Afghan Elections (2009)

Afghanistan's parliament adjourned today for the winter, leaving 10 seats in President Hamid Karzai's cabinet unfilled, according to the AP. Karzai has the authority to call parliament back, but he will likely leave the current ministers in place or select caretakers of his own to keep the government running until lawmakers return at the end of February.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked lawmakers on Monday to suspend their winter vacation so that they can vote on a new list of cabinet nominees, reported Alissa Rubin of the New York Times.

On Saturday, Afghanistan's 246-member Parliament approved just seven of Karzai's 24 nominees, rejecting the rest. Six of those approved were incumbents, including the ministers in charge of defense, interior, finance, education and agriculture, who are believed to have strong American report, Rubin reported over the weekend. However, seven of those rejected were also incumbents.

Observers interviewed by the Times are ambivalent about the political standoff, calling it both a positive sign of legislative independence and a potentially significant problem in a country that is struggling mightily to put together a responsive government.

Hamid Karzai, the newly re-elected president of Afghanistan, has become increasingly cut off from the world and is largely confined to his palace, surrounded by dozens of guards, snipers and personal tasters, while his daily exercise is limited to a walled garden that is home to two baby deer.

That's the depressing picture painted by Christina Lamb, the Washington bureau chief of the Sunday Times and a longtime Afghanistan and Pakistan reporter who was Karzai's neighbor in Peshawar in the 1980s and still maintains a friendship with the beleaguered Afghan head of state.

Hamid Karzai was inaugurated for a second term today under heavy security at the presidential palace in Kabul. Visiting dignitaries included Hillary Clinton and David Miliband.

Much of the media coverage of Karzai's inauguration speech has focused on his alleged timetable for withdrawing NATO forces from the country. The Times of London, for example, headlines its story Hamid Karzai: foreign troops out of Afghanistan in five years. But if you actually read the speech -- well, I'm not so sure that's what Karzai said.

There's some speculation in Washington that Obama might stop in Afghanistan on his way home from Asia to deliver an ultimatum to Hamid Karzai: Clean up your government, or else.

I would emphasize the word "speculation." It's clear that Karzai's corruption and the lack of a U.S. exit strategy have become two of the most divisive issues in the Afghanistan debate. But it's not clear where Obama stands on those issues: Will he commit more troops to Afghanistan without a clear plan for getting out?

Abdullah Abdullah issued a statement today slamming Hamid Karzai's "re-election" as illegal and his government as illegitimate.

Abdullah is obviously angling for a role in Afghanistan's next government, as Steve Coll noted yesterday. He's setting himself up as a persistent Karzai critic, challenging the government and critiquing Karzai's penchant for corruption. But he's also urging his supporters to remain calm, because he knows that any incitement to violence would cost him international support (not to mention create huge unrest in Afghanistan).

So far he seems to be "walking the tightrope" fairly well, as The Guardian put it. Now the question is what concessions Karzai will make to placate Abdullah.

Hamid Karzai vows to fight corruption in Afghanistan and create an inclusive government. The Guardian, analyzing Karzai's sudden fondness for transparency, dryly notes:

Karzai echoed the commitments that his western backers had pushed him to accept, including appointing a clean government and making progress in peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Standing next to Karzai as he made this announcement was Muhammad Qasim Fahim, one of his vice presidents -- and a notorious Afghan drug lord. (No word on whether Rashid Dostum was in the audience, too.)

As long as we're posting statements, here's Obama on Karzai's "re-election." These are his first public comments on the subject; they came after a meeting with Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in the Oval Office. Full text after the jump.

Mother Jones' David Corn, as usual, is tweeting about today's White House press briefing. Press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked if there's a "sense of legitimacy" for Karzai. Gibbs replied that there is "no reason to believe there's not."

I'll post a fuller transcript when it's available, but for now it seems that White House policy is to recognize Karzai's "election" as legitimate.

