number of journalists and Arab foreign media have widely used the information published on Dr. Abdullah’s website. Albeit at first not many people noticed the contradictions in his past, increased scrutiny eventually revealed important inconsistencies.
Most Pakistanis know about his links to the Islamic Society Party – headed by Dr. Rabbani. The Islamic Society Party was an organization under which Tajik Afghans gathered during the eighties in their exile. It provided them with aid while also actively helping in the fight against the Soviets. Kandaharians, on the other hand, were often part of Pashtun blocs such as the Hekmatyar's Islamic party, Sayyaf's Dawa Party, the organizations of Sibghatullah Mojadidi, or the movement of Mr Jilani leader of the Jilani Sufism.
Further underlying these inconsistencies are old photos dating back to the eighties displaying Dr. Abdullah wearing a "Bakool," a wool hat used by the Tajiks from the north-east of Afganistan and for which Shah Masood was famous. While for outsiders, the fact that the Kandahari people wear a completely different hat or even turbans may not mean much, in Afghanistan the head cover is of great importance. It is in fact rare for anyone to use a head cover different from the one prevalent in his home region.
Dr. Abdullah's contradictions have become even more evident when he broke the Afghani tradition of choosing deputies from different ethnic groups. This strategy has been proven crucial in Afgani politics in helping to mobilize voters from different ethnicities around three unifying figures. For example, the Pashtun Karzai chose the Tajik Marshal Fahim as his first vice-president and Karim Khalili, a Hazara Shiite, as his second vice-president.
Dr. Abdullah chose as first deputy Humayun Shah Asefi, who comes from a well known Pashtun tribe and is a relative of the former King Mohammed Zahir Shah. This choice was overwhelmingly based on his dire need for Pashtun votes. As a relative of the King, Asefi is very respected in the Pashtun tribal community. If Dr. Abdullah had indeed descended from a Pashto Kandahari father, all he would have needed to do to easily lock-in the support of Pashtun tribes was to announce his name and tribe. The poor prospects of the Pashtun accepting his claim of being a Kandahari forced him to choose a vice-president from a well-known Pashtun family.
Dr. Abdul Shakoor Rashad, the most famous Afghani historian, highlights a further reason for these inconsistencies. Accoring to him, Dr. Abdullah descends from Tajik parents from the Panjshir Valley and his father worked for the Ministry of Works in the Kandahar province. He died three years after the birth of Abdullah. After Abdullah's father’s death, his mother remarried a Pashtun Kandahari man. Evidence shows that Abdullah has exploited this incident to falsely trace his origin back to his mother's husband instead of his father, believing that the vast majority would never learn the exact details of his family’s history.
Given the importance of these elections to his political future, Abdullah has worked very shrewdly in his campaign. One of his most important strategic moves was to attach his pictures next to the ones of Mirwais Hotk, one of the founders of modern Afganistan and a revered cleric in the Pashtun areas. Furthermore, Hotk descends from the Pashtun branch Glzai, the largest branch that rivals the Poplzai branch, the ancestral home of Hamid Karzai.
Dr. Abdullah knows quite well that the Glzai Pashtuns are outraged by Karzai’s move to banish them from all political positions in their regions, replacing them with members of the Poplzai branch. The objective here was clear: to grab half of the Pashtun votes in Kandahar, where more than 300,000 people voted for Mr. Karzai in the 2004 presidential elections.
Other aspects of Dr. Abdullah’s past contribute to his discredit. It is known that the Afghan resistance fighters considered anyone who remained inside Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1980 as a traitor and a Communist, especially if this person was studying in educational institutions controlled by the Communists, or was working with the Communist government.
His presence in the capital Kabul until 1985 has therefore not contributed to his credibility. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine at Kabul University in 1983, Dr. Abduallah went on to join the Nour Optical Hospital in Kabul, where he worked for two years. He then moved to Peshawar to work as an optician in Sayed Jamal al-Din hospital, and only joined the Afghan resistance fighters as an optician in 1986. It was only then that he integrated the Islamic Association Party and befriended Ahmad Shah Masood.
If Abdullah had been just an ordinary person, he might have been executed by the different groups of Mujahideen in Peshawar right on his arrival in Pakistan on charges of treason. Nevertheless, his extraordinarily political talents allowed him not only to escape trial, but also to rise quickly through the ranks, ending up the spokesman for the Islamic Association and for Ahmad Shah Masood. Although Dr. Abdullah did not actively combat the Soviets and did not participate in Jihad, he eventually became a foreign minister.
Despite being raised in a family that he himself describes as religious, in 2004 he denied having had any affiliation to the Islamic Association in any period of his life. But this denial was only a means to escape any involvement in any trial. This happened in the context of the then looming collaboration between the Karzai government and the United nations to open the files of war crimes committed by the warring Afghan parties during the civil war. Although many people were angered by his denial and criticized this behavior, Abdullah explained it as a pragmatic action required in order to establish his name in politics.
By adopting U.S. President Barak Obama’s campaign slogan “Change and Hope”, Dr. Abdullah aimed at setting a modern tone to his campaign. This was not to count with the lack of electrical infrastructure in Afganistan, which rendered the use of such tools as Facebook and the internet redundant. There were only 1770 people who registered themselves as supporters of Abdullah Abdullah, after his Facebook account showed him sitting on a chair and sipping a glass of wine with a U.S. official.
Although Dr. Abdullah used all his political skills and merits in his presidential battle, analysts and experts see him as a fan of equestrian marathons, table tennis, and basketball. The presidential contender asserts that he grew up in a religious family, was nurtured in the love of Persian poetry and any interviewer of the presidential candidate would realize his cultural background.
But the veteran diplomat risked two decades worth of personal political history. Although the Pashtuns did not vote overwhelmingly for Karzai in the first round of elections, the possibility of Dr. Abdullah winning the presidency could have mobilized Pashtun tribal and ethnic areas, which constitute the majority in Afghanistan. This could have pushed them to overcome the psychological barrier and go out on election day to polling stations in an attempt to support Karzai despite their discontent with him.
Since its establishment, the modern Afghanistan state has always been governed by someone from a Pashtun descent. Despite the fact that the Tajik Habib Allah Kalkani assumed power after a coup in January 1929 against the reformist King Amanullah Khan, Pashtun tribes cooperated with Mohammed Nader, cousin of Amanullah Khan, and succeded in deposing Kalkani.
Had Dr. Abdullah won the presidency, Taliban support would have skyrocketed. This, however, can still happen if Dr. Abdullah and Karzai do not reach a deal on power-sharing.
