Campaign
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), said insecurity had "severely limited freedom of movement and constrained freedom of expression for candidates". Security concerns prevented presidential candidates from campaigning in most of the provinces, and candidates running for provincial councils were under constant threat wherever they went. Widespread cultural opposition to women in public life, further compounded by the lack of security, made campaigning by women candidates very difficult or impossible in many parts of the country, according to EU observers.
A UN election monitoring report said in early August that there was mounting evidence that the government was using state resources to favour Karzai. An election commission report in July noted that state-run Radio Television Afghanistan had dedicated 71% of prime-time news coverage to the president.
Issues at the forefront in the election campaign were the insurgency and lack of security, the conduct of foreign troops in Afghanistan and civilian casualties, corruption, and poverty. Topics concerning women's rights were virtually never featured in news coverage of the electoral campaign, and women received almost no coverage in news reporting during the election, according to a European Union observation mission report.
Mr. Karzai announced that he would invite the Taliban to a Loya Jirga (a grand tribal council) to try to restart stalled peace talks. A May pre-election poll reported that over two-thirds, 68%, of Afghans thought their government should hold talks and reconcile with the Taliban, and 18% did not know or refused to answer. Only 14% did not support government talks and reconciliation with the Taliban. Karzai also said the country was growing in stature and would be able to prevent "foreigners" from jailing Afghans, referring to the foreign military forces operating in their country.
According to Ramazan Bashardost, the insurgency was motivated by the presence of foreign military forces in their country, by the presence of warlords and human rights abusers in the Western-backed regime, by the corruption in that government, and by poverty. Bashardost vowed that he would not allow foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan if elected.
Abdul Salam Rocketi, a former Mujahideen "freedom fighter" – whose name came from using rocket-propelled grenades to shoot down Soviet helicopters – and former Taliban commander, said he would announce an amnesty for all the insurgents if he won the election.
The Election Commission accredited 160,000 observers for the election. The Afghan Free and Fair Elections Foundation, the largest local monitoring group, said that it would have observers at 70 per cent of polling stations but couldn't observe the remainder because of security concerns.
Read more about this topic: Afghan Presidential Election, 2009
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