Richard
08-28-2009, 16:34
And so it goes...
Richard's $.02 :munchin
U.S.-Afghan Relations Strained Over Election
Helene Cooper, NYT, 28 Aug 2009
A little more than 24 hours after polls closed, President Obama stepped out on the White House South Lawn to pronounce the Afghanistan presidential elections something of a success.
“This was an important step forward in the Afghan people’s effort to take control of their future, even as violent extremists are trying to stand in their way,” Mr. Obama said. “I want to congratulate the Afghanistan people on carrying out this historic election.”
But now, as reports mount of widespread fraud in the balloting, including allegations that supporters of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, illegally stuffed ballot boxes in the south and ripped up ballots cast for his opponents, Mr. Obama’s early praise for the Afghan elections may soon be coming back to haunt him.
Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission said Friday that it had received more than 2,000 complaints of fraud or abuse in last week’s election, with 270 of those complaints serious enough to potentially change the outcome. Mr. Karzai’s biggest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, showed reporters video of a local election chief in one polling station stuffing ballot boxes himself.
The vote count has progressed very slowly in Afghanistan — as of Friday, preliminary results with 17 percent of the vote in gave Mr. Karzai 44 percent and Mr. Abdullah 35 percent. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, a run-off must be held between the two top candidates.
For the Obama administration, it is, in many ways, the worst of all possible outcomes. Administration officials have made no secret of their growing disenchantment with Mr. Karzai, who is viewed by the West as having so compromised himself to try to get elected—including striking deals with accused drug dealers and warlords for political gain—that he will be a hindrance to international efforts to get the country on track after the election.
But Mr. Karzai, in a feat of political cunning which has surprised some in the Obama administration, has managed to turn that disenchantment to an advantage, painting himself at home as the only political candidate willing to stand up to the dictates of the United States, according to Western officials.
Case in point: a now widely reported exchange the day after the elections last week between Mr. Karzai and Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, at Mr. Karzai’s presidential palace in Kabul.
American officials initially described the meeting, which also included Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, and his deputy, Francis Ricciardone, as routine. The three men, the officials said, told Mr. Karzai that the United States was maintaining a neutral position on the elections and was leaving decisions about whether there needed to be a run-off to the Afghan elections commission and the electoral complaints commission.
But a few days later, reports surfaced in international and Afghan news outlets that Mr. Holbrooke had demanded a run-off election in the “explosive” meeting with Mr. Karzai, a charge which the Americans deny. Administration officials accused Mr. Karzai’s agents of leaking select portions of the meeting to make it look as though the Obama administration was trying to force Mr. Karzai into holding a run-off.
Mr. Karzai, a senior administration official said, “has a longstanding pattern of creating a straw man of America’s positions, and rallying people around that.”
“But contrary to those reports,” the official said, “no one shouted, no one walked out” of the meeting.
Mr. Holbrooke, administration officials said, did not demand a run-off during the meeting but did express concern about the complaints about fraud and ballot-stuffing. The Associated Press quoted Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, as refusing publicly to discuss the meeting.
Whatever the case, the atmosphere may now have become so poisoned between the United States and Mr. Karzai that the Obama administration will be hampered no matter what course it takes. Administration officials said that initial characterizations of the success of the elections referred solely to the fact that they took place at all, despite threats by the Taliban and more than 200 rocket attacks that rained on southern Afghanistan on election day.
“Those comments about the relative success of the elections were coming at a time when there was the fear that the Taliban would disrupt the process,” another senior administration official said. The Taliban, the official said, “launched hundreds of rocket attacks, and Afghans still voted.”
Publicly, the administration line remains that Mr. Obama, who is vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard this week, is waiting for the Afghan complaints commission to rule on the validity of the vote tallies, a process which may take weeks. Asked if Mr. Obama regretted his initial assessment that the elections appeared to have been successful, a White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said that “the president’s view is we’re all waiting for the results to trickle in just like everybody else.”
Mr. Burton added: “We think that, with the mechanisms in place to address any allegations of fraud, that they will work. And we’re just waiting out the process just like everybody else.”
That may not be enough for Afghans. “The allegations of fraud are very serious, throughout the country, and the international community has an obligation to ensure that the complaints commission investigates all of these complaints,” said Saad Mohseni, head of the Moby media group of radio and television stations based in Kabul.
