The Afghan runoff election is going to be a sham. Ugh.

[beachmom]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/78042.html

Defying U.N., Afghans to keep fraud-marred polling centers

KABUL, Afghanistan — In a rebuff to the United Nations, an Afghan commission named by President Hamid Karzai disclosed Thursday that centers rife with fraudulent votes during the summer's presidential election will remain open for the Nov. 7 runoff against challenger Abdullah Abdullah.

U.N. officials had hoped to shut down polling centers where the worst fraud was documented in a recent audit, but the Independent Election Commission said it will open 6,322 polling centers -- about 500 more than U.N. officials had proposed and 17 more than were open in the first round.

Commissioner Zekria Barakzai said that polling centers would be closed only if because of security concerns or weather, not because of past problems with fraud.

"The election commission is prepared for the second round of elections," he said.

A Western official Thursday described the Afghan action as "maddening, and completely against our advice." The official couldn't be named because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan, reeling from a deadly insurgent attack on its personnel Wednesday, is scrambling to salvage the election after a disastrous Aug. 20 first round, in which rampant fraud -- largely to the benefit of Karzai -- undermined the results and fed doubts in the U.S. and Europe about continued military commitments. To bolster confidence in the new vote, U.N. officials sought to shut down polling stations when auditors had found extensive stuffing of ballot boxes and other misconduct.

I also read that the U.N. is ordering all "non-essential" staff out of Afghanistan after the attack on a guesthouse in Kabul yesterday that killed half a dozen U.N. workers (election workers). They claim this will have no effect on their being observers of the election. I am skeptical.

[karynnj]

1. Ugh, I quess Karzai didn't get the message or it was intended to be a sham

It is ridiculous that after they were caught with "ghost" polling places that they are going to have MORE polling centers this time. The UN did not come out that well the first time, as it looked too willing to ignore the fraud until they had no choice.

[wisteria]

2. It could be he feels threatened after the NYT piece.

He said to Kerry, according to news accounts that he thought there was a move afoot to remove him from office.
We still have several days until the vote- things could change.

[beachmom]

3. Bad news tonight: Afghan election talks break down

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/30/afghanistan.election/index.html

Source: Afghan election talks break downOctober 30, 2009 7:20 p.m. EDT

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his election opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, have broken down, a Western source close to the Afghan leadership told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Friday.

According to the source, Abdullah will likely announce this weekend that he will boycott the runoff presidential election slated for November 7, a runoff that had been scheduled after intense diplomatic arm twisting by the United States.

In a Thursday interview with Amanpour, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad had predicted that the country would soon be governed under a power-sharing deal.



Marc Ambinder wondered whether Kerry, Clinton, or Biden will be sent over there to try to salvage the situation.

[wisteria]

4. I never thought the power sharing deal was going to work.

Both sides had already come out against it. But, if Abdullah really has intentions of boycotting the elections he must know he stands a good chance of losing and is trying to make it look like the election process was rigged against him all along. He should remain in for the sake of the country.

[karynnj]

5. This really is a mess

Wasn't it the ex-Bush people pushing the power in the first place? The real question is how involved can the US be in setting it up, before it looks more like a puppet government than the current one. In addition, Abdullah was saying in a CNN interview last weekend that he would not work in a Karzai government. (Imagine Kerry had fought on Ohio and the solution (rather than Kerry getting nowhere) was that Kerry and Bush had to create a power sharing government - that sounds like how far these two are apart.)

Strange that Ambinder left out Holbrooke and Eikenberry.

[wisteria]

6. I think Clinton is on her way back from Pakistan, maybe she should turn the plane around and go to

Afghanistan.LOL.

[beachmom]

7. Actually, I stand in solidarity with Hillary Clinton after the way she was treated in Pakistan

Now I do think she made a mistake with her al Qaeda remark. However, basically the entire trip she was screamed at by students, journalists, etc. for the aid package and the drone attacks. The people there are anti-American. And they took it out on her. It was like how Kerry was treated times 1,000. Pakistan is going to be a problem going forward.

Oh, and it goes without saying that Pakistan is a patriarchal SEXIST society. I read recently about a female European musician who went to Pakistan to record her new album (it eventually became Taken by the Trees' critically acclaimed "East of Eden"). Her original idea was to collaborate with female artists in Pakistan. When she asked folks where she could meet the female Pakistani musicians she was given blank stares. Women aren't allowed to be professional musicians in Pakistan!! This from an extremely culturally rich country. You KNOW there are women highly talented who can't do what they love because of the sexist society they live in.

