What is completely unclear, since there are no precedents on which to draw, is how Afghan voters might react to the failure of an incumbent president to win a first-round majority. Would it energise voters to throw their weight behind him for the second round, or would it dispose them to see him as ‘damaged goods’, and therefore imprudent to support? No one can be sure. But just as important might be how far below the threshold Karzai fell. If he just missed a first-round victory, his position could be much stronger than if he missed by a wide margin. And this brings us to the question of what the objectives of the Taliban might be.

Unfortunately for President Karzai, his area of strongest potential support, in the south of Afghanistan where his own Popalzai tribe has long been an influential force, coincides with the area where the Taliban are best placed to strike fear into the hearts of voters. Thus, a successful Taliban campaign of intimidation is most likely to affect voter turnout amongst potential Karzai supporters. Yet if polling places remained open, it would be unclear whether a failure of voters to vote reflected the consequences of intimidation, or simply reflected a conscious choice to abstain – voting in Afghanistan being non-compulsory.

And this might be all that the Taliban want. They are unlikely to be able to disrupt voting in the north, where their presence is patchy, and where Karzai’s challenger, former Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah, appears to enjoy strong support. Dr Abdullah is no friend of the Taliban, and has scorned the idea that there are ‘moderate Taliban’ with whom the Afghan government could deal. However, it is not at all clear that the Taliban’s main backer, Pakistan, would fear a victory by Abdullah. To Islamabad, Karzai has long reflected the kind of secular Afghan nationalism that Pakistan most fears, since it underpinned the decades-long ‘Pushtunistan dispute’ between the two countries, and Pakistan is quite paranoid about the degree of Indian influence in Afghanistan under Karzai. Abdullah is on cordial terms with Indian leaders, but he also is part of the generation of Mujahideen figures who recall how India in the 1980s supported the communist regimes of Babrak Karmal and Dr Najibullah in Kabul. This may be enough for Pakistan to think it worth the effort to support Abdullah’s cause by seeking to lower the turnout of voters in Karzai’s stronghold.

Professor Maley is Director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, ANU

This article originally appeared here at the South Asia Masala.