Afghan Election Rigged, Possible Runoff Before Decision on Troop Surge
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The fraud perpetrated in Afghanistan’s election was so pervasive, international monitors fear it may never be possible to determine the actual results. At least 1.5 million ballots are believed to be illegal or fake votes. Entire district tallies are reported to be possibly comprised of fake ballots. The report from the UN-backed electoral complaints commission (ECC) suggests as many as one of every three ballots counted for incumbent president Hamid Karzai is suspect.
The finding is a significant setback, as US military commanders say one key element to any successful effort to prevent the Taliban’s return to power is good governance. With evidence of such widespread corruption in both national and local government, the prospects for determining a path toward reliable good governance remains very dimly lit.
The Obama administration has announced plans to give $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over 5 years, in order to reinforce its civic infrastructure and protect against the advance of the Taliban and secure its nuclear arsenal.
There are now discussions about whether the disputed election result will be resolved through a runoff. Hamid Karzai, long seen as Washington’s man in Kabul, and once a heroic figure for his very real efforts to unite fractious tribal cultures, is now widely viewed as corrupt and may lose a runoff to the challenger Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.
The outcome of the election will almost certainly influence the US president’s decision on whether to send more troops, but in the style of truly astute military planning, Pres. Obama is not giving any sign as to which election outcome would be more likely to warrant an increase in troop levels.
A good reason for this is the need to incentivize the new government to work with the coalition forces and toward the key goals of a sustained counter-insurgency strategy. A model of scaled-back ground presence and targeted strikes might prevail for remote, sparsely populated mountainous and rural areas where Taliban cadres seek to dig in, train and extend their control of territory, while a Petraeus-planned counter-insurgency and community building strategy might be more attuned to Kabul, Khost and Kandahar.
Mr. Karzai faces a serious challenge, due to mounting public frustration with rampant systemic corruption and a seemingly permanent generalized condition of insecurity and random violence. The Afghan government’s willingness to talk about a prospective runoff, if only to legitimate its return to power, is a sign that international allegations of fraud, widely believed to be true by Afghans, have substantial truth behind them.
UPDATE, 2:34 GMT, 20 October 2009: the ECC has found one-third of the votes cast for Hamid Karzai to be illegitimate, reducing his total vote-count to less than 50%, making a second round runoff necessary under the Afghan constitution. If upheld by the Independent Electoral Commission, the finding means Pres. Karzai must win a second vote against Dr. Abdullah if he is to remain president.
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