Afghanistan, in a new light

[Hellfire]

That's your opinion. MY opinion is that demonstrated use and a retention of those ambitions justifies the inclusion of WMD into the portfolio of "missions accomplished"

By extension of the same, you may as well justify the imminent "colonisation" of the Sun and what not too and include it in your portfolio of "missions accomplished"

What you perhaps don't appreciate is, regardless of dormancy, the latent capability remained and the will to employ such had been demonstrated. Whether active or not, the plausibility of such is now removed for the forseeable future.

So theoretically I should now wait to see the will being demonstrated against North Korea which has openly threatened South Korea with reactivation of the war and usage of Nuclear Weapons consequent to that. So, and now help me here please, what happened to your righteousness in this case? Suddenly US finds that it is none of its business? Whereas a nation which was supposedly threatening development of nuclear weapons with intent to initimidate its neighbours was invaded and occupied, and a nation that has openly threatened a nation with its nuclear weapons post tests is being 'engaged' in negotiations? Some logic to such an approach? Can you kindly share the American POV which we poor people of the world may not be able to appreciate?

Thanks for reminding me of our other significant success. Actually, I'd argue that the Kurds have never been closer to being integrated into the Iraqi state and, yet, achieve their own nationalist ambitions...

...within limits.

Who defines those limits? US or the respective national governments which govern the geographical regions being occupied by the Kurds? And today there is an animosity brewing between the Kurds and the Central government in Iraq as the new Iraqi regime (which is backed by US) wants to ensure territorial integrity of the Iraqi republic, whereas there are differing views in other camp.



There will be no greater Kurdistan. Not by America's endorsement. Should Kurdistan prove intractable in this regard, there may no longer be an autonomous kurdish republic. Their hold on statehood is tenuous. Their ambitions for an utterly separate nation will not be achieved.

And so you say, it shall be the same cycle, the day (and when that comes) US forces withdraw anfd Iraqi forces are of some standing, there shall be trouble again ..... be it with your endorsment or lack of!

Uh huh. So with each election you'll repeat this mantra? Try taking that privilege of voting away from the Iraqis now and emplacing your preferred strong man.

Frankly, provide the common man with security, peace and good living standard and they care a damn about votes. Please review Iraq of 80s .........

See what that gets you. It's tried and true throughout the region. Works wonderfully too from all that visible socio-cultural innovation.

Try it sir, in KSA ....... would love to see voting there


More giggles...

Nitrous oxide having its effect on you is it?

 

[Hellfire]

Involvement of Iran in rebuilding .... now that shall be interesting .......!!!

 

[TruthSeeker]

IMHO, the US needs to take a lesson from China: amorality in foreign affairs pays off. China succeeds where the US does not because it pursues a foreign policy that is a-moral, that is, without a "moral" rationale and cloak. China does not try to change anyone's system or try to protect anyone else but itself. The US public has not been been able to adopt this approach to foreign policy since WWII. I think the hubris of being a world power and the power that was most intact and secure after WWII went to the collective "head" of American society. It gave we Americans the self-image of being the invincible savior of humanity, the "last best hope" for mankind. We have to get past this. Vietnam helped but then we were successful in the Cold War and 1st Gulf War, so the mindset came back. Maybe our mis-adventures in Muslim nations will give us a sufficient bloody nose that we will withdraw to lick our wounds for a while, if not forever. I hope so. I would like to see how the world gets along if America stayed home and minded its own business for a couple of decades.

 

[muse]

TS

Be careful what you wish for -- international relations have not seen any innovation, ever.

America exercises imperial power neither out of hubris nor from ignorance but out of a sense of responsibility to protect what she percieves as her interests --

 

[muse]

TS

There has been no innovation in international relations, ever.

US exercises imperial power neither from hubris nor from ignorance, it does so to protect what she perceives as her interests

 

[TruthSeeker]

TS

There has been no innovation in international relations, ever.

US exercises imperial power neither from hubris nor from ignorance, it does so to protect what she perceives as her interests

Yes, but America defines her interests too broadly. I.e. as being the last best hope for mankind. That, unfortunately, is hubris. AND, like a Greek tragedy, the gods are making America pay dearly for her hubris....

 

[muse]

Maybe it is the best hope for mankind -- don't count it out just yet.

