A Failed Afghan Election
Writing in the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland has this to say on the Afghan elections .
The disputed elections are not simply a political embarrassment. They pose significant questions about the new U.S. counterinsurgency strategy of population protection, which was initially keyed to clearing areas contested by the Taliban — largely the Pashtun-inhabited southern region — to enable people there to vote freely.
But even in many of the “cleared” villages, Afghans refused to come out to vote, apparently fearing that in a matter of weeks or months the Taliban would seep back into their zones and seek vengeance on those who went to the polls.
Even more tellingly, Pashtun elders went to Kabul, sought out Western journalists and gave them detailed on-the-record accounts of how Karzai supporters falsified the returns from the elders’ territory. This may attest to their new attachment to democracy and press freedom — or, as I would guess, to their fear of how the Taliban would react to fabricated precinct results showing large pro-Karzai turnouts in their villages.
These are calculations that people engaged in civil wars live and die by. Those who reside in the territory that American, British, Afghan and other soldiers fought to clear will wait to see whether their communities do remain beyond Taliban reach for long. Only then will they decide to take the kind of risks the administration expected of them this time.
The final paragraphs here are the key to if we are winning a victory in Afghanistan. If the local Afghans don’t believe in us then we have been defeated.
As it is, it appears at least 10% of the Voting stations have been rigged or just plain didn’t exist. What can we say about an election that is this corrupt apart from perhaps they are not yet ready for democracy as we believe in it.
Jim Hoagland – A Failed Afghan Election — and Danger Signs for Obama – washingtonpost.com.