You might argue that this isn't news, because the U.S. embassy in Kabul congratulated Karzai on his re-election earlier today. But there's a big difference between congratulating him on the results -- a diplomatic formality, and a recognition that he is, indeed, going to serve another term -- and declaring his re-election legitimate.

Breaking news out of Kabul: The Independent Election Commission has cancelled the runoff election scheduled for Nov. 7. The decision comes just a day after Abdullah Abdullah dropped out.

Monday morning update: Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission has canceled the the runoff election.

As you've undoubtedly heard by now, Abdullah Abdullah, Hamid Karzai's main challenger in the Afghan elections, has withdrawn from the runoff scheduled for Nov. 7.

His decision, announced today at a press conference in Kabul, confirms 36 hours of speculation that he would drop out.

Abdullah told thousands of cheering supporters that he would drop out of the race because of "the wrongdoing of the Independent Election Commission and the abuse of power by the government." But he stopped short of calling for a boycott of the election, according to Pajhwok (sub. required), and he encouraged his supporters to remain calm.

CNN is reporting that Abdullah Abdullah will drop out of the Afghan runoff scheduled for Nov. 7. The report is attributed to a single "Western source close to the Afghan leadership" -- Zalmay Khalilzad, maybe? -- and says Abdullah will formally announce his decision this weekend.

Khalilzad is quoted on the record later in the story -- which doesn't necessarily mean he isn't also the unnamed source quoted at the top.

Update: The Times of London advances the story a bit with quotes from several sources who say it is "increasingly unlikely" that Abdullah will take part in the runoff.

It's hard to get the facts from Haji Jan Dad, as if they're swallowed up in the mythology surrounding him. Jan Dad tells war stories. They are filled with bodies. But there are few dates, and his figures vary wildly. Perhaps the stories run together in his mind. His voice comes out in a Brando-esque wheeze, supposedly from a Russian RPG rocket that hit him square in the chest but didn't explode.

Oz, who has dealt with him frequently on the part of the U.S. Army, said Haji Jan Dad tells stories of beheading captured Russians. I asked Jan Dad how many Russians he'd killed. His numbers were confusing. "I caught 55 of them, 90 I killed. In Heywa, I could have caught 350 alive. I don't know how many I killed that day," he said, looking troubled by the memory. "I took around 1200 weapons, PKMs, AKs, DSHKs," he said, as if he was trying to suppress images of a massacre, or was confused by several events overlapping.

Abruptly his tone changed. "What was I gonna do?" he said, "It was a war." Haji Jan Dad also claims to have personally killed some 40 Taliban.

His recent history is not much clearer, in part because the U.S. military wouldn't make current intelligence on him available. Haji Jan Dad was arrested less than a year ago by coalition forces. From what I gathered from several conversations, the infantry unit Dog Company replaced passed off enough intelligence on Haji Jan Dad's illicit activities to warrant an arrest; what the intelligence community calls "building a packet." Most likely a rival Afghan informed on him. He was arrested by U.S. forces, but like many warlords with clout, he was pardoned by an old ally -- President Karzai.

The cease fire lasted for almost a day. The next evening's sprints up the hill in full body armor -- which pass for entertainment at an outpost in the Badel Valley -- were interrupted by the whoosh of RPGs and shots ringing down. I ran for cover; the soldiers, for their firing positions. Soon the dusk was lit with red tracers and the roar of crew served weapons. At the same time, a rival militia was attacking Haji Jan Dad's compound in the lower valley, supposedly to discredit him for being unable to provide the security he had promised. Jan Dad vowed it was personal and promised to send his own men out to hunt the attackers down that night.

It's little wonder that the U.S. military is sometimes unsure which warlord to trust. Dealing with power brokers, and the forces that back them, is an extremely tricky business; agendas can change over night.

The soldiers of Dog Company live inside the walls of an old Soviet base named Fortress. To the east is the Kunar River and the Black Mountains, whose rugged passes are regularly traversed by the Black Mountain Fighters, otherwise known as the Taliban. The Pakistani border is approximately six miles away. It is eerily beautiful for such a dangerous place. Several weeks before the shura, four U.S. Marines were killed in an ambush on a joint Afghan Army patrol one district east of Fortress.