"All life is Problem solving" It's a super read - I recommend it.

 

[muse]

September 7, 2009
Fake Afghan Poll Sites Favored Karzai, Officials Assert
By CARLOTTA GALL and DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials here.

The fake sites, as many as 800, existed only on paper, said a senior Western diplomat in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the vote. Local workers reported that hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of votes for Mr. Karzai in the election last month came from each of those places. That pattern was confirmed by another Western official based in Afghanistan.

“We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day,” the senior Western diplomat said. “But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai.”

Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.

The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10. “We are talking about orders of magnitude,” the senior Western diplomat said.

The widening accounts of fraud pose a stark problem for the Obama administration, which has 68,000 American troops deployed here to help reverse gains by Taliban insurgents. American officials hoped that the election would help turn Afghans away from the Taliban by giving them a greater voice in government. Instead, the Obama administration now faces the prospect of having to defend an Afghan administration for the next five years that is widely seen as illegitimate.

“This was fraud en masse,” the Western diplomat said.

Most of the fraud perpetrated on behalf of Mr. Karzai, officials said, took place in the Pashtun-dominated areas of the east and south where officials said that turnout on Aug. 20 was exceptionally low. That included Mr. Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, where preliminary results indicate that more than 350,000 ballots have been turned in to be counted. But Western officials estimated that only about 25,000 people actually voted there.

Waheed Omar, the main spokesman for Mr. Karzai’s campaign, acknowledged Sunday that there had been cases of fraud committed by different candidates. But he accused the president’s opponents of trying to score political points by making splashy accusations in the news media. “There have been cases — we have reported numerous cases — and our view is the only place where discussion can be held is in the Election Complaints Commission,” he said.

American officials have mostly kept a public silence about the fraud allegations. A senior American official said Sunday that they were looking into the allegations behind the scenes. “An absence of public statements does not mean an absence of concern and engagement on these issues,” the official said.

But a different Western official in Kabul said that there were divisions among the international community and Afghan political circles over how to proceed. This official said he believed the next four or five days would decide whether the entire electoral process would stand or fall. “This is crunch time,” he said.

Adding to the drumbeat, on Sunday the deputy director of the Afghan Independent Election Commission said that the group was disqualifying all the ballots cast in 447 polling sites because of fraud. The deputy director, Daoud Ali Najafi, said it was not clear how many votes had been affected, or what percentage they represented of the total. He gave no details of what fraud had been discovered.

With about three-quarters of the ballots counted in the Aug. 20 election, Mr. Karzai leads with nearly 49 percent of the vote, compared with 32 percent for his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent, the election goes to a runoff.

Officials in Kabul say it will probably take months before the Election Complaints Commission, which is dominated by Westerners appointed by the United Nations, will be able to declare a winner. Such an interregnum with no clear leader in office could prove destabilizing for a country that is already beset by ethnic division and an increasingly violent insurgency.

One opposition candidate for president, Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister, said that the scale of the fraud on Election Day had deeply damaged the political process that was being slowly built in Afghanistan.

“For five years Mr. Karzai was my president,” he said in an interview at his home in Kabul. “Now how many Afghans will consider him their president?”

Since ballots were cast last month, anecdotal evidence has emerged of widespread fraud across the Pashtun-dominated areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where Mr. Karzai has many allies. Many of the allegations come from Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is the chairman of the provincial council and widely regarded as the most powerful man in the region. Last week, the governor of Shorabak District, which lies in Kandahar Province, claimed that Hamid Karzai’s allies shut down all the polling centers in the area and falsified 23,900 ballots for Mr. Karzai.

Two provincial council candidates in Kandahar, both close to the government, confirmed that widespread pro-Karzai fraud had occurred, in particular in places where poor security prevented observers and candidates’ representatives from watching.

“Now people will not trust the provincial council and the government system,” said Muhammad Ehsan, the deputy head of the provincial council, who was running for re-election. “Now people understand who has come to power and how.”

Hajji Abdul Majid, 75, the chief of the tribal elders council in Argestan District, in Kandahar Province, said that despite the fact that security forces opened the town’s polling place, no one voted, so any result from his district would be false.

“The people know that the government just took control of the district center for that day of the elections,” he said. “People are very frustrated. They don’t believe in the government.”

