Karzai Poised to Steal, err Win, Election

News out of Afghanistan is that with nearly all the votes counted, President Hamid Karzai has just over 54% of the total, enough for him to avoid a run-off with second place finisher and former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. The other news out of Afghanistan is that basically no one outside of Karzai's coalition of warlords and drug runners believes the outcome of the election.

Afghanistan's election commission is dealing with now thousands of complaints about vote-rigging, more than 600 of them deemed 'serious' (as in they could affect the outcome of the election) and ballots from nearly 100 polling stations have already been tossed out. Officials told the AFP that it could take "months" to sort out the remaining complaints and declare a winner in the August election, and that's bad for several reasons. Not only would it mean that Afghanistan, in effect, wouldn't have a government for the next few months, if Karzai doesn't get 50%+1 in the vote total it would trigger the need for a run-off between him and Abdullah - in winter, a time when much of Afghanistan becomes impassible.

Which is why Western diplomats are said to already be pushing the two sides to come together in a coalition government (much like the compromises that were brokered to end political gridlocks in Kenya and Zimbabwe). Problem is that neither Karzai nor Abdullah is in the mood for compromise. The growing fear now (among the Western diplomats at least) is that Abdullah could marshal his supporters into an insurgency against the Karzai government, which would turn Afghanistan into a three-sided fight of Karzai vs. Abdullah vs. the Taliban, with the US/NATO coalition stuck in the middle.