Karzai Wins Dirty as Abdullah Quits Run-Off in Afghan Election

Abdullah Abdullah will not be the next president of Afghanistan. He won't even pursue a second election. The run-off incumbent president Hamid Karzai finally agreed to last week, after much inelegant and transparently corrupt prevarication, won't take place. Abdullah planned to withdraw by Sunday, though it was not clear on Saturday whether he would do so quietly or by denouncing Karzai.

If denunciations are in the air, the Afghan government, no longer legitimate or barely so, faces more than a political crisis. Some violence could result from Abdullah's decision. If Abdullah concedes on American terms (the Obama administration wants him to go quietly), Karzai doesn't emerge more legitimate, but still does so less shakily: he won't have a civil war on his hands. Either way, it's a deflated ending to an election clearly stolen.

But it's not a stunner: there was speculation all along that Abdullah would not keep challenging Karzai for the presidency of Afghanistan: Abdullah would pull out and call the whole thing a sham, he would work out a power-sharing deal with Karzai, Karzai would convince him to concede by granting Abdullah's demand that the whole electoral process be reformed.

And nobody, as The Economist put it last week, really wants a second election, "not Mr Karzai, who fears that his voters will not come out again; probably not Mr Abdullah, who has declared himself open to other options; not the Afghan electorate, who will be asked again to brave the Taliban's death threats; not the UN, which must manage the arduous logistics of organising another ballot with winter closing in; and not NATO troops, who will risk their lives for an election that may not be any cleaner than the last."

As it turns out, Abdullah is getting neither a power-sharing deal nor the concessions from Karzai that he was seeking (a revamp of the election law). He's getting nothing but the celebrity status of an opposition leader railroaded by seemingly democratic instruments machinated into anti-democratic cudgels.

The election was a sham. A run-off would likely have been no less of one. Karzai's legitimacy, so tangible in 2002, is in tatters. So is that of the government he controls rather thuggishly now. The British prime minister called Karzai's decision to accept a run-off "statesman"-like. There was nothing statesman about it. Karzai gave in to American and Western pressure unhappily and resentfully. His ostensible "win" now that Abdullah has withdrawn will ensure that a more embittered and emboldened Karzai will run government even more like the mob boss he was becoming.

It's bad news for Afghanistan, and paradoxically bad news but the only news the Obama administration was really ready to deal with. Karzai, like so many illegitimate (because unelected, or elected by sham) leaders across the Middle East, is a known entity. But all that says is that Obama is as comfortable as his predecessor(s) dealing with known and knowingly bad entities. It's bad news for the United States, at least for those in the United States who imagined a different approach in Obama. Day after day, from Iran to Afghanistan to Iraq to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Obama administration is looking like spruced up Bush. More eloquence. Same old deals. Is it any wonder the Middle East looks no closer to breakthroughs under Obama than it did under Bush? Only Karzai smiles.

See Also:

• Should Hamid Karzai Go? You Decide
• The 2009 Afghan Election Results
• Understanding Politics in Afghanistan: A Guide
• War in Afghanistan: A Guide
• More Troops for Afghanistan? Pros and Cons
• Afghanistan Election: Karzai vs. Runoff
• Time to Get Out of Afghanistan