He added: “If Karzai is re-elected, people will leave the country or join the Taliban.”

More evidence of fraud has emerged in the past few days. In Zangabad, about 20 miles west of Kandahar, local residents say no voting took place on Aug. 20. The village’s single polling site, the Sulaiman Mako School, is used by Taliban guerrillas as their headquarters, the residents said. The area around Zangabad is one of the most contested in Afghanistan. Despite the nonexistent turnout, Afghan election records show that nearly 2,000 ballots were collected from the Sulaiman Mako School and sent to Kabul to be counted by election officials.

The allegations in Zangabad are being echoed throughout the Panjwai District. Official Afghan election records show that 16 polling centers were supposed to be open on Election Day. But according to at least one local leader, only a fraction of that number actually existed.

Haji Agha Lalai is a senior member of the provincial council in Kandahar, where Panjwai is located. As a candidate for re-election, he sent election observers across the area, including to Panjwai. In an interview, Mr. Lalai said that only “five or six” polling centers were open in Panjwai District that day — far fewer than the 16 claimed by the Afghan government.

So far, the Independent Election Commission has released results from seven of Panjwai District’s polling centers. The tally so far: 5,213 votes for Mr. Karzai, 328 for Mr. Abdullah.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul and Istanbul, and Carlotta Gall from Kandahar and Kabul.

 

[Developereo]

IMHO, the US needs to take a lesson from China: amorality in foreign affairs pays off. China succeeds where the US does not because it pursues a foreign policy that is a-moral, that is, without a "moral" rationale and cloak.

I don't think the US government is any more "moral" than the Chinese but, being a democracy, they have to come up with a plausible story to sell the public.

PR is probaby the most essential component of government policy in a democracy.

 

[muse]

Mother of bad ideas??



September 4, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Can the U.S. Lead Afghans?
By MARK MOYAR
Quantico, Va.

THE Afghanistan debate is increasingly focused on two words: troop numbers.

Those numbers certainly deserve serious attention as President Obama decides whether to raise them even further this year. But in Afghanistan, as in past counterinsurgencies, it is important to remember that all troop numbers are not created equal. When it comes to indigenous forces, quality often matters more than quantity, and quality often declines when quantity increases.

Current recommendations of American and Afghan troop strengths are, for the most part, based on the size of the Afghan population. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, has produced figures using a ratio of 25 troops for every 1,000 Afghans. His methodology assumes that increasing American troop strength by, say, 20 percent will increase counterinsurgency capacity by roughly the same amount. That assumption is correct, because the quality of the additional American units will be broadly similar to that of the others.

Where the methodology fails is in its assumption that doubling Afghan troop strength, as many now advocate, will double counterinsurgency capacity. In reality, such an increase is likely to cause quality to fall. With Afghan security forces already two-and-a-half times as large as the American forces, and America lacking the political will to reduce that ratio, the counterinsurgency cannot afford such a drop.

Why would a rapid expansion of Afghan forces result in their deterioration? Because the Afghan army and police simply have too few good officers to lead the forces already in existence, let alone new forces. Past counterinsurgents who tried to expand under similar conditions, like the British in Malaya (1948 to 1960) and the Salvadorans (1980 to 1992) discovered that too many inexperienced officers took command and the experienced officers were spread too thinly. In addition to fighting poorly, badly led troops usually alienate the population by misbehaving and they often desert or defect.

Historically, counterinsurgents have needed at least 10 years to turn raw soldiers into officers suitable for essential commands. They also need solid government training programs, something Afghanistan did not have until recently.

Clearly, big improvements in Afghan officer quality are several years away. At the same time, a growing number of Americans, including many in Congress, are demanding progress in 12 to 18 months. So what can be done?

There are some simple first steps. First, the United States must pressure senior Afghan leaders to weed out bad commanders. Second, we must assign more and better officers to advise Afghan units. Third, American units should work more closely with Afghan units.

Given what is at stake, however, the United States should also consider more drastic techniques. One is direct control over selecting commanders, a model that the United States used to excellent effect in Vietnam with the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, paramilitary forces that proved successful against the Vietcong. By appointing the units’ indigenous commanders, the C.I.A. eliminated the political and other non-merit considerations that plagued other South Vietnamese forces. That arrangement would benefit Afghanistan, as cronyism and nepotism run rampant there.

