Afghanistan: Logistics support to Provincial Elections

United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) provides project management, procurement and other support services to United Nations agencies, international financial institutions, governments and non-governmental organisations. In Afghanistan, UNOPS provided all logistics, capacity building, legal, ballot counting, and administrative support to the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) and Provincial Council elections of September 2005.

Cakum’s founder, Aaron Birkbeck, was responsible for planning and coordination of the logistics effort for Parwan Province. This included contracting of local goods and services suppliers, and maintaining full financial responsibility for the province’s elections needs. Mr Birkbeck also acted as mentor to a local Afghan counterpart who assumed responsibility for logistic/finance functions in the next elections (District Elections) in 2006.

In preparation for the country-wide elections, Aaron proactively and autonomously planned and executed a small-scale rehearsal one month prior to election, the results and recommendations of which were communicated to all provinces throughout the country, for implementation during the actual election operation. He selected one location (an actual polling centre for the eventual election activity) and conducted full mobilization, ballot dissemination and collection, and demobilization of the polling centre, and return of all stores and ballots to the counting centre and storage facilities. He provided dummy stores in place of controlled stores (ink bottles, ballot papers and tamper-evident seals) in order to replicate controlled stores handling without risking compromise of important elections stores.

A number of lessons learned were tabulated from the rehearsal experience that were added as considerations for all provinces.

For the real elections, Aaron conducted an appreciation of stores and materials requirements for 135 polling centres across Parwan Province. He devised and executed a 5-day delivery and retrieval plan, including coordination of more than 350 Afghani Elections support staff, 140 trucks, 120 cars, 12 horses, 46 donkeys and all elections materials and equipment. The team successfully distributed and retrieved all controlled stores with zero compromises, and no injury, damage or loss to any people, animals, materials, equipment, or vehicles.

In addition, Aaron planned and conducted the fastest complete demobilization of a UNOPS Elections Operation of any province in Afghanistan, without misplacing or damaging any materials or equipment. Aaron received excellent feedback and reports from senior UNOPS management on the success in transferring knowledge and capability to Afghan counterpart in logistics planning and conduct of logistic and supply chain operations.