In pulling out of Afghanistan’s presidential election runoff scheduled for next Saturday, opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah has done his country a great disservice. Afghanistan needed a clear-cut result to restore faith in the electoral system, marred by fraud in the first round, and to give legitimacy to whoever would have been elected. In pulling out, he has placed a powerful question mark over Hamid Karzai’s right to govern, even though he has now been declared president for another term and the runoff contest scrapped.
It is not just Karzai who will suffer as a result. It is Afghanistan. The country is bitterly divided as it is, between those who want a democratic system and an elected government and those who would impose their authority through terror, force, suicide bombers and the barrel of gun. With the former at each other’s throats, it is the latter who will benefit. There is a moral power vacuum that the Taleban can exploit. Anyone who wants to say that Karzai has no right to be the leader of Afghanistan can claim justification from Abdullah’s actions.
Abroad, the consequences will be just as damaging. It is no accident that it was international figures such as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner who pressurized Karzai into accepting a second round. They needed the Afghan elections to be seen to be above board to be able to sell sending more troops there to their own electorates. It is significant that the UK prime minister, in an evident damage- limitation exercise, was one of the first to congratulate Karzai on his “re-election” after the second round was scrapped. The US Embassy in Kabul did likewise in an effusive statement that must have been cleared by Clinton.
The ground is being set for an announcement of more troops but it is not going to be easy for US President Barack Obama to commit to it in the present circumstances, even though the military strategists deem it an absolute necessity.
Despite all this, the Afghan election commission was right to cancel the vote once Abdullah pulled out. It would have been a face — and an expensive face at that — to have a contest with just one candidate. It would have brought ridicule to the whole electoral process, and damaged it, perhaps fatally, in the minds of almost all Afghans.
So where now? Karzai’s credibility in the eyes of the world and his own people is so wounded. The only way to undo the damage is for him to bring Abdullah back into government, either as prime minister or as vice president. That may stick in Karzai’s gullet but it is the only sure means of giving his government legitimacy in both Afghan and international eyes.
Abdullah may not like it either but his room for maneuver is just as limited. He has done his own credibility little good by pulling out. Walking away from a contest that in all likelihood he would have lost even if it had been free and fair looks like a case of sour grapes. He too needs to put the country’s best interests above his own.
