HuffPo: Abdullah to boycott runoff

"Karzai rejected Abdullah Abdullah's conditions for next Saturday's vote, including removing top election officials whom the challenger accused of involvement in cheating in the first-round balloting in August. Abdullah has called a press conference for 10 a.m. Sunday to announce his final decision after Afghans and Westerners close to the challenger said he would withdraw. His campaign manager Satar Murad said the candidate might still change his mind, but that "as of now" he planned to call for a boycott. A clouded electoral picture would further complicate the Obama administration's efforts to decide whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan to battle the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies." Full story is here.

Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission finds need for runoff

The NYT is reporting that Karzai is resisting the Commission's report, deepening Afghanistan's ongoing constitutional crisis. Certification of the results by the Independent Election Commission is expected to lead either to a runoff or to a power-sharing agreement between Karzai and Dr. Abdullah, his closest challenger.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: Say what?

The announcement that a person whom I greatly respect and admire has won a Nobel Peace Prize, you might think, would fill me with a sense of satisfaction. Not so the announcement, on Friday, that President Obama had won this prestigious accolade less than nine months into his first term. Don't get me wrong: I, like many other people who are scratching their heads over this unexpected turn of events, remain a staunch Obama supporter. I believe that, in both foreign and domestic policy, he has been making sensible decisions, setting the right tone, and generally doing as well as can be expected under the (very challenging) circumstances. But let's be honest: Obama's accomplishments to date have consisted of staffing up executive agencies, putting out a few of the many fires left by the Bush administration, and taking preliminary steps toward his other policy objectives. While very arguably the right moves to be making at this time, these are hardly the stuff of Nobel Peace Prizes, and the major challenges of the Obama administration are not only unresolved, but perhaps even unknown.

The Nobel Committee's reasoning in awarding the prize more or less acknowledged the above:

"Announcing the award, the Nobel committee cited Mr. Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" and said that he had "created a new climate in international politics." In a four-paragraph statement, it praised Mr. Obama for his tone, his preference for negotiation and multilateral diplomacy and his vision of a cooperative world of shared values, shorn of nuclear weapons. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population."

The suspicion on most sides seems to be that the Committe's decision is less a reflection of the young administration's accomplishments than of Europe's relief to have a new face in the White House:

"For a world that at times felt pushed around by a more unilateralist Bush administration, the prize for Mr. Obama seemed wrapped in gratitude for his willingness to listen and negotiate, as well as for his positions on climate change and nuclear disarmament."

Um, right. As numerous commentators have noted, the prize is likely to represent more of a liability than a benefit for the president as he tries to move forward with his agenda; the perception that he is playing better in Europe than at home will feed right into the Republicans' stock arguments. Having heard so much about the potential for outside intervention in other countries to create political backlash, we may be getting a taste of it ourselves.

Map of Afghan election results

The Afghan Independent Election Commission's map of preliminary results by province is here. The counting is progressing more slowly than expected; preliminary nationwide results were expected two days ago. Instead, only 17% of the vote has been counted. Within that 17%, Karzai leads Abdullah by 44% to 35%. Thanks to Paul Hamill.

Breaking news: Pajhwok calling election for Karzai

This doesn't seem to have been picked up by major news services, but Afghan independent news agency Pajhwok is reporting that, with approximately two thirds of the votes counted, Karzai is heading toward an outright victory with 70% of the vote. Official preliminary results are not expected until Tuesday. In the contest between election-rigging and voter intimidation, rigging may have won.

Abdullah for Afghanistan

For whatever it's worth, I want to go on record as endorsing Dr. Abdullah Abdullah for president of Afghanistan. Elections are scheduled for tomorrow and the BBC is reporting that voter registration cards are on sale in Kabul for $10. Compare that, by the way, to the Lebanese elections, where political parties were offering expats round trip airfare in return for their votes.

As a foreigner, I'm not sure whether I'm formally entitled to an opinion, but I have one. As my friend Graeme said, if you approve of the way things are going in your country, vote for the incumbent. If you don't, vote for someone in the opposition who isn't crazy. I think both Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani fit this bill, and Abdullah seems to be the only opposition candidate who is polling well enough to potentially send the election to a runoff.