“We had rockets raining on some towns, suicide bombers in the cities, gunfire, and yet people turned out to vote,” Mr. Mohseni said. “People took their lives in their hands, and therefore they deserve better.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/world/asia/29prexy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Richard's $.02 :munchin
U.S.-Afghan Relations Strained Over Election
Helene Cooper, NYT, 28 Aug 2009
A little more than 24 hours after polls closed, President Obama stepped out on the White House South Lawn to pronounce the Afghanistan presidential elections something of a success.
“This was an important step forward in the Afghan people’s effort to take control of their future, even as violent extremists are trying to stand in their way,” Mr. Obama said. “I want to congratulate the Afghanistan people on carrying out this historic election.”
But now, as reports mount of widespread fraud in the balloting, including allegations that supporters of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, illegally stuffed ballot boxes in the south and ripped up ballots cast for his opponents, Mr. Obama’s early praise for the Afghan elections may soon be coming back to haunt him.
Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission said Friday that it had received more than 2,000 complaints of fraud or abuse in last week’s election, with 270 of those complaints serious enough to potentially change the outcome. Mr. Karzai’s biggest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, showed reporters video of a local election chief in one polling station stuffing ballot boxes himself.
The vote count has progressed very slowly in Afghanistan — as of Friday, preliminary results with 17 percent of the vote in gave Mr. Karzai 44 percent and Mr. Abdullah 35 percent. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, a run-off must be held between the two top candidates.
For the Obama administration, it is, in many ways, the worst of all possible outcomes. Administration officials have made no secret of their growing disenchantment with Mr. Karzai, who is viewed by the West as having so compromised himself to try to get elected—including striking deals with accused drug dealers and warlords for political gain—that he will be a hindrance to international efforts to get the country on track after the election.
But Mr. Karzai, in a feat of political cunning which has surprised some in the Obama administration, has managed to turn that disenchantment to an advantage, painting himself at home as the only political candidate willing to stand up to the dictates of the United States, according to Western officials.
Case in point: a now widely reported exchange the day after the elections last week between Mr. Karzai and Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, at Mr. Karzai’s presidential palace in Kabul.
American officials initially described the meeting, which also included Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, and his deputy, Francis Ricciardone, as routine. The three men, the officials said, told Mr. Karzai that the United States was maintaining a neutral position on the elections and was leaving decisions about whether there needed to be a run-off to the Afghan elections commission and the electoral complaints commission.
But a few days later, reports surfaced in international and Afghan news outlets that Mr. Holbrooke had demanded a run-off election in the “explosive” meeting with Mr. Karzai, a charge which the Americans deny. Administration officials accused Mr. Karzai’s agents of leaking select portions of the meeting to make it look as though the Obama administration was trying to force Mr. Karzai into holding a run-off.
Mr. Karzai, a senior administration official said, “has a longstanding pattern of creating a straw man of America’s positions, and rallying people around that.”
“But contrary to those reports,” the official said, “no one shouted, no one walked out” of the meeting.
Mr. Holbrooke, administration officials said, did not demand a run-off during the meeting but did express concern about the complaints about fraud and ballot-stuffing. The Associated Press quoted Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, as refusing publicly to discuss the meeting.
Whatever the case, the atmosphere may now have become so poisoned between the United States and Mr. Karzai that the Obama administration will be hampered no matter what course it takes. Administration officials said that initial characterizations of the success of the elections referred solely to the fact that they took place at all, despite threats by the Taliban and more than 200 rocket attacks that rained on southern Afghanistan on election day.
“Those comments about the relative success of the elections were coming at a time when there was the fear that the Taliban would disrupt the process,” another senior administration official said. The Taliban, the official said, “launched hundreds of rocket attacks, and Afghans still voted.”
Publicly, the administration line remains that Mr. Obama, who is vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard this week, is waiting for the Afghan complaints commission to rule on the validity of the vote tallies, a process which may take weeks. Asked if Mr. Obama regretted his initial assessment that the elections appeared to have been successful, a White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said that “the president’s view is we’re all waiting for the results to trickle in just like everybody else.”
Mr. Burton added: “We think that, with the mechanisms in place to address any allegations of fraud, that they will work. And we’re just waiting out the process just like everybody else.”
That may not be enough for Afghans. “The allegations of fraud are very serious, throughout the country, and the international community has an obligation to ensure that the complaints commission investigates all of these complaints,” said Saad Mohseni, head of the Moby media group of radio and television stations based in Kabul.
“We had rockets raining on some towns, suicide bombers in the cities, gunfire, and yet people turned out to vote,” Mr. Mohseni said. “People took their lives in their hands, and therefore they deserve better.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/world/asia/29prexy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss