Hamid Karzai seems set to win Afghanistan’s presidential election whose ballots are still being counted six weeks after the polls closed.
Who is Hamid Karzai?
The dominant tribe in Afghanistan, a country where tribal loyalties are far more important that national ones, is the Pashtun. Karzai comes from the Pashtun and from the same clan as the former Afghan king Mohammad Zahir Shah. His family was prominent in Afghan politics and he was given a Western education.
A CBC News profile of Karzai (September 21, 2006) says that “For a brief time in the early 1990s, he supported the Taliban, which had taken over when the holy warriors of the mujahedeen forced the Soviet Union to end its occupation of Afghanistan. At that time, he regarded the Taliban as Pashtun, like himself.”
In 1999, the Taliban murdered Karzai’s father and that ended his relationship with the group.
Karzai Becomes Afghanistan’s President
After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan banished the Taliban, Karzai was pretty much the hand-picked choice as interim president. In 2004, he was elected president with 54.5% of the vote.
But, things have not gone all that well for President Karzai. Eight years after the U.S. invasion his country is wracked by more conflict than it was then. His control over much of the country is so weak that he is often referred to derisively as “The Mayor of Kabul.”
And, as the Christian Science Monitor reported (October 23, 2008), “Both at home and abroad, Mr. Karzai is facing mounting criticism that he has lacked the courage to stop the government’s descent into corruption and ineffectiveness.”
In October 2008, a New York Times investigation linked the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, to Afghanistan’s massive heroin trade.
2009 Presidential Election Tainted
When Afghan voters went to the polls on August 20, 2009, Karzai predicted he would get a higher percentage of the vote than he did in 2004.
But, as The Economist reported (September 10, 2009) the election has been tainted by massive ballot stuffing and corruption: “The country’s electoral-complaints commission says there is ‘clear and convincing evidence of fraud’ and has ordered an audit of districts where turnout was 100% (or more) or one candidate won more than 95% of votes.”
European Union observers have said about 1.5 million ballots are questionable; that’s about a quarter of those cast.
United Nations Election Official Fired
Peter Galbraith is a U.S. diplomat who was second-in-command of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. On September 30, 2009 he was fired and is now going public with allegations the UN is trying to gloss over the election fraud.
In an interview with BBC World News America (October 5, 2009) he said that when his boss, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, realized the election rigging would hurt President Karzai, “he ordered us to do nothing with it. He had good relations with Karzai, and he became Karzai’s man in the United Nations, rather than the United Nations representative to Karzai.”
Denials of Galbraith’s charges have come thick and fast. In the meantime, ballots are being re-examined in an effort to give some legitimacy to the election outcome.
