Nicholas Salmons
11/6/09
On November 2, a runoff election that was planned to take place on the 7th was cancelled by an "Afghan-led commission," following the withdrawal of candidate Abdullah Abdullah. This cancellation held that the incumbent President Hamid Karzai will remain in office for another five years, as decided by elections held in August. According to the article, the election process was hindered by claims of fraud and "irregularities," which led to a great deal of investigation, resulting in the discarding of "millions of votes." President Obama has stated that though the process was "messy," it was "determined in accordance with Afghan law." Along with this, the president has stated that increased efforts must be made to dissolve corruption and strengthen Afghanistan's infrastructural integrity, which includes stronger and better trained/equipped "security forces." All of this is hoped to accomplish a "move forward" into international interests and internal reform. As Afghanistan begins to move into some sense of political establishment, this provides an incentive for the U.S. to begin diplomatic relations, since the country now has a "legitimate leader," who hopefully will initiate a process of continued edification in Afghanistan.
I think this is very interesting, in both good and weird ways. I think it's good to hear about some sort of result happening in regards to U.S. intervention in the Middle East, especially since I don't really know anything at all about it. The only part that concerns me is in the way that every U.S. spokesperson said that the election was chaotic, and yet lawful. I guess this does make sense, and should in some respects be expected, but I find it odd that a democratic election would be considered a success when "millions of votes" are "thrown out" (especially when those millions of voters possibly risked death to submit an opinion), and then a follow-up vote is cancelled. Maybe the conceding candidate simply gave up or expected a landslide loss, in which case everything seems to look a bit better. But apparently President Karzai didn't win an "outright majority..."
http://www.america.gov/st/peacesec-english/2009/November/20091102163940esnamfuak0.7243158.html?CP.rss=true
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