Muddy waters

Afghan elections votes have been casted, have been counted and have given the victory to Mr. Hamid Karzai, the current president. But nobody still gives him the victory officially. Even with the allegations of fraud behind, Karzai has achieved only a 54.6 percent of the votes according to the first full results to be released. His opponent, Abdullah Abdullah won a 27.7 percent of the votes.

However, still nothing is already sold.

The EU independent observers monitoring the elections have made allegations on 1.5m votes. That’s as much as a quarter of all votes casted. Three in four of those -maybe- fraudulent votes, are for Mr. Karzai. If finally all or some of those votes are casted out, that could lead into a second round. Indeed, preparations for it are already underway.

Of course, Karzai’s team hasn’t received well this. They accuse the independent observers of interfering in Afghan matters and of being “partial, irresponsible and in contradiction with Afghanistan's constitution”. Not that it surprises me. For most of the process Afghan officials didn’t even try to hide corruption and fraud; it was highly unlikely to start seeing them acting like a democratic western politician.

But there is another important number in the final -for now- results: the turnout. 38.7 percent, which for western standards might seem low, but for what we saw on the election day it might be quite high. Almost utopical.

Meanwhile, controversy and debate continues in the home front, especially in Europe. In the eight years of war, the US and the UK have been the biggest contributors to losses in the battlefields but many other countries have lost soldiers too in Afghanistan. However, until now it was only due to occasional encounters with the Taliban or accidents. 2009 brought a shift into that.

The surge of the Taliban in areas before under control of the ISAF, the loss of key areas in the south, the stalled positions for the alliance for years and the civilian casualties all led into the erosion of the support for the “good war” -in contraposition to Iraq- both in Europe and America. As for the first ones, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Nicolas Sarkozy have pledged for a withdraw before 2012. Canada as well voted for that date in the Parliament. The Poles will do the same soon.

It is so, the same old song for the Americans. Like in Iraq, everyone starts to be tired of shooting an invisible foe. Generals are asking for more troops. Many Senators -mostly Republicans- back that option. Former Presidential candidate John McCain admits that more boots on the ground maybe won’t solve the problem, but definitely it cannot be solved without them.

Obama, however, is thinking in a switch for Afghan strategy. Those days from the beginning where he pledged for more troops to the please of the military are gone. In the mind of many Democrats -and maybe even Obama- flies the ghost of Vietnam. Public opinion is already eroding. As with the Southeastern Asian country, lose the home front and you’ll lose the war.

In order to change that, measures are taking place. Home opinion is much linked to abroad performance, and it’s linked to Afghan public opinion. To gain the Afghan’s hearths, tighter rules of engagements are on to tackle on the Taliban and more non-lethal gear is being deployed to minimize casualties among civilians.

But most dangerous than that is letting Afghanistan have on the Democrats the effect Iraq had on the Republicans. Afghanistan is already seen as the “Obama war”. If the identification prevails, he better win it or he will lose more than a war abroad.

PS. By the way, does anyone remember bin Laden?


Photo: ISAF
 
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