Finally, love how a place that is till not terribly democratic takes advantage of America's openness by allowing Q & A with the public.

[beachmom]

10. Or maybe we are all being too sensitve:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/clintons-pakistan-strategy.html

Scott Horton despairs of the MSM's misreading. Money quote:

An important part of Clinton’s job is public diplomacy, and her remarks in Pakistan this week are just that. A focal relationship is being recast, new points of connection are being defined, and criticisms once only whispered in back corridors are now stated openly. Clinton has made clear that the United States is prepared to dish out serious criticism, and also to receive it in return. Pakistan, at long last, is being treated as a fellow democracy and not as a military dictatorship in waiting. Beyond this, Clinton has forced open again a platform for more peaceful relations between the subcontinent’s two major powers. No one thinks peace is just around the corner for Pakistan. But we are witnessing the development of a policy that seriously engages its problems.

[karynnj]

13. While I agree with you that Clinton was subjected to very hostile

reception, I don't think it was 1000 times what Kerry got. Reading the various accounts, Kerry got pounded hard on many of the same issues, but he stayed far cooler. (leading to reports that he was weary, frustrated, and disappointed, rather than angry as Clinton was described.) This was completely personality and it is Kerry, who is more unusual here.

In addition, it was the way Holbrooke and others defined HRC's visit. From Holbrooke's descriptions, they wanted to use her history and star power to reach out to the people as well as have the standard meetings. In hindsight, the events they put HRC in exposed her to a level of hostility that surprised them. The fact is the articles on Kerry's trip and the fact that Holbrooke had difficulties earlier in the year with them should have let them see this as a very risky thing to do - not to mention exceedingly unpleasant for HRC. (They could have given her the chance for outreach with a combination of ceremonial events and an in studio interview with a respected Pakistani news person.) It does show how tough things are that a trip where she was able to announce specific projects that the aid will fund was almost completely hostile.

Scott Horton is revising history less than a week after it happened. It is pretty clear that one goal was the same one Biden, Hagel and Kerry set out to achieve with the aid bill - to try to lower the distrust and anger by directly helping the people. The other was likely to commend the Pakistanis on their antiterrorism effort and to encourage them to continue it. This is what she and other were speaking of before the trip. The fact is that no "new points of connections" were made and there is nothing I read that suggests that Clinton "forced open again a platform for more peaceful relations between the subcontinent’s two major powers".

While I don't think HRC was completely to blame and I doubt her words increased the anger - it was already seething, arguing that this trip had a positive impact is really trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

[wisteria]

12. Oh no doubt she took a lot of abuse. But, that goes with the job.

Have you ever worked in the field of customer service? Well, I did, and I see similarities. You never hear very many positive comments-mostly you hear complaints, and as a customer service rep. you are responsible for being diplomatic, hearing the customer out, and resolving the issue. This field is dominated by women. I firmly believe many men would not stand up to the verbal abuse. Mrs. Clinton did not make this trip to have a picnic with the Pakistani people. It must have been expected that as our official diplomatic represent ive, she would be hearing the complaints and be expected to try and smooth things over. The fact that Pakistan is a male dominated society that treat half of their society as subservient and nothing more then property, is irrelevant in this situation,in my opinion. If she were a he, the complaints would have been the same and the outrage might have been even more pointed and crude.

Mrs. Clinton was doing what she was appointed to do and I don't think she handled it any better or any worse than others who have tried. She is not our first SOS that has been a woman, but for some reason Albright and Rice never seemed to have supporters constantly have to remind us that they were victims of gender discrimination. And, frankly, this excuse is used way to often in defense of Clinton. It seems to be an defense whenever things don't go that well for Clinton.

[wisteria]

14. I also wanted to add that SOS Clinton's celebrity may be why thecriticism has been turned up.

Those who want to call attention to issues and gain attention know to seek out celebrity because this will allow them more press coverage.

[MH1]

8. If our goal is to exit soon, this might help

by giving us an excuse of sorts. "We tried", and get out.

