A Second Chance for Karzai

David Blair, Daily Telegraph October 21, 2009

Only a legitimate government can defeat a stubborn and resilient guerrilla movement. That awkward axiom of counter-insurgency warfare lies behind the bitter wrangling over Afghanistan's presidential election, which culminated in yesterday's announcement of a second round.

Hamid Karzai, sombre, downbeat and apparently chastened, publicly accepted the verdict of the Electoral Complaints Commission. This United Nations body chided him for the widespread ballot-rigging that marred the first round and knocked his share of the vote below the 50 per cent threshold needed for outright victory.

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So the contest will continue, with Mr Karzai facing his leading opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, in a head-to-head vote on November 7. Both Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama were quick to endorse this outcome and praise Mr Karzai for accepting that he has not yet secured another term.

By David Blair Published: 6:26AM BST 21 Oct 2009

Comments 7 | Comment on this article

The thinking of the American and British governments is clear: a discredited Afghan leader would be incapable of defeating the Taliban, even with the presence of about 100,000 Western soldiers in the country. Ballot-stuffing, fraud and the exceptionally low turnout in the southern and eastern provinces most affected by the insurgency have all combined to tarnish the first round – and rob Mr Karzai of any legitimacy.

A second round provides a second chance to get this right. Or so the theory goes. In a two-horse race between Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah, experience suggests that the president should emerge as the clear winner.

He, after all, is a Pashtun and they are the largest single ethnic group among Afghanistan's 30 million people. Mr Abdullah also has Pashtun blood on his father's side, but he is considered to be a Tajik and they comprise about a quarter of the population. In a country where people vote according to ethnic loyalty, the numbers should be on Mr Karzai's side.

The optimists, notably John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, believe that the president can re-establish his legitimacy by winning a clean and credible second round, free of the chicanery that marred the first ballot.

Mr Kerry, who appears to have been mediating between Mr Karzai and the American administration, declared that a "time of enormous uncertainty has been transformed into a time of great opportunity". After his expected victory on November 7, America may urge the president to form a government of national unity and find a place in the cabinet for Mr Abdullah.

Mr Karzai could then claim to be Afghanistan's legitimate leader on two grounds: he will have won a credible victory in a clean second round – never mind the fiasco of the first ballot – and he would preside over a unity government. He would then possess the broadest base of political support from which to take on the Taliban.

That is the optimistic scenario. But the chances of real life working out as smoothly as this are slim indeed. The first problem is that it wholly ignores the Taliban. If the British and the Americans know that a legitimate Afghan government is in their interests, the Taliban is equally well aware that undermining the election and preventing the birth of such an administration must be its strategic priority.

Just as Mr Karzai and his foreign supporters have a second chance to get the election right, so the Taliban now has a second opportunity to sabotage the whole affair. If it can turn the new ballot into a fiasco, then nothing will be solved.

The Taliban may even be able to engineer an utterly perverse result. If it is able to intimidate people in its Pashtun heartland to boycott the poll, it could deprive Mr Karzai of the votes of his ethnic kith and kin. The Taliban's central aim will be to drive down turnout, thereby robbing the contest of legitimacy and, perhaps, going as far as to deny the president his expected victory.

What would happen then? Would Mr Abdullah be proclaimed as the new president? If the central problem of Afghan politics is the alienation of the Pashtuns, the advent of a Tajik leader would only make this worse.

And would Mr Karzai leave office quietly? Peaceful transfers of power are unknown in Afghanistan's modern history. Of the 10 men who served as president in the past three decades, four were murdered – one being strung up from a lamppost and hacked to death.

The worst fate that can befall a British politician is to be dispatched to the House of Lords. In Afghanistan, the personal consequences of political failure can be very grim. Hence Mr Karzai's desperate struggle to win re-election in the first ballot and his fierce determination, persisting until yesterday, to avoid a second round.

So the next round of voting presents crucial opportunities to both sides: the West may finally get a reasonably legitimate Afghan ally, while the Taliban now has another chance to cripple the country's political leadership. Whoever makes best use of this chance will decide the future course of the Afghan story.

Comments: 7

And Brown is about to provide the Taliban with a further 500 British targets. For this farcical election? Bring our troops home now.

sad sick old blimps ordering our young blood into the fight.how can the afgans have any democracy? they all walk round with guns.stop the crap and get out. employ the troops as border guards stop anymore of the religious fanatics getting in here.

This sounds like Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty all over ! How can he establish legitamacy ? He's a cheating crook ! Oh , I get it ? Welcome back Jacqui Smith for a 2nd chance. Don't fiddle your expenses for a while and you will be rehabilitated. This article and what is being allowed to happen in Afghanistan just demonstrates the surreal hypcrisy and fraud of Western politics. If I were a British Soldier I would be feeling ever so slightly sick.

This one of the biggest tests for democracy in a country where the concept is largely alien. With resilience and predicatability, Mr. Karzai still has the resounding credibility to be in power. He is the man who has done his best to bring a reasonable face to this tumultous country where the Talebans have stifled civil liberties. To me Hamid is the fairer face of a liberal Afghan. After his second tenure can we only become weary if he still wants another term. We shall then fail to understand his interior motives. Good luck Afghan peoples, welcome civility. Vote Hamid Karzai. Ojoatre Kaaka

Gordon Brown has joined Barack Obama in welcoming President Hamid Karzai's agreement to a second ballot run-off in Afghanistan's disputed presidential election. Skip related content RELATED PHOTOS / VIDEOS Afghan election to go to a second round Play video In today's excerpt - the Renaissance in Europe owed a tremendous debt to the inventions that Marco Polo (1254-1324), his father Niccol� and his uncle Maffeo brought back to Venice from their twenty four years of travel in China: The Afghan leader has bowed to international pressure after a ruling by the UN's Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) that a third of his votes from the first round in August were not valid. That left him without the 50 per cent needed for outright victory. Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission said the run-off with rival candidate Dr Abdullah Abdullah, who finished second in the first round ballot, would be held on November 7. Mr Brown commended what he described as Mr Karzai's "statesmanlike" acceptance of the constitutional process and promised Britain's full support for the final round of voting. "It is vital that the new Afghan government has legitimacy in the eyes of its people," he said. "I have consistently said that the election must be allowed to run its course and that all concerned should respect the process.There is no doubt that there have been flaws and we will need to apply the lessons of this process." I thank you Firozali A. Mulla

Once again, the West has shot itself in the foot by insisting in "Democracy". Is it always right to insist on democratic elections, when in the case of Pakistan, the government is more weaker than ever, and in Afghanistan, where it will probably lead to a stronger Taliban. Surely there is a cased to be made in some countries, for a strong military to rule instead of a lawlessness after a seemingly, democratic process which in some cases must be doubted.

An legitmate western style government in the middle of a bloody civil war is like enjoying the winter in hell. The insurgency is there to stay and all they have to do is wait for either the current criminal warlords kill themselves off for western money and power or until the U.S. debt force a budget retreat at its current 6 billion dollar occupation price tag. There is no GDP in Afganistan or for that matter foreign-aid supported nuclear Pakistan to pay back the investments-unless the South Asian Pipeline through both countries comes to fruitation. Better to work with the insurgents and cut a deal to share the spoils, then to go broke attempting to create a crooked and mutant government of legitimate criminals who will eventually have to be forcefully removed over greed in the future. We need deal-makers and negociators rather than boobs, bullets and a fraudlent western constitution. It's all about energy, so stop with the nation-building crap already...