Word: mir
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...immediate flash point will come in a matter of days, when the election results are officially announced. Getting Abdullah to accept defeat will be hard: there have been widespread allegations of fraud. If the former Foreign Minister contests the results in the street - in the manner of Iran's Mir-Hossein Mousavi - that could set off an ethnic conflict between Karzai's Pashtun base and his rival's Tajik following (Abdullah's father is Pashtun, his mother Tajik). "The challenge is to ensure that the election doesn't end up dividing the country," says a U.S. official familiar with Afghan...
...graves, No. 257, has become a magnet for the opposition. On July 30, thousands of people traveled here for an abortive memorial turned protest for 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death was captured on video and seen by millions around the world. Security forces ordered opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to turn back and then started beating the mourners. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of opposition supporters still secretly visit Agha-Soltan's grave, despite the threat of harassment or arrest by the Basij paramilitary vigilantes. (See the top 10 symbols of protest, including Neda Agha-Soltan...
That Karroubi is a different kind of reformist became clear during this year's presidential campaign. While Mir-Hossein Mousavi became the opposition front-runner in large part because he was the best-known reformist in the race, his popularity in Iran stems mostly from the fact that he is not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, Karroubi, though less well-known, attracted a circle of advisers from among the country's most respected reformist technocrats, and ran on a specific program of reforms targeted at specific electoral groups such as women, students and the non-Persian minorities who make...
...strongholds may yield protests. While no one foresees the kind of unrest that followed the disputed Iranian election in June, each candidate's lack of an "organized mechanism" to cope with masses of angered, loosely knit partisans could allow the situation to boil over with time, says Haroun Mir, director of the Afghan Center for Research and Policy Studies. "If one group feels left out, it will create problems for everybody," Mir says. Indeed, Abdullah's campaign manager told an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper last month to predict street violence if Abdullah didn't win. (Abdullah, in damage-control mode...
...succeeded in diminishing voter turnout in much of the south. In at least two instances, promises to cut off the fingers of those who voted were made good on. The extra time and mounting pressure of a runoff would create a climate that could be readily exploited, according to Mir, by the Taliban or "neighbors who like to meddle in Afghan affairs" - a less-than-subtle reference to Pakistan. "If someone wants to make trouble, it's a good time." (Read about the warlord who is key to Karzai's victory...