Second act in Afghanistan.

In the end, there will be a second round in Afghanistan. First one has been the slowest counting in the world. Two months, to be precise, since last 20th of August the Afghans voted. And yet, we don’t know for sure what will happen next.

All the actors playing on the stage performed as it was expected from them in the big day. The UN even was standing besides Hamid Karzai until almost the very end, when they couldn’t cover anymore the fraud. Because it was huge. Almost a quarter of Karzai’s votes were finally declared null, and it looks like if they were still just a few of the total.

In the end, this is all makeup. No one wanted a second round. Nor in Kabul, nor in Washington. It’s just make it longer. The now official results are as false as the first ones or as the ones we will get if a coalition government doesn’t avoid a second poll. Karzai’s opponent, Abdullah Abdullah has already offered for that, knowing he has no chance to win.

Because in fact, this elapsed ending isn’t a solution for the Afghans or the governments in muddy waters in Central Asia. It is just a play for the public opinion. The problem is that, once decided that a new rerun will take place, there are a few things to be sorted out now. Like how to do it. I’m talking about logistics.

At first, the hypothetical second round was planned for the 7th of November. That’s in three weeks. And after the endless recount process, achieve that agenda looks impossible. The preparations for the first round were going along for months, and that with the benefit of a good (or at least better) weather. Afghan roads are difficult to transit in summer, even more during the winter. At least, if the Taliban follow the same modus operandis as previous years, we won’t have to worry about their attacks. In winter they simply hibernate.

Someone who seems to be hibernating too is Obama. He’s been thinking about sending more troops to Afghanistan for six weeks now. Meanwhile, the casualties are given by the local allies. Pakistan started an offensive in Swat valley last weekend that has already claimed two dozen soldiers’ lives.

But as usual, the ones suffering most are the civilians on both sides of the Af-Pak border. Even from the hands of their liberators. On Monday, a new report released offered numbers of civilian casualties in Pakistan for the drone wars. They are an estimated 320. It’s a third of the total. The Pentagon estimates that drones have killed between 750 and 1,000 people since 2006; 20 of them top Al Qaeda and Taliban militants. The rest are militant soldiers and civilians. Make the maths. And that’s only for the southern neighbour.



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