Afghani-sham

The more news that comes out of Afghanistan, the more it looks like their presidential election last month was an outright fraud. The latest is that one district expected to be a stronghold for the leading challenger, former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, supposedly, cast 100% of its ballots for current President Hamid Karzai. And if that doesn't sound phony enough, some individual polling stations turned in ballot boxes with exactly 500 votes in them, all for Karzai.

Similar results are coming in from across Afghanistan. Local tribal leaders are saying that government troops kept them from opening polling stations in their villages, yet ballot boxes filled with votes (most or all for Karzai) were turned in from these same stations to national election officials. Others say that ballot boxes arrived at the polling sites already sealed and filled with votes (that saves time on election day I suppose). Earlier in the week Abdullah showed a video that he said was of a ballot box being stuffed with ballot sheets all marked for Karzai - in fact the markings on the individual ballots were so similar that Abdullah suggested they were pre-printed with votes for Karzai already cast. And what happened to some of those votes that were cast for Abdullah or any of the three dozen or so other candidates? Another tribal leader said in the Times that he saw those ballots being burned by Karzai supporters.

Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission says they are investigating more than 600 'serious' complaints, though the Independent Election Commission (IEC), the folks doing the actual vote-counting, are sticking by the integrity of the vote, though here it's worthwhile pointing out that the IEC members were mostly appointed by Karzai himself. The international community so far has been reluctant to call the election a fraud despite the growing evidence that it was.

One person that doesn't seem to want to stand by and let Karzai (apparently) steal the election is Dr. Abdullah, who has been holding near daily press conferences to keep the stories about vote fraud alive in the international media, even if the international diplomats would like to sweep them under the rug. Nor are at least some of Afghanistan's tribal elders willing to let this one pass either. On Tuesday hundreds gathered to protest the sham election results and to call on Karzai to step down. By Friday some of Abdullah's supporters were warning of what they called "Iran-style protests", only this time with the Afghan twist of being protests "with Kalashnikovs.”

But despite all the (alleged) vote rigging, Karzai still has not gotten the 50.1% of the vote he needs to avoid a run-off against the second place challenger, Dr. Abdullah. Final, official results in the Afghani election aren't expected until mid-September. Expect a lot more tales of vote-stealing between now and then.