KABUL — In a move likely to anger members of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, election officials on Wednesday upheld a sweep by a rival minority group in a Pashtun-dominated province in September’s parliamentary election.
The discord over the election outcome in Ghazni, a strategic province south of Kabul, was only one of a number of quarrels that remain unresolved more than two months after balloting that was intended as a showpiece of democracy.
Thousands of fraud complaints are still pending, and Afghanistan’s attorney general is threatening more arrests in connection with the vote. Some Western diplomats are concerned that President Hamid Karzai might seek to retroactively alter the supposedly final results that were announced last month.
Wednesday’s decision ratified the victories of 11 candidates in Ghazni who are members of the Hazara ethnic group. Pashtun candidates and their supporters said the result was dictated by the danger in the province, where many people were unable to vote because they were afraid to leave their homes or because polling centers did not open.
The Taliban insurgency is strongest in Pashtun-dominated areas, and insurgents had warned people not to cast ballots.
The international community, however, aimed to keep the focus on the fact that the election had taken place at all. The U.N. mission in Afghanistan issued a statement praising electoral authorities for “completing the process in extremely challenging circumstances.”