I was considering Afghanistan a must-win but recently I am coming to the conclusion it is a can't-win, after the years of neglect by the Bush administration AND the fact that we are really, really bad at this sort of thing. I guess Bosnia kind of worked but wasn't that more NATO than us (in the peacekeeping, I mean)? And that took at least 10 years (I'm too lazy to look it up), and is still a bit dicey if I'm not mistaken. Well with Bush's negligence we have lost those critical first years. In a situation as difficult as Afghanistan was to start with, I don't see that we have the means to recover. Short of incredibly overwhelming force - as in World War type action, like vastly increasing the size of the military and accepting high casualty numbers. In other words we either go "all in" or we lose. Yet the American people will NO WAY support that. (and I'm not saying they should either. I am saying that is what I think the choice is.)

What really changed my thinking was the recent student demonstrations. We have totally failed in the PR battle. It was one thing if some local warlords supported the Taliban only because they thought they had to. But we are driving the youth to think they must be rid of us and the only way to do that is to side with the Taliban. There cannot be much worse a disaster than that, I think - to have the future generations made open to the awful beliefs that the Taliban push, as a reaction to our presence.

I do see another alternative but I think it is fanciful to believe the US can carry it off. That would be to start actually HELPING Afghanis throughout the country with useful, real assistance that made their lives better almost immediately. I have read scads of stories of approaches that can work but we seem incapable of implementing them on the scale that would be needed. Part of that is that corruption is not an Afghani problem, or a Philly politician problem it is a HUMAN problem and anytime you try to do anything on a large scale it will be undermined by corruption somewhere. But the other thing is that I think that the leadership of our Afghanistan operation have NO FRICKIN' CLUE as to what is really needed. They just don't get it. And to be honest, I don't know what it is either, and I might have some problems with it because I sure as hell am not enamored even of the apparent non-Taliban Afghani mindset toward women. Anyway, bottom line I just don't see a miracle happening here. If Obama thinks he can pull one off he'd better find a way to make drastic changes in our approach, fast.

Well that's a little negative stream-of-consciousness to start the morning. Maybe I'll go buy a pumpkin and carve it.

[beachmom]

9. Watch this video of the French foreign legion "help" Afghans. Then get hit with ambush

right after:

http://tinyurl.com/yekve5f

Article to go with video here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125676818114014325.html

[MH1]

11. Yeah, that's kind of what I mean

Many problems with that account.

In the night before Sunday's operation, the Legionnaires -- a motley crew of nationalities including Romanian, Chilean and Chinese -- threw a raunchy party at the outpost's improvised bar, downing beer as a sequence of porn videos and Ukrainian pop clips blared from the dust-covered TV.

Oh yeah, that'll help in a Muslim country. But where would you find sufficient numbers of men who would NOT behave like that? Particularly since few if any military commanders have ever even suggested that our troops should set a higher standard of behavior. (Don't get me started on the way my male military colleagues behaved in Korea. And Germany and Italy for that matter. Do NOT get me started.)

The original French plan had been to provide villagers with a tractor and farming supplies, in an attempt to win hearts and minds. But such a ceremony -- requiring the attendance of Col. Durieux and the district governor -- was judged too risky.

"Such a ceremony"? WTF? Just go help the people, you don't need a ceremony. If you are actually helping, the word will get around. Just like the word gets around that the "infidel occupiers" are throwing raunchy parties with porn videos.

Meantime, other Legionnaires walked into Rodbar's center below, knocking on the doors of prominent locals and telling them to assemble outside the school for an unannounced shura, or meeting, with the captain.

Not asking. Telling. Barging in and saying hey, stop everything, you must come talk to us because we think we rule your world and we have big guns to prove it.

An Afghan army representative sitting next to Capt. Guillaume, Sgt. Din Mohammad, tried a softer line. "We're here to help you, not to disturb you. If a mortar falls on your house, it pains me as much as if it were to fall on my house," he said.

Oh bullshit, just bullshit, and his audience knows it.

Our mission is to go to Rodbar to find out whether it has fallen under insurgent sway," Capt. Guillaume, a 29-year-old graduate of France's elite St. Cyr military academy, explained Saturday night.

Well duh, guess you got your answer. And - 29 years old? Sigh.

I certainly don't pretend to have any answers. But reading stuff like this tells me the people who really need to have the answers, obviously don't.

