The results of the parliamentary election that was held in September 2010 were finally announced in early December, after a two-month delay caused by a farcical process of claim and counter-claim regarding electoral fraud. Hundreds of the 2,500 candidates were directly accused of fraud. In addition, 1,100 temporary staff of the Independent Election Commission (IEC, a constitutionally sanctioned body) were referred to the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) on suspicion of fraud.

More than 440 polling centres' votes were declared invalid at the beginning of October, but the vote-counting process was far from smooth and on November 11th it was announced that the IEC had found ballots in a warehouse from 511 polling centres across 20 provinces that had still not been counted nearly two months after the election had taken place. Election officials said that the additional votes would be counted, but that they would not affect the results.

In Khost province alone there were 206 written complaints, of which only six were deemed not to have the potential to affect materially the outcome of the election. The provincial election official, Shahzada Hassan, was detained by police and accused of attempting to sell positions to candidates in the provincial electoral body.

Overall there were about 6,000 complaints, of which 2,200 were deemed to have the potential to affect the results. Officials believe that more than 400 candidates may have been involved in improper conduct, and that about one-quarter of the votes were excluded from the final results. During the vote-counting period it was alleged that Ismail Khan, the former governor of Herat province, pressured the election bodies to favour his candidates in Herat. Mr Khan was recorded, for example, telling an election official that "I hope that the next results you announce will be all the people that I have named for you".

Just before the announcement of the election results, the attorney-general, Abdul Jabar Sabet, suspended the spokespersons for the ECC and IEC on corruption charges. Mr Sabet's office has sought to arrest several election officials on allegations of fraud, including one individual who was believed to work at a UN mission in Afghanistan.

On the eve of the announcement of the results, the IEC announced that it was disqualifying 24 winning candidates on evidence of electoral tampering and fraud. This represents nearly 10% of all the 249 seats in the lower house of parliament. Among the disqualified candidates were individuals such as Mir Wali from Gereshk, in Helmand province, who is believed to be linked to an armed group operating in the area.

Overall, the number of supporters of the president, Hamid Karzai, has declined. Mr Karzai is expected to be able to count on the support of only around 100 members of parliament. Meanwhile, ethnic Pashtun voters in some provinces, such as Ghazni, failed to elect a single Pashtun leader, giving all 11 seats in Ghazni to Hazaras, who are an ethnic minority in that province. Overall, according to the results announced by the IEC, Pashtuns lost at least 25 seats, so they will therefore hold only around 94 seats in the lower house. Since Pashtuns form nearly one-half of the Afghan population, they will be severely under-represented in the new parliament.

On January 3rd, however, the government ordered the Supreme Court to establish a panel comprising five judges. The panel is meant to issue a ruling by mid-January on the allegations of electoral fraud, but the panel has been condemned by the IEC and the ECC as unconstitutional. The panel's opponents assert that its creation was politically motivated. A new parliament is meant to be convened by January 20th.