Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/asia/03afghan.html
November 3, 2009
Karzai Gets New Term as Afghan Runoff Is Scrapped
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ALAN COWELL [Afghanistan] [hydra] [began in Pakistan, but moved to Paksitan] [AfPak] [the rigged elections now have come to head with UN, US, others urging runoff-type solution] [apparently others have prevailed on Karzia to go through motions of democracy] [pretty dramatic attack on UN housing in Kabul] [the Obama administration trying to figure how to support this regime?] [apparently Abdullah has stepped aside hoping to create another attempt in spring 2010?] [I can’t imagine why anyone would support giving Karzia only 4-6 month term?] [*]
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan officials on Monday canceled plans for a runoff presidential vote, declaring President Hamid Karzai the winner after the withdrawal on Sunday of his last remaining challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
The announcement capped a fraught election widely depicted as deeply flawed by corruption and voting irregularities..
Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, said the Constitution did not require a runoff and the second-round vote had been canceled after Mr. Abdullah’s announcement that he was dropping out of the race.
Mr. Karzai had earlier demanded that the runoff take place as scheduled on Saturday.
Listing the commission’s reasons for canceling the vote, Mr. Ludin said the electoral body wanted to spare Afghans the high costs and security risks of a fresh round of balloting. The concerns reflected the difficulties of holding an election amid a growing Taliban insurgency.
Mr. Karzai and the Independent Election Commission had been under intense pressure from Afghanistan’s international backers, including the United States, to cancel the second round because of security perils and worries about a potential repetition of the vote-rigging that marred the first round. At a news conference, Mr. Ludin said Mr. Karzai had won the majority of votes in the first round “and was the only candidate in the second round.”
Accordingly, Mr. Ludin said, Mr. Karzai was “declared the elected president of Afghanistan.”
Officials from the United States and United Nations welcomed the decision and congratulated Mr. Karzai. [*]
“We congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election,” said a statement from the United States Embassy in Kabul, “and look forward to working with him, his new administration, the Afghan people and our partners in the international community to support Afghanistan’s progress towards institutional reforms, security and prosperity.”
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who arrived in Kabul on Monday, said the election process had been “difficult,” and urged Mr. Karzai to form a government that would have the support of Afghanis and the international community.
“I welcome today’s decision by Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission to forego a run-off vote and to declare Hamid Karzai as the winner of the 2009 presidential elections,” Mr. Ban said in a statement. “I congratulate President Karzai.” [*]
Since the first round of voting on Aug. 20., casualties have mounted among American and allied forces fighting the Taliban, while the nation has been seized with accounts of huge vote-rigging that delivered Mr. Karzai’s victory.
Earlier on Monday, Mr. Ban met both Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah “to assure them and the Afghan people of the continuing support of the United Nations towards the development of the country and the humanitarian assistance that the U.N. provides to millions of Afghans every day,” a United Nations statement said.
He arrived days after three men dressed as Afghan police officers attacked a guesthouse in Kabul, killing eight people, five of them foreigners who worked for the United Nations. But Mr. Ban said his organization would not be deterred from working in Afghanistan.
In an emotional speech Sunday to thousands of supporters here, Mr. Abdullah did not ask Afghans to take to the streets to protest or boycott the political system.
But he said he could not take part in a runoff that he believed would be at least as fraudulent as the tainted first round in August, in which almost a million ballots for Mr. Karzai were thrown out as fakes.
“I hoped there would be a better process,” he said. “But it is final. I will not participate in the Nov. 7 elections.” [he couldn’t have won even if no fraud so that’s why he’s out, in all likelihood] [*]
Advisers to President Obama called Mr. Abdullah’s decision a personal choice that would not greatly affect American policy and was in line with the Afghan Constitution. They portrayed the election of Mr. Karzai as essentially settled, enabling Mr. Obama to move forward with deciding whether to send as many as 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, although an announcement probably remains at least three weeks away.
“Every poll that had been taken there suggested that he was likely to be defeated anyway, so we are going to deal with the government that is there,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said of Mr. Abdullah on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
The Obama administration, in other words, prepared a united front around a leader whom many senior American officials have harshly criticized as being corrupt and ineffective in fighting the intensifying Taliban insurgency.
Administration officials alluded to those issues in their comments on Sunday. But they sought to focus on security questions rather than governance and political stability, emphasizing that the chief American goal now in Afghanistan was to make sure that Al Qaeda would not re-establish bases there. [*]
“Obviously, there are issues we need to discuss, such as reducing the high level of corruption,” Mr. Axelrod said. “These are issues we’ll take up with President Karzai.”
Mr. Abdullah’s supporters, who traveled from all over the country to hear his decision in Kabul, were unanimous in calling Mr. Karzai an illegitimate leader.
The decision was clearly a hard one for Mr. Abdullah. He choked up at the moment of announcing it before his supporters and had to pause to drink water before speaking.
“It did not come easily,” he told the crowd, which had begun cheering at his announcement. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, traveling in Morocco, released a statement saying that while the Obama administration would support Mr. Karzai as president, she hoped Mr. Abdullah would “stay engaged in the national dialogue and work on behalf of the security and prosperity of the people of Afghanistan.”
Mr. Abdullah rejected any suggestion of joining Mr. Karzai’s government, and he clearly signaled that he was positioning himself as a future player in Afghan politics. In a news briefing later at his home, he said: “I did it with a lot of pain, but at the same time with a lot of hopes toward the future. Because this will not be the end of anything, this will be a new beginning.”
Mr. Abdullah has been under intense pressure from Western officials to avoid confrontation and end a two-month dispute over the election results. That has been in part because the outcome of the runoff had been identified as a vital benchmark before Mr. Obama was to announce his military strategy in Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama is scheduled to hold at least two Afghanistan meetings at the White House this week, following his session on Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he pushed his military commanders to return with more specific options.
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Jeff Zeleny from Washington, and Joseph Berger and Jack Healy from New York.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company