[TayTay]

15. We have a sort of bipolar disorder of a sort there

And army exists to present the threat of organized, deadly force to use violent and deadly means to enforce a will on another group or population. (As Thomas Ricks has pointed out, there is no peace-time branch of the American armed forces. That is not what we train people to do.)

I think that it is 8 years to late to do a proper counter-insurgency. I just think that window has closed. Doing so now in Afghanistan would require hundreds of thousands of troops, which are unavailable. I think the actual Pentagon planning and use of our armed services should be targeted to what they do, hunt down and eliminate threats to the United States of America.

The military is not trained to do nation-building. It just isn't what they do. We have every honorable intention, but you can't kill people and then make friends with their dead friends and relatives. It just doesn't work. There are 3rd party groups that do that work, do it much more efficiently and far, far cheaper than have a sort-of standing army in Afghanistan with the thousands of soldier, thousands of support personnel and so forth that accompany an army.

I don't expect the army to construct skyscrapers or teach school or plant crops either. Afghanistan needs these things done. They have to do them.

We need our armed services to do the actual jobs they have trained for. We can't ask people to do a job then yank them around the country just when they start to communicate with local populations. I can't see a scenario under which that would work. And I think Karzai is using our troops to prop up his corrupt regime. Maybe Karzai has no choice and that is the best Afghanistan can do, but I can't see why we have to be seen as his partner in corruption. It isn't going to work.

I also think the US has an "out" here. We did negotiate in good faith and at great effort. But we were deceived, the negotiations were in bad faith and the officials revealed as hopelessly compromised. We cannot proceed under those circumstances. The mission is not achievable, in those terms.

[beachmom]

16. Yup. Bad faith. It's now officially a sham that Abdullah Abdullah will not be party to:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/01/afghanistan.election/index.html

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan politician Abdullah Abdullah withdrew Sunday from the upcoming runoff election, saying he believes the second round would be as fraudulent as the first.

"I want this to be an example for the future so that no one again tries to use fraud to abuse the rights of the Afghan people," Abdullah told reporters.

Abdullah's withdrawal was not expected to change plans for the Nov. 7 runoff election, and ensures the re-election of President Hamid Karzai if the voting proceeds as scheduled.

Azizullah Lodin, the president of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, said Sunday an announcement on holding the runoff would be made Monday.

Sorry, but if they still hold an "election", none of our troops should help to provide security. Not one of our troops should give their lives for what is a one choice election.

[ProSense]

17. You're right:

I also think the US has an "out" here. We did negotiate in good faith and at great effort. But we were deceived, the negotiations were in bad faith and the officials revealed as hopelessly compromised. We cannot proceed under those circumstances. The mission is not achievable, in those terms.

It was Abdullah's decision to drop out. He may be right that the run-off election would produce the same fraudulent result, but that was his decision. The U.S. has no control over that. They do however have control over what comes next in terms of our policy

[beachmom]

18. Now the WH says: Well, um, well ..... GOVERN BETTER THIS TIME:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/world/asia/02assess.html?_r=1&hp

With Karzai, U.S. Faces Weak Partner in Time of War

WASHINGTON — With the White House’s reluctant embrace on Sunday of Hamid Karzai as the winner of Afghanistan’s suddenly moot presidential runoff, President Obama now faces a new complication: enabling a badly tarnished partner to regain enough legitimacy to help the United States find the way out of an eight-year-old war.

It will not be easy. As the evidence mounted in late summer that Mr. Karzai’s forces had sought to win re-election through widespread fraud to defeat his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, administration officials made no secret of their disgust. How do you consider sending tens of thousands of additional American troops, they asked in meetings in the White House, to prop up an Afghan government regarded as illegitimate by many of its own people?

The answer was supposed to be a runoff election. Now, administration officials argue that Mr. Karzai will have to regain that legitimacy by changing the way he governs, at a moment when he is politically weaker than at any time since 2001.

“We’re going to know in the next three to six months whether he’s doing anything differently — whether he can seriously address the corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us and that doesn’t lose troops as fast as we train them,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides said. He insisted on anonymity because of the confidentiality surrounding the Obama administration’s own debate on a new strategy, and the request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, for upward of 44,000 more troops.

Thoughts going out to John Kerry whose tireless work convincing Karzai to have a runoff has been unraveled in the past 24 hours.