That Unresolved Afghan Election Mess

I have been wondering when he would give his side of things, and the other day American Peter Galbraith (deputy special UN representative in Afghanistan until he got fired last month because he called the fraudulent elections by their full name) did so in the Washington Post. A key passage:

Afghanistan's presidential election, held Aug. 20, should have been a milestone in the country's transition from 30 years of war to stability and democracy. Instead, it was just the opposite. As many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates. In several provinces, including Kandahar, four to 10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast. The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.

And yet, the UN seems to want to hand President Karzai his victory, and the U.S. may be leaning that way too. His government is corrupt, inept, and disliked by a growing number of people in the country. Should we stick with Karzai; and what would be alternatives?

I recently did a lecture on the early years of South Vietnam, particularly the relationship between the U.S. and South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, and I have to say that the West's problems with Karzai look eerily similar. For one thing, President Obama has called Afghanistan a "war of necessity"--just like Eisenhower believed South Vietnam was a vital U.S. interest. Also just like "Vietnam" wasn't really about that country, it's not about Afghanistan itself today. We're trying to create a viable government there, able to stand on its own feet, able, especially, to keep the enemy at bay, because of a greater cause: the war on Al Qaeda and similar groups. And maybe Karzai is just like Diem: an authentic Afghan leader genuinely hostile to the Taliban and Al Qaeda but also contemptuous of ignorant Westerners trying to impose their vision for his country's future. In that case, working through Karzai really isn't going to work: in addition to being corrupt and ineffective, he would also reject genuine collaboration. The big problem in Vietnam, also for Kennedy, was that there did not seem to be an alternative for Diem, even though Diem himself turned out to be a failure. The South Vietnamese state needed to be built up because South Vietnam was designated a vital domino in the Cold War. In hindsight, however, the flaw seems to have been this designation of (South) Vietnam as a vital battlefield in the global Cold War.

Is there an alternative today for Karzai? Do we have to let him "win" this sham of an election? The answer may have to come from two additional questions: how vital is Afghanistan really to our current transnational concern (internationally operating, fanatically anti-Western terror groups); how vital is it to build a cohesive Afghan state under an effective central government? I'm not prepared yet to argue that we should just let Karzai fend for himself if he wants to rule the country in his own way--that we should basically give up on Afghanistan the country and instead focus on fighting Al Qaeda and similar groups directly. I think the cure there might be much worse ultimately than the remedy, because it might well lead to a re-run of events of the 1990s after the departure of the Soviets from Afghanistan: civil war, Taliban rule, Al Qaeda sancturary. Plus, having been there for almost eight years now, the West owes the people of Afghanistan.

I'm wondering if there might not be a middle way, namely working with local, tribal authorities, few of whom are looking forward to a return of Taliban rule. Bypass the central government, at least until it becomes credible, and direct resources to the regional and local level. One way in which Karzai (or whoever would succeed him) could become credible is to run an honest election and operate an effective, transparent government. It will be a while before that happens. Until then, we'll have to think of something else. President Obama, of course, is in the middle of his second big re-evaluation of Afghanistan policy in less than a year. I haven't seen many indications of where he's leaning with regard to Karzai and the current election mess, but I can't imagine that he and his advisers aren't thinking very hard about alternatives to especially the current political approach to that country. As we've learned in Vietnam, no military effort is going to mean very much in the longer run without a viable political strategy.