Afghan president’s sole rival withdraws from race
Published: 01 November, 2009, 10:44
Edited: 06 November, 2009, 13:28
TAGS: Middle East, Politics
Former Afghan Foreign Minister and presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has withdrawn himself from the November 7 election runoff. The state election commission says the second round will still be held, however.
The move makes the incumbent president Hamid Karzai the only candidate.
Vakif Hakimi from Abdullah's campaign office says the former candidate has decided not to turn the second round of the election into a farce.
"Afghan election laws don't allow one of candidates to pull out of the run-off. They don't expect the second round of polls to settle the vote, because as a result of fraud during the first round everything has been mixed up . And Abdullah Abdullah refused to take part in a process he called a farce," he said.
In August, Abdullah came second in the election behind Karzai. The UN, however, said that one third of Karzai’s votes were fake, throwing out around a million votes.
The situation in Afghanistan is completely deadlocked, says Yury Krupnov, expert on Afghanistan.
"We aren't seeing the crisis of elections or the crisis of Karzai's legitimacy, but the crisis of western policy towards the country. The US-led coalition, unfortunately, needs a weak Afghanistan," Krupnov says. "During the 8 years of their operations in the region the aim to create an independent state wasn’t set. They are just using Afghanistan as a foothold to tackle their own problems in the area. And this election mess is a direct consequence of that policy."
01.11.2009, 09:00
5 comments
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Bianca, I agree that in general that we often do more harm than good when we go on these foreign escapades, but I disagree that Iraq is a puppet government. This for instance is refuted by the difficulty, which was manifested by the delays involved, in getting it to extend US troop allowances to their present schedule; by the fact they don't do what we tell them to on any of a number of issues, for instance in dividing the oil money equitably throughout the nation; and by the fact their government has involved elements we down right despise; Sadr's for instance. I don't think the Iraq war was at all justified, or that it has churned out more good than it did bad, but no, I don't see Iraq's government as a puppet government. I have less confidence in my assessment of the best way forward in Afghanistan than I have for my above conclusions, but the violence in Afghanistan is no where near as dire as it was in Iraq. 11k to 30k of civilians have died as a result of violence in Afghanistan, compared with up to a million in Iraq. But several hundred thousand people starved to death in Afghanistan in 06 due to a drought. This was already a major problem before we invaded, Afghanistan has been a broken country since 1978, but if we can at least modernize its economy to the point where starvation was no longer very common we would save a hundreds of thousands of lives. I think with Obama in power, the focus on humanitarian ends will rise. Also, giving up on Afghanistan puts Pakistan in grave danger. That war isn't going to end just because we leave.
Can't you see the obvious? This is a war of occupation. The Taliban was defeated within weeks, and 'al qaeda' is a made up group that exists only in the US immagination - look it up and cross refence if you don't belive me. What the US is fighting today are resistance fighters. Men and women with only small arms who have fought a well fed, well equiped superpower and its junior partners who are armed with jet planes, armoured vehicles and satellite survelience, to a virtual standstill. When these men and women were fighting the Soviets they were called Mujahideen and respected around the world as some of the touhest fighters you could come accross, now we call them terrorists.
The Afghan Presidential race has resulted in the exercise of a big fraud. The current president should be disqualified and a new, fair election held without him being allowed to participate. A fraudulently chosen president will only inflame the situation there. Remember that the population there may not be as friendly toward a rigged election as the residents of New York City in their Mayorial race.