Analysis: Few ways forward in Afghanistan

[unhappycamper]

Analysis: Few ways forward in Afghanistan
By Robert H. Reid - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Nov 1, 2009 13:40:13 EST

KABUL — President Hamid Karzai’s leadership is weak, his government corrupt and nearly a third of the votes he won in the August election were thrown out as fakes.

But in the end, the Obama administration is likely to stick by the Afghan president. It has few other good options.

Karzai is far from the strong and capable partner that Washington had hoped would emerge from the electoral process that it and Western allies had pushed for in Afghanistan. They hoped the elections would stabilize the country and bleed support from the Taliban.

But the process effectively ended in turmoil Sunday, even as the war with the Taliban intensifies. Karzai’s challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, bowed out only six days before a scheduled runoff, charging that no fair election was possible.

Now the United States, barring other developments, must find a way to work with Karzai and encourage him to embrace supporters of Abdullah and other groups opposed to the Taliban.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/ap_afghanistan_forward_110109/



unhappycamper comment: Perhaps a little history lesson is in order.....


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam#First_Indochina_War

Sound familiar?

In July 1955, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem rejected the nationwide elections agreed to by France and North Vietnam at the Geneva Conference of 1954. The pro-Hanoi Vietcong began a guerrilla campaign in the late 1950s to overthrow Diem's government, which an official Vietcong statement described as a "disguised colonial regime".<16>

In 1963, Buddhist discontent with Diem's pro-Catholic discrimination erupted following the banning of the Buddhist flag and the Hue Vesak shootings. This resulted in a series of mass demonstrations known as the Buddhist crisis. With Diem unwilling to bend, his brother orchestrated the Xa Loi Pagoda raids. As a result, America's relationship with Diem broke down and resulted in coup that saw Diem killed.

Diem was followed by a series of military regimes that often lasted only months before being toppled by another. With this instability, the communists began to gain ground. There were more than a dozen governments before the pairing of Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu took control of a junta in mid-1965. Thieu gradually outmanoevred Ky and cemented his grip on power in fraudulent elections in 1967 and 1971.



The Vietnam quagmire continued on for 12 more years after the death of Diem.