The concrete bunkers at Fortress are not for show. Mortars from overlooking mountains slammed the base on consecutive days this summer. Shrapnel fragments sprayed Lt. Waage's door. The same month, a Russian PKM machine gun round pierced the plywood wall of the recreation room, ricocheted off a monitor and embedded in the back of a soldier's head. He lived, thanks to some medics who ran to the scene.

One of the questions underlying Barack Obama's Afghan strategy review is the extent to which the U.S. can win the support of Afghanistan's fiercely independent tribes, particularly in rural Pashtun areas along the Pakistani border. The area remains one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan: Earlier this month, Taliban fighters overran an American outpost in Nuristan province, killing 8 American soldiers. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has acknowledged that the U.S. cannot field enough soldiers to secure the sparsely-populated region; he has begun withdrawing troops to population centers.

James Foley embedded with an army unit in eastern Afghanistan earlier this year. Here, in three parts, is his report on the army's troubled efforts to "rent" a local warlord to provide security during the August election.

Haji Jan Dad is riddled with the scars of some 20 years of combat as a mountain fighter. Shrapnel is embedded in the back of his head, his arm has been ripped open by bullets. He has a PKM machine gun round lodged between his thumb and index finger that he's never bothered to remove.

On a sunny day at the end of August, dozens of Afghan elders in traditional dress and long beards were facing a few American soldiers on the terrace outside Haji Jan Dad's compound. They were assembled under the auspices of a truce.

Incumbent President Hamid Karzai, who won around 55 percent of the vote in the now-discredited Aug. 20 elections, has conceded that massive fraud occurred and will agree to a recount to be set for Nov. 7, within the two weeks mandated by the country's constitution. But at least one news agency is reporting that he and chief rival Abdullah Abdullah have agreed to share power in a coalition government.

The Afghan runoff election is set for November 7.

Obvious question: How will the runoff election be any more legitimate than the original? Take Peter Galbraith's claim of "ghost" polling places, stations that the Afghan government could neither monitor nor secure. They'll be equally unaccountable during a runoff election.

The government could decide to close those stations, of course -- Galbraith was just on the BBC urging it to do exactly that -- but Karzai would raise holy hell about losing hundreds of polling places in the Pashtun heartland.

We'll have to wait and see what the IEC does. But designing a legitimate runoff in 17 days is a tall order.

The New York Times, citing anonymous officials and its own analysis, is reporting that incumbent President Hamid Karzai will lose a whopping 874,000 votes in the recount of Afghanistan's fraudulent August election, shrinking his share of the total to somewhere between 48 and 49 percent and necessitating a runoff.

Gregg has already written about Karzai's disappearing margin of victory and the byzantine recount decision, overseen by the joint United Nations/Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission and released yesterday, that is making it disappear.

Byzantine or not, what makes the ECC's recount fun for the whole family is the fact that the organization is releasing basically all of its data in raw form. That means you too can spend endless hours deducing where the fraud took place, from the comfort of your own home. Here's how to do it (bonus points if you can tell us how the Times got to the number 874,000):

The Afghan election recount rules are slightly byzantine, so here's my attempt at an explanation.

The ECC obviously didn't recount every ballot box. Instead, the commission divided the boxes into six categories, outlined here (pdf), and reviewed a sample from each category.

For example: Category B1 is defined as "polling stations with more than 100 votes in which one candidate received 95 percent or more of the total votes cast." There were 1,270 such polling stations in Afghanistan; the ECC reviewed 124 of them, or about 10 percent. (This 10 percent ratio held for the other five categories.)

The Electoral Complaints Commission has released the final results of its recount; press release is here (pdf) and the full text of each decision is available online.

The results now go to the Independent Electoral Commission, the Afghan body responsible for adjusting each candidate's vote total. The BBC says the recount will strip enough votes from Karzai to necessitate a runoff.