Regrettably, these measures may not suffice. We therefore should consider the most drastic method, which is also the method most likely to increase quantity and quality simultaneously — foreign command of indigenous units.

In the Philippine insurrection of 1899 to 1902 and in the Malayan revolt in the middle of the last century, indigenous soldiers worked well under the command of able American and British officers. Effective indigenous units were thereby deployed at much lower financial and political costs than foreign units.

Some will object that those colonial wars are not relevant to our postcolonial world. Yet in postcolonial Vietnam, foreigners commanded indigenous troops through the combined-action program, an initiative long heralded as a paragon of enlightened counterinsurgency. The program succeeded by placing South Vietnamese militias and United States Marines under the leadership of American commanders.

Foreign intrusion into the leadership sphere will elicit accusations of neocolonialism and will slow the development of indigenous leaders. But the short-term benefits may justify the long-term costs if the indigenous leaders are grossly incapable, as they too often have been in Afghanistan, and if political realities demand rapid improvement. It could be better to protect the weak fledgling from its predators and teach it to fly later, than to insist on self-reliance and take the chance that it will be eaten on the ground.

Mark Moyar, a professor of national security affairs at the United States Marine Corps University, is the author of the forthcoming “A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency From the Civil War to Iraq.”

 

[TruthSeeker]

I don't think the US government is any more "moral" than the Chinese but, being a democracy, they have to come up with a plausible story to sell the public.

PR is probaby the most essential component of government policy in a democracy.

YOU may not think so, but the American public, many US political and most US military leaders think that the US is infinitely more moral (in its foreign policy motivations) than are the Chinese, Russians and the French. This is what I mean above by "hubris". I am not saying that the US succeeds in being "more GOOD" than China. But it thinks it is, and is sure it is trying to be. Hence the multiple lane highway of US good intentions paving the road to h3ll, and the pride and arrogance that causes us so much trouble in the playground ....

 

[Developereo]

YOU may not think so, but the American public, many US political and most US military leaders think that the US is infinitely more moral (in its foreign policy motivations) than are the Chinese, Russians and the French.

I agree the US public thinks so, and that is a PR coup by each US administration. In a democracy, the politicians have to be extra good at PR.

Don't get me wrong. I am not denying the huge amount of humanitarian work that the US has done over the years. Probably more than the rest of the world combined, in terms of dollar amounts.

I simply believe that any government ultimately works for its own citizens' interests, and many starry-eyed candidates get a dose of reality check when they get in office. Obama is a case in point. Other than flowery rhetoric, he hasn't deviated significantly from Bush on foreign policy.

This is what I mean above by "hubris". I am not saying that the US succeeds in being "more GOOD" than China. But it thinks it is, and is sure it is trying to be. Hence the multiple lane highway of US good intentions paving the road to h3ll, and the pride and arrogance that causes us so much trouble in the playground ....

I agree that the US is held to a higher standard than China or Russia because it is the undisputed superpower and is the self-appointed champion of Western values, including freedom and democracy.

Support for ruthless dictators in the developing world and the Middle East, overseeing continued carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan, are at odds with that image.

 

[muse]

The title of the piece should be a give away that the ISI is going to be the fall guy -- but someone said there is no such thing as bad PR -- as Pakistani readers will peruse the article, they will note all the standard Afghan conspiracy ideas - the esteemed ambassador is a most capable operator; the echo of the Indian and Iranian demand against any diminishment of the Northern Alliance role, is difficult to ignore. The ambassador points that in Kabul there will be calls for revenge, but as he says, there wheels within wheels and if number one feels threatened by number 2 and number one is allied with a presidential contender, and feels safe under shade of the real power in Afghanistan, little option but to bide their time - either way, it's a fascinating shake up.


Death Wish?

Spooks spill blood in the Hindu Kush
By M K Bhadrakumar

Like in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, the murder of Dr Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, could have been foretold. But the sheer brutality of his murder by a suicide bomber in front of a mosque in the town of Mehtarlam in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday afternoon in the holy month of Ramadan speaks of a visceral hostility not easily fathomable.


