Rod Blagojevich For Special Envoy
Karzai agrees to a runoff. Apparently there’s a backroom deal in the works to get around the lack-of-legitimate-government problem. NYT:
KABUL, Afghanistan — Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai appears set to concede as early as Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, but the path to ensuring that the country has credible leadership remains uncertain, American and European officials said Monday.
The officials said Mr. Karzai was moving toward accepting the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly a third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.
Mr. Karzai’s apparent capitulation came after an all-out push by Obama administration officials and their European allies. But even if Mr. Karzai ends his strong resistance to a runoff, that will not resolve the country’s political crisis, officials say. It would be difficult to hold a new election quickly, as the Afghan winter approaches, and delaying the selection of a new government until the spring could allow the Taliban to make further gains across the country.
As a result, some Obama administration officials, who say a pending decision on whether to increase troop levels in the country depends partly on resolving the election outcome, now argue that they should push Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah to form a coalition government to avoid a runoff altogether.
During a hastily arranged two-hour meeting with Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, a key foreign policy ally of President Obama, and the United States ambassador, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, at the presidential palace in Kabul on Monday, Mr. Karzai, after initially hesitating, agreed to accept the findings, the officials said.
Scary to think the fate of millions is in Kerry’s hands.* Imagine what could have happened to Iraq if they had let him near there for anything but a grip-and-grin and waffles with the troops.
The finagling in Kabul points to the problems of holding up vital security initiatives on political stability and honest governance. If we had to wait around on a legitimate First World political outcome in places like, say, Illinois, the Taliban would be running Chicago. OK, bad example. Good thing our national security doesn’t depend on New Jersey being corruption-free. Then you’ve got Massachusetts, where the Legislature ignores citizens’ duly voted ballot initiatives when it doesn’t like the results. There were a lot of hurtful jokes about the inability of the United States Congress to accomplish anything back when it was demanding that the Iraqi parliament get its act together, or else. This year, it briefly looked like giving America’s own Disloya Jirga its own Karzai, a president who would sign any pork-laden monstrosity they came up with, was the answer to gridlock in DC, but even well-greased they’re running into logjams.
Anyway, if they need to grease the skids in Afghanistan, they should probably get someone in there who understands how politics work in a primitive, violent tribal society. Rod Blagojevich is free. For the moment.
Meanwhile, read on. Intense, scathing irony alert:
For Mr. Karzai, the decision to acquiesce to the demands of the international community puts him in the position of disappointing his followers, including people who showed up at the polls despite widespread threats from the Taliban to disrupt the elections.
“The dilemma for Karzai is that because of the tribal nature of Afghan society, if a constituency is angry at having a significant number of votes denied and reacts by withholding their vote in the next round, it could change the result,” said a senior administration official.
The United States, this official said, is sympathetic to Mr. Karzai’s concerns, but Mrs. Clinton urged him in calls over the last few days, to be a “statesman” and accept the results.
Allahpundit’s Quotes of the Day, all on point.
* For the former Massachusetts lieutenant governor and career Senate back-bencher, carrying the bad news to Karzai may be the first real professional responsibility he’s exercised since his days in the Middlesex DA’s office in the 1970s. Fingers crossed he doesn’t let drop any jokes about Chicago politics.
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Topics: Afghanistan, Obama, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:09 am on Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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