The New York Times is reporting that Afghan president Karzai's "re-election" may have been boosted by hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots.
Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials here.
800 non-existent polling sites allegedly poured votes into Karzai's tally, while another 800 real sites were effectively commandeered by Karzai loyalists for additional fradulent voting.
The fraud is said to be concentrated in the Pashtun regions of southern and eastern Afghanistan. While this area might be considered the heart of Karzai's support, it is alleged that fraudulent ballots may have multiplied the number of actual votes by more than an order of magnitude (at least in Iran they were a bit more careful than that!). I remember as the results came in, those from the opposition-leaning north and west were reported first, and I wondered at the time if this was for Karzai's men to see how many votes were needed in the south. That now seems quite likely.
When they stole the election in Iran, there was a huge reaction on this site and across the net. I wonder what will happen this time, when it's our soldiers and our tax money propping up what looks to be an illegitimate Karzai regime. Granted Karzai is no Khamenai, but his willingness to deal away large blocks of his country to warlords, among other things, make it seem like Afghans deserve the right to vote him out if they so choose.
What will happen next? The U.S. and NATO reaction should carry considerable weight - if they were to really push for a revote, it's not clear that Karzai could hold on without their help. As the NYT article puts it:
a different Western official in Kabul said that there were divisions among the international community and Afghan political circles over how to proceed. This official said he believed the next four or five days would decide whether the entire electoral process would stand or fall.
There is a gradient of "democracy" in this world. In so many countries, there is an an "election" every few years, but the outcome is never in doubt. And for regimes that have angered the West (e.g. Iran and Zimbabwe), this becomes an occasion for international condemnation. But for governments that get along with with the U.S. and Europe (such as the Bongo dynasty in Gabon, and perhaps now Karzai in Afghanistan), there is really no reaction at all.
But are we willing to spill American blood for stability alone, without a semblance of real democracy?