Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Another Afghan Election

Rich Galen

Wednesday October 21, 2009

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There will be another election in Afghanistan on November 7 between President Hamid Karzai and his former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.

The first election, on August 20, was fraught with fraud. You may remember that I was an official observer during that election but I was in the far north and most of the mischief apparently occurred in the south and southwest of Afghanistan.

The rules of the election were that if any candidate got more than 50 percent of the votes then he would be declared the winner and be sworn in as President of Afghanistan. If no candidate got more than 50 percent the top two vote-getters would compete in a second round.

After the first count, Karzai ended up with 54.6 percent of the votes, to Abdullah's 27.8 percent.

Reports of cheating had begun even before the polls closed on election day. Many polling places in the south never opened, or if they did open, there were technical problems with allowing people cast ballots.

In the far northern Balkh Province, where the election was conducted under my watchful eye and which is at the center of Abdullah's strength, he beat Karzai by about seven percentage points, 46-39. In Kabul, Karzai beat Abdullah and the third place finisher 55-35.

But, in the southern-most major population center, Kandahar Province, Karzai got about 88 percent of the votes compared to 3.7 percent for Abdullah.

Oh, yeah. That sounds about right.

The Taliban had threatened people that if they were found with their fingers stained by the blue ink indicating they had voted, the offending finger would be amputated.

Anecdotal reports suggested the Taliban made good on the threat at least twice, which was more than enough to make people stay away in the areas they control.

The Electoral Complaints Commission, the United Nations-backed recount body which was charged with investigating complaints ended up tossing out hundreds of thousands of ballots which were cast for Karzai in polling places where no one had actually voted.

Karzai wasn't all that interested in a second round. According to all reports, as recently as Monday he was still resisting but calls from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and a series of meetings with Sen. John Kerry (D-Ma) in Kabul, convinced him to back down and accept the new election.

Part of the negotiations were to have Karzai end up just short of the needed 50 percent, so the official record will show that he ended up with 48.3 percent, but we may never know what the real percentage was.

Folks in Kabul have said that in order to get the election rewound in just two weeks there will be fewer polling places and fewer voting stations within each polling place. That will mean fewer poll watchers to recruit and fewer polling places to protect. It will also mean fewer voters will probably come out.

All this gives President Obama another two weeks to decide upon a strategy for Afghanistan, because he can and should wait until the Afghans choose a President so he knows with whom he will be dealing.

Obama has more time, but the extra time won't make that decision any easier.

The economy is still non-existent. According to the CIA World Factbook the principal sector is agriculture and the major products are, in this order:

Opium, wheat, fruits, nuts; wool, mutton, sheepskins, lambskins

And, the Taliban. According to a London-based group, tne International Council on Security and Development,

"Confident in their expansion beyond the rural south, the Taliban is at the gates of the capital and infiltrating the city at will."

The only thing everyone agrees on when it comes to Afghanistan is, there is no good answer.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the site for the International Foundation for Election Systems' news summary since August 20, and the Wall Street Journal's look at the role Sen. John Kerry played in all this.

Also a really amusing series of e-mails from StubHub, a Mullfoto showing how global warming is destroying West Virginia, and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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