A self-styled Taliban spokesman promptly claimed responsibility. "We were looking for him for a long time, but today we succeeded." Commentators will no doubt rush to underscore that Laghmani's killing demonstrates the growing "sophistication" of Taliban operations. Indeed, Laghmani was a heavily guarded figure right in the sanctum sanctorum of the Kabul power structure. The first circle of the Afghan security establishment has been breached. High professionalism is the hallmark of the operation.

However, there are wheels within wheels. At critical junctures in the progress of the Taliban movement, an unseen hand has often summoned the assassin to clear the path or tilt the scales. The chronicle is chilling: Ayatollah Mazari, the top Shi'ite cleric of Afghanistan, (1994); Mohammad Najibullah, president of Afghanistan (1996); Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, (2001); Haji Abdul Qadir, also in the Northern Alliance, (2002). The list seems never-ending. "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on ... " [1]

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been stalking Laghmani for a decade. It is rare for an intelligence agency to single out one individual as its mortal enemy and publicly warn him. The ISI had bestowed on Laghmani that rare honor more than once publicly.

If one could go back and take a peep into the Northern Alliance's (NA's) intelligence apparatus during the anti-Taliban resistance in the latter half of the 1990s, one would spot Laghmani as an operative of exceptional brilliance in the shadows.

Being an ethnic Pashtun, he had keen insight into the political culture of the Taliban movement and the mindset of its patrons in the ISI, which was an invaluable asset for the NA. Pakistan got a taste of what Laghmani could do when in July 2008 he established the connection between the suicide bombers who attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the ISI by tracing a cellphone found in the wreckage to a facilitator in Kabul who was in direct telephone contact with a Pakistani intelligence official in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province.

The ISI felt the maximum heat from him in his native region of eastern Afghanistan, given the complexity of the situation there involving factors such as the traditional failure of the Taliban to strike deep roots among the Ghilzai tribes, the presence of the network of Jalaluddin Haqqani and al-Qaeda and the continuing influence of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e Islami.

In sum, Laghmani is not easily replaceable for the Tajik-dominated Afghan intelligence in Kabul on account of both his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Pashtun tribal alignments and the inner working of the Taliban and the ISI, as well as his operational skills.

The timing is significant. He has been a key ally of President Hamid Karzai. Pakistan has adopted an air of indifference to the outcome of the Afghan presidential elections, but a strong undercurrent of anxiety is palpable. Especially so, as the prospect of Karzai winning another five-year term as president is appearing.

Everything now hinges on the American effort to rein in Karzai by getting the leading contenders to form some kind of a national government and to include technocrats in his cabinet. But then Karzai might well reject such a proposition. Karzai has tasted independence and may have come to like it.

To quote Ahmed Rashid, the well-informed Pakistani author who advises the Pentagon, "Karzai, of course, is showing his independence more and more from the Americans and does not want to be seen as an agent of the West in any way."

With such a curious power calculus forming in Kabul, the ISI needs to prepare for the return of Mohammed Fahim, the head of the NA intelligence - Laghmani's boss - and former defense minister, to the top echelons of Karzai's government as first vice president. That is a tough call. There is no one today in Afghanistan with Fahim's reach of experience in intelligence and military operations.

Pakistan succeeded to get the United States pressure Karzai to remove Fahim from his powerful post as defense minister and send him into political oblivion in 2005. (The US probably had its own geopolitical objectives too.) Pakistan now faces the specter of Fahim rising up, as it were, from the ashes like a phoenix, more powerful than ever. A massive media campaign has appeared against "warlord" Fahim, ever since he began figuring as Karzai's running mate. Unsurprisingly, he evokes strong partisan feelings. But to the consternation of his detractors, Karzai remains unmoved.

Now, Fahim used to be Laghmani's mentor. Indeed, the Fahim-Laghmani team would have turned the heat on the Taliban and the ISI from day one of the new Karzai presidency. Fahim, with his vast experience as an "operations man", is quite capable of carrying the fight to the ISI camp, and Laghmani would have been a "force multiplier" for him in the Pashtun regions. There was an attempt on Fahim's life already in August and Laghmani's murder is most certainly intended as a warning.

Prime facie, Pakistan ought to have nothing to fear from a Karzai presidency. Karzai has repeatedly expressed his willingness to work for a political transition that accommodates the Taliban as an Afghan group, provided it eschews violence. But in Karzai's scheme of things, the reconciliation of the Taliban should be preferably through an intra-Afghan peace process and through a loya jirga (tribal council).

