Run-Off Vote Is Good for Afghanistan

Afghanistan's presidential election is still a work in progress but its implications will be enormous. President Barack Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan needs a legitimate and credible outcome from this election in order to build support for what is now America's longest war both at home and abroad. The NATO mission in Afghanistan needs an Afghan partner who has the support of the Afghan people and can provide the decent governance that is essential to fighting an insurgency. War weariness is gaining ground in America and Europe, a flawed election would only add to discontent.

The preliminary results released on the Afghan elections so far are too small (only 17 per cent of the polling places) to mean much. The claims of victory by the contenders, including incumbent president Hamid Karzai (a Pashtun) and his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah (a Tajik), should also be given little attention; they are just spin. Charges of fraud and vote tampering need to be investigated thoroughly. Final results are not expected until next month and they will provide much more insight into the status of the war.

The actual voting day events violent and non-violent demonstrated that both sides of the war achieved some, but not all, of their goals. For NATO and the Afghan government, the major accomplishment was just holding the election in the face of the Taliban's announced determination to disrupt the process. This is a pretty low bar for a military alliance with almost 1,00,000 foreign troops and 1,50,000 Afghan security personnel on the ground but it was passed. The more difficult challenge of convincing Afghans and others that the outcome is legitimate and credible still lies ahead.

For the Taliban and its al-Qaeda partners, while they failed in their promised goal to disrupt the voting so as to prevent any semblance of an election, they succeeded in intimidating voters in many parts of the country, especially females, to effect a low turnout.