After two months of bick ering over alleged fraud, Afghan authorities have agreed to hold a run-off of the presidential election on Nov. 7. Three things are certain:
* The Aug. 20 election was marred by vote rigging, especially in the Pashtun-majority provinces of the southeast. It’s possible, though, that even with “suspect votes” excluded, the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai, would still end up with the 50 percent plus one of the votes needed to win. Even Dr. Abdullah Abdullah Zamariani, the candidate who came second, refused to rule out the possibility of a Karzai win.
“We had reports of fraud and wanted every case investigated,” he said in a telephone interview from Kabul. “However, it was not up to us to establish the results.”
Before Tuesday’s decision, none of the other 30 candidates who stood on Aug. 20 had demanded a run-off.
* Karzai agreed to a run-off under pressure from Washington.
Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s coordinator on Afghanistan and Pakistan, was almost alone in questioning the need for a run-off. Vice President Joseph Biden insisted on a second round to give the Afghan government “credible legitimacy.”
Signaling a decline in Holbrooke’s influence, Obama dispatched several emissaries, including former US Ambassador to Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan by birth, and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry to “lean on Karzai.” Then, even White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel started talking about the need for a run-off.
* The run-off will give Obama more time to agonize over Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s demand for 40,000 to 60,000 additional troops. Yesterday, Obama said he may have a plan before then. But According to Emanuel, no decision can be taken until Afghanistan has a working government in place. That could take months. Polling day is two weeks away. After that, the various election-supervision committees will need several weeks to finalize results and investigate complaints.
The processing of the Aug. 20 vote took two months and was abandoned before completion. If experience is any indication, whoever wins on Nov. 7 will need weeks, if not months, to form an administration.
In the meantime, the advent of Afghanistan’s harsh winter could herald a lull in insurgent activities. That could deprive the McChrystal message of its urgency, enabling the administration to continue wiggling out of making strategic choices that might prove risky in US domestic political terms.
Although hailed as a sign of Afghan democracy, the run-off is full of risks.
It could divide Afghans along ethnic and sectarian lines.
Security problems will mean a reduction in the number of polling centers in the predominantly Pashtun areas where the insurgency is most active. That would deprive Karzai of a portion of the votes that he easily won last August.
A lower turnout among Pashtuns would make Karzai more dependent on Uzbek and Shiite Hazara votes. That would mean the virtual isolation of the Tajiks, some 36 percent of the population, who are likely to vote for their “favorite son,” Dr. Abdullah Zamariani.
The problem is that, thanks to higher rates of literacy and urbanization, the Tajiks account for a disproportionate percentage of the Afghan civil- and military-service personnel. Thus, if Karzai wins, he’d have to work with a state machinery dominated by people who voted against him. Washington’s “arrogant posture” could push a victorious Karzai further toward Iran as the foreign ally that Afghanistan needs once the Americans withdraw.
Karzai has signaled his strategic leaning toward Tehran by naming two pro-Iran politicians as his vice-presidential running mates. One, Gen. Muhammad Qassim Fahim, a former Mujahedeen commander, makes no secret of his anger at “the way Americans treat us like children.”
The second is Abdul-Karim Khalili, a Shiite scholar trained in the Iranian “holy” city of Qom and a vocal critic of the US “occupation.” Khalili was instrumental in persuading Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to publicly acknowledge Karzai’s victory in the first round and congratulate him on his re-election. (Ahmadinejad was the only foreign leader to do so.)
A third figure, this time in the shadows, completes the triumvirate that could emerge as the power behind the throne in a second Karzai administration. He is former ethnic Uzbek “warlord” Gen. Abdul-Rashid Dostum, who was forced into exile in Turkey under pressure from Washington. Last August, Karzai called him back home to help mobilize the Uzbek vote.
Because of his background, political convictions and temperament, Karzai may remain a pro-US politician. Nevertheless, his confidants say, he feels “betrayed and hurt” by Washington. That feeling is shared by many in the new Afghan political and military elite, the very people whose cooperation President Obama would need when and if he manages to work out a strategy for Afghanistan.