And there is no guarantee that the other Afghan groups will concede any dominant role to the Taliban. Besides, the Afghan-ness of the political process might incrementally loosen the ISI's grip over the Taliban. Indeed, Laghmani with his seamless knowledge of the Taliban leadership and the Pashtun tribal alignments would have posed a constant headache to the ISI if any intra-Afghan peace process got under way.

Laghmani's murder highlights continued interference in Afghanistan. In the coming period, we may see an escalation of such interference. Pakistan, for its part, will feel tempted to exploit the differences that have cropped up between Karzai and Washington.

Pakistani commentators see the Americans "breathing down his [Karzai's] neck harder then ever". They anticipate that in the name of a crusade against public corruption and for good governance, the US will seek the exclusion of important political allies of Karzai who belonged to the Northern Alliance, such as Fahim, Karim Khalili, Mohammed Mohaqiq, Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan. Indeed, these NA stalwarts ("warlords") will stubbornly reject a Taliban-dominated power structure in Kabul.

Therefore, in the shadowy world of the spooks, the second Karzai presidency may be starting on a bloody note. From all accounts, Laghmani was a popular figure in the Afghan security establishment and he figured in Karzai's inner circle. The general expectation was that he was destined to occupy a key post in any new government under Karzai. There will be many in Kabul who may want to avenge his untimely death.

[1] Quatrain 71of the The Rubaiyat by Persian poet Omar Khayyam (circa 1048-1143) reads,
The Moving Finger writes, and having writ, Moves on:
nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.


Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

 

[muse]

The Empire Strikes back? Or Revenge of the prodigy?


September 9, 2009
Partial Recount Ordered in Afghan Election
By CARLOTTA GALL and SHARON OTTERMAN

KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations-backed commission serving as the ultimate arbiter of the Afghan elections announced Tuesday that it had found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud” in a number of polling stations and ordered a partial recount even as election officials declared that President Hamid Karzai had won a majority of the vote.

With 91.6 percent of the polling stations counted, the officials said, Mr. Karzai had won 54.1 percent of the vote, and his main challenger, the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, won 28.3 percent. The tally, if certified, would mean that Mr. Karzai would be declared the victor without the need for a runoff because he would won more than 50 percent of the vote..

But international election officials and observers immediately cast those figures in doubt. They said the tallies included hundreds of thousands of suspect votes that would have been excluded if Afghan election officials had correctly used safeguards built into the computerized counting system.

One Western official said Mr. Karzai would not have made the 50 per cent mark if the triggers built into the computer counting system were enforced as planned.

“He was below 50 per cent when you exclude the obviously fraudulent votes,” the diplomat said of Mr. Karzai.

Afghan election officials had made a decision Sunday to enforce a number of algorithms that would catch irregularities where more than the expected number of voters were recorded, or where one candidate won an exceptional result.

But when it became clear that Mr. Karzai would not make the necessary 50 per cent, the diplomat said, the decision was reversed Monday, and the officials announced they had no legal authority to exclude ballots from the count.

In a harshly-worded statement that cited “large scale ballot stuffing,” the European Union’s election observer said Afghanistan’s election officials had allowed hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes to be accepted in the count.

Up to 700,000 more ballots could be excluded from the count if stricter algorithms to catch inflated numbers of votes were enforced, the European Union suggested in its statement, which condemned those who “have flouted the law by seeking to manipulate the results of the elections and so to deny the Afghan people a legitimate, democratic choice of president.”

Reports of egregious fraud have marred the Aug. 20 presidential election and raised serious questions about the legitimacy of the Afghan political process as Mr. Karzai seeks a second five-year term.

Mr. Abdullah and other opposition candidates have repeatedly accused the Karzai government of voting fraud. In a statement on Tuesday, the Electoral Complaints Commission, an Afghan and international panel in charge of certifying the final count, said it had found a “clear pattern” of fraud in the polling stations it investigated in the southern and eastern provinces of Kandahar, Paktika and Ghazni.

