A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Monday, November 2, 2009

Karzai: Elected. Now What?

After Dr. ‘Abdullah pulled out of the second round in Afghanistan, the election has been canceled and Karzai declared elected. The second round was supposed to increase perceptions of legitimacy. Now what?

Certainly the timing is awkward. The US Administration has been saying it will make a decision on the McChrystal request after the second round. Now, we have Karzai without the second round. Perhaps there's some sort of coalition deal in the wings, or Karzai will somehow reach out to ‘Abdullah, but this will not strengthen the hand of those who want to give McChrystal what he wants.

I, for one, would not like to be in the President's shoes. Afghanistan is playing out badly, and few of the options are attractive.

1 comment:

life insurance Canada said...

Well, this whole situation turned out to be very hard to crack, but it wouldn't have been like this, if the decision taken were on reasonable grounds. I mean to cancel the second election and to just declare Karzai the president was not really of the fortunate ones. It misses a lot of the promised legitimacy in the eyes of people. Lorne