Afghan Presidential candidate Obama-ises his campaign

By Mark Hanson

This article first appeared on the US Democracy and Tehcnology forum TechPresident.

Dr. Ashraf Ghani, leading contender (according to Newsweek) to replace President Hamid Karzai in next month’s presidential election in Afghanistan, is utilising British and American technology and expertise in the fight for votes and donations, making big strides in online campaigning in the region. The team is operating in a war zone, which in recent days has become even more dangerous. This makes the stakes higher and the challenges greater than in the average Western election campaign. But also remember this is a country where less than 5% of the population has regular internet access, so how will Ghani’s campaign translate new media tactics practiced in the UK/US into an environment like this?

I’ve had a unique insight into this traditionally secretive area from the British web consultant, Luke Bozier of Red Narrative, a friend of mine and a fellow British Labour party web strategist.

Ghani’s campaign will rely on people to spread his positive campaign message in remote communities throughout the country. The campaign is also hoping to tap into large expatriate communities in the West and the Middle East, in an effort to raise important campaign funds and to spread awareness of political issues amongst Afghans living away from home. “This encourages distant communities of Afghans to connect with the campaign in ways which they previously wouldn’t be able to,” said Bozier. “Particularly in poorer countries, the ability to fundraise from citizens who live and work in richer countries is a major boon in campaign planning.” Despite the barriers the campaign website attracts a thousand visits per day and there are over 2,300 members of the campaign’s Facebook group and Ghani’s supporters’ page, a mixture of village locals who are acting as link-points in the community of UK/US-based Afghan nationals who are looking to contribute in other ways.

Ashraf Ghani served as finance minister under President Karzai during his first term as leader of war-torn Afghanistan. His time as economic leader of one of the poorest countries in the world is seen as a success; he is credited with the design and implementation of difficult and extensive reform. His main line of attack against the incumbent, Karzai is that his Government is regularly squandering 50% of all incoming aid on corruption, and not investing the other 50% effectively.

This is only the second election since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. So the political culture in Afghanistan is still emerging. Typically, a campaign would require a lot of talking to warlords and community leaders to try to win their support. Also Kabul is plastered in political posters at this point but the level of internet ‘buzz’ around Ghani is climbing fastwith 1,284 blog posts mentioning Ashraf Ghani since the start of the campaign in March .

Karzai himself has a Presidential website but no online campaign to speak of, so Ghani has spotted an opportunity to use the web in two ways: utilize word-of-mouth and encourage local influencers to spread the word in their communities; and to target the large Afghan ex-pat population in the West for political donations and to amplify their views back into their homeland.

The campaign encourages users where possible to host events at their homes (these are not called meet-ups but you can sense that the spirit has been imported) and in their local communities to spread the campaign messages and policy commitments etc. The aim in these final few weeks is to publish very simply written policy documents, and encourage people to literally copy down the bullet points from the screen onto a piece of paper, so they can pass them on to their friends/relatives.

The other strand has been borrowed as much from the old school political consultants like the famous Sawyer Miller and the way they used foreign media and ex-pats to influence elections in the likes of the Philippines. The campaign has set its sights firmly on the 500,000 or so Afghans in the following countries (these are the biggest communities): USA 200k, UK 45k, Germany 100k, Australia 40k, Canada 50k, and Netherlands 40k. The idea is to engage them online, the campaign site, which allows people to set up their own events, email campaign messages to friends, sign up to email updates from the campaign and follow the campaign with news releases, photos, video etc. gets anywhere from 500-1000 unique visitors per day from a wide range of countries.

Combining that with traditional media and face-to-face events, the aim is to encourage them to funnel cash donations into the campaign as well as transmit their influence back to the homeland and those communities where they still have families and friends. The response seems to be good in terms of donations where the campaign claims to have received tens of thousands of dollars.

It’s a long hard road for new media campaigners in a place as war-torn and underdeveloped as Afghanistan, but lessons learned here will go some way to show certain reluctant Western politicians that it is not just okay but vital to use social media to communicate about politics. If the principles of online campaigning can be tried and tested, and be seen to have worked in Afghanistan, they can work anywhere.