The ballot boxes, the commission said, were tainted in one of two ways: either they were stuffed with an “exceptionally high number of presidential votes” in relation to the number of ballots available, or they contained an “exceptionally high percentage of votes” cast for one candidate, or both. The statement did not say which candidate had benefited, but Mr. Karzai won large numbers of votes in those areas.

The complaints commission ordered a recount of all votes in polling stations where 600 or more votes had been cast — a level seen as suspiciously high. All stations where any one candidate received 95 percent or more of the votes cast will also be recounted. Stations where fewer than 100 votes were cast will be exempt from recounts.

The audits, which affect an unknown number of polling stations, will be conducted in the presence of international and Afghan observers, and ballots ruled to be fraudulent will be discarded, the commission said. The process is expected to take weeks.

About 5.7 million votes have been tallied so far, but at least 224,000 have been thrown out because the candidate had withdrawn or because of technical problems with the ballot, like a vote cast for not one but two presidential candidates.

The confirmation of significant fraud places the Obama administration in a difficult position as it seeks to shore up domestic and international support for the expanding Afghan war. American officials have said little publicly about how they will respond to the vote-rigging accusations, but some Western and Afghan officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said there was broad misconduct.

Those officials said this week that Afghans loyal to Mr. Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election. Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.

The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10.

In Mr. Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, preliminary results indicate that more than 350,000 ballots have been turned in to be counted, but the Western officials estimated that only about 25,000 people actually voted there. More than 2,300 complaints of electoral misconduct have been lodged with the commission.

The election uncertainty comes amid increasing violence in Afghanistan that has led to a record number of international troop deaths this year. On Tuesday, a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of NATO soldiers near the main gate of their air base in Kabul, a senior Afghan police official said, killing at least three civilians just three weeks after a similar attack.

A NATO spokesman said that while no international forces had been killed, some had been wounded. Six civilians, including one woman, were being treated for injuries at a local hospital, said Dr. Farid Raaid, a spokesman for the Public Health Ministry. The death toll was likely to rise, officials said.

The explosion occurred at 8:20 a.m. outside the entrance to the air facility operated by the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led coalition. Coalition flights operate from the base, located at the eastern end of Kabul’s main international airport.

In a phone call from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the blast, and he said coalition troops had been the target.

Three weeks ago, Mr. Mujahid claimed responsibility for a similar attack outside NATO headquarters in Kabul. At the time, he warned that the Taliban would “continue this kind of operation in the future and we will accelerate our operations against the Afghan and foreign forces.”

In that attack, a suicide car bomber struck just outside the NATO headquarters and the Ministry of Transportation, a block from the United States Embassy in Kabul. Seven people — all civilians — were killed, and 91 others were wounded.

Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Sharon Otterman from New York. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul and Mark McDonald from Hong Kong.

 

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Disturbing developments in Afghanistan
Najmuddin A Shaikh



The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, defying directives or requests from the Electoral Complaints Commission, a UN-appointed body with a Canadian head, announced that with ballots from 91 percent of polling stations counted, Hamid Karzai had 54.1 percent of the vote, as against 28.3 percent for his main rival Abdullah Abdullah.

This result announced on Monday gives President Karzai the simple majority he needs to avoid a second round. The result, however, clearly includes votes counted from areas where the ECC has ordered a recount. The recount was ordered before the poll results were announced but the so-called Independent Election Commission’s officials, clearly indicating their bias in favour of Karzai, did not postpone the announcement of the poll results on the technical ground that there were differences in the English and Dari versions of the letter received from the ECC, and the letter could not therefore be acted upon. These officials have now warned that while they will implement the recount order, this will take a “long time”.

The announcement of the results came despite requests from the Americans and others that further results should be withheld until complaints had been investigated. The ECC had ordered a recount after it said it had found “clear and convincing” evidence of fraud in several southern provinces and ordered a recount in some areas. It also asked for an audit of polling stations that recorded turnouts of 100 percent or where one candidate had won more than 95 percent of votes.

All the Americans achieved, apparently on the basis of a message from Secretary Clinton conveyed to President Karzai by Ambassador Eikenberry, was a postponement by Karzai of a proclamation of victory. It is now certain that there will be no announcement of the final results by September 17 as originally planned. It is also certain that the election crisis will keep the political pot on the boil in Kabul and keep the Karzai administration from making the decisions that are sorely needed to counter the rising Taliban influence.