Elizabeth Rubin's recent NYT piece offered a revealing glimpse of Karzai's descent into cronyism, remoteness, and the politics of self-preservation:

"Other close friends of Karzai describe his leadership style as a kind of three-card monte where you never know which card will appear. One card is tribal. “His father was head of the tribe, and in tribal culture you depend on loyalty of individuals rather than institutions,” said Ali Jalali, his former interior minister and a friend from refugee days in Pakistan. “You always try to be a patron to people close and loyal to you.” The second is the factional politics of resistance in Peshawar, where mujahedin leaders organized their resistance to the Soviet occupation. “Jihadi politics is mostly wheeling, dealing, no strategy, all tactical,” Jalali continued. “Please people here. Break promises there.” And the third is democracy. He cherishes the values of democracy but has no faith in its institutions. “How he reconciles these competing demands creates his style of leadership,” Jalali said. In reality, said another friend, “he sees human rights, freedom of the press, the law, the constitution as chains around his hands and legs.”"

Against this backdrop, Abdullah has been running on a platform of change which has borrowed rhetorically from the Obama campaign:

"I'm asking you to believe not only in my ability to bring about necessary change and hope in our beloved country, Afghanistan, but I'm also asking you to believe in your own potential to change the course of our history."

Specifically, Abdullah advocates devolution of power from the imperial presidency crafted by Karzai and his international backers, including through the direct election of provincial governors and a greater role for the parliament. He also advocates national reconciliation through a more meaningful dialogue with the Talibs and other extremist elements, although as numerous observers have pointed out, that is likely to be easier said than done.

While fake voter registration cards proliferate, the Taliban has stepped up violence in the lead-up to the election and plans to attack polling stations, which is likely to disproportionately affect the Pashtun south (see here for discussion of recent polling). Under these circumstances, not only the outcome but also the legitimacy of the election and its chance of producing a result which will be broadly credible to the Afghan people all seem to be anyone's guess.

Countdown to the Afghan elections

Presidential elections in Afghanistan are now only a few weeks away, scheduled to take place on August 20. Within the past few weeks, a challenger to the deeply unpopular president, Hamid Karzai, has emerged in Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, an optometrist and former foreign minister. As the NYT is reporting, Abdullah has been drawing crowds across the country by giving voice to widespread discontent over corruption and incompetence within the Karzai administration. Most interesting to me are Abdullah's policy positions on parliamentary and local governance, which match my observations and also parallel some of Thomas Barfield's recommendations:

"Today, Dr. Abdullah, with a diplomat and a surgeon as his running mates, is seen as part of a younger generation of Afghans keen to move away from the nation’s reliance on warlords and older mujahedeen leaders and to clean up and recast the practice of governing. To do that, he advocates the devolution of power from the strong presidency built up under Mr. Karzai to a parliamentary system that he says will be more representative. He is also calling for a system of electing officials for Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and nearly 400 districts as a way to build support for the government."

The significant power built up by Karzai, reflected in the constitution and implemented in cooperation with then-ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, has come at the price of both the Afghan parliament and local governance. The parliament, to which my friend Michael Metrinko served as a liaison, has been largely marginalized, including in the lawmaking process, while Afghanistan's 34 provincial governors, appointed directly by the president with no direct accountability to their constituents, represent a constant source of corruption and mismanagement.

Although Karzai's popularity has been hovering around a dismal 30%, he is still seen as the most likely winner of the upcoming election. This is partly because of the widespread fraud which is expected to accompany the process; in combination with security concerns, this will likely serve to keep people away from the polls. Karzai also benefits from his ability, as the recipient of international aid money, to strike alliances with influential power-brokers, to campaign on the international dime, and to control state-run media. Interestingly, he ducked out of a recent debate with Dr. Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani on Tolo TV, an independent station, leaving an empty lectern as a telling symbol of his administration.

Although Karzai looks likely to win, some factors may play to his disadvantage. The most important of these is the deep-seated dissatisfaction of ordinary Afghans, who have seen growth stagnate and security deteriorate in spite of the billions of dollars that have poured into the country. Karzai may also be hurt by the security situation in the heavily-Pashtun south, which may disproportionately affect members of his ethnic group. The Obama administration, while ramping up military assistance to Afghanistan (as it should), has taken steps to distance itself from the Karzai administration. Under the circumstances, the best outcome may be a runoff, which will result if no candidate captures a majority of the vote.