Apropos growing influence of the Taliban, I went back to look at the SENLIS council (now renamed the International Council on Security and Development) which maintained that while in November 2007 the Taliban had a permanent presence in 54 percent of the country, they had extended their sphere of influence by December 2008 to 72 percent of the country. Operation Panther’s Claw, hailed as a major military advance against the Taliban, and this may yet turn out to be true, did not in the short time between its completion in end-July and the holding of elections on August 20, inspire the degree of confidence in the local population that could have ensured a respectable turnout.

The total turnout in an area with 80,000 voters was apparently 150. It would seem that the Taliban sphere of influence has not shrunk in any substantive way because of the increased American presence or the increased military activity in the south and east of the country.

And this is the crux of the matter. Taliban influence is heaviest in the Pashtun south and east. This is where turnout has been low and this is where ballot box stuffing has been undertaken by Karzai’s supporters and state officials. If all doubtful votes were to be thrown out, it is likely that only a small percentage of votes, perhaps 10-15 percent of registered voters in the Pashtun areas, will be seen as genuine.

This would call the entire election into question since the Pashtun, who are the majority ethnic group and who the international community concedes comprise 44 percent of the total population, would have been effectively disenfranchised. Were this to happen, Afghanistan and large areas on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line would be severely affected.

In the United States, it had been expected that President Obama and his security advisers would make decisions on the strategy that Gen McChrystal has recommended within weeks, and that additional troops, additional development funds and additional civilian experts for undertaking the development work would be sent to Afghanistan quickly.

Now American press reports indicate that meetings on this question will not be held until November. Presumably the Americans would like resolution of the election issue that would be palatable before they set out to convince an increasingly disaffected American public that continued and increased American involvement in Obama’s “war of necessity” merits their support.

The Europeans (the UK, Germany, France and Italy), partly as a reaction to the election fiasco, partly as a result of the Kunduz incident and partly as a result of the heavy casualties the British took during Operation Panther’s Claw (and the consequent public outrage in the UK) have now proposed to the UN Secretary General the convening of an international conference by the end of the year at which the Europeans would want to advocate a quickened pace for the shifting of security responsibilities to Afghan national forces.

The Americans are lukewarm about this proposal. They fear rightly that this will lead to increased pressure for a premature withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan and confirm that the scheduled departure of Dutch forces in 2010 and of the Canadians in 2011 will not be postponed.

Afghan national forces are certainly not going to be in a position to take over security duties in any substantive way. In November 2008, according to a Pentagon report, only 7 Afghan battalions were considered capable of independent operations without international support. Given the pace of training even after increased trainers arrive from the US, it is unlikely that the present strength of Afghan forces will be ready for at least another 4-5 years.

Equally importantly, much of the recruitment that has brought the strength of the Afghan army to some 89,000 has come from Tajik areas, perhaps because Pashtuns have been intimidated into not joining, or perhaps because of the policies adopted by the largely Tajik-dominated bureaucracy of the Afghan defence ministry. The increase already approved to 134,000 will also come in current conditions from the Tajiks or other minority ethnic groups.

The further increase to 240,000 which has or will be proposed by Gen McChrystal will further compound the problem, of having a national army in which the largest ethnic group is underrepresented, and may give added reason for the Pashtuns to identify with the Taliban.

This however lies in the future. For the moment the problem is of finding a way out of the election imbroglio. It cannot be a solution that disenfranchises the Pashtuns. It cannot be a solution that exacerbates the ethnic divide. It must be a solution that brings some combined leadership that can provide effective governance and reduces the corruption that has eaten away at the vitals of the Afghan state.

The Americans and their allies have to realise that even if this happy result is obtained, and this will require deft diplomacy in the weeks ahead, the ability of the Afghans to look after their own security will take many years to develop. Equally importantly the development of this capability would have to be carefully handled to ensure that it does not upset the ethnic balance in the country or create apprehensions in the region.

As regards the economy, even with effective governance, the capacity for which will take time to develop, it will be many years before the Afghans can create the jobs and economic opportunities that will wean the reconcilables away from the Taliban. In the meantime, “make work” policies may have to be adopted.

The question then becomes: will western leaders be prepared to articulate this reality to their people and if they do, will the necessary support be forthcoming?

The writer is a former foreign secretary