Afghanistan Elections: What a Joke

When the Afghanistan’s August elections were first planned, Taliban issued warnings that there would be repercussions if any one wanted to vote. Turns out, they didn’t have to. The elections were done with widespread fraud, all pointing to Harmid Kharzai, the man who has been in office, ever since the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was founded. 

As literally thousands of ballots where either falsified, destroyed or marked as “rejected”, the Western nations all cried out injustice, corruption, some saying we should get out of there, Gen. McChrystal thinks the solution is more troops, and some, including Abdullah Abdullah, Kharzai’s main rival, wanted a re-election. An inquiry was lead and as thousands of ballots were nullified Kharzai, who had “won” the election saw his numbers slip beneath 50% of the votes, putting his government at stake, and forcing a run-off re-election scheduled for Nov. 4.

 Kharzai’s government was already marked by controversy, when it passed legislation to allow Shiite men to rape and detain their wifes against their will. Why did we go in Afghanistan in the first place? Wasn’t it to stop just these kinds of human rights abuse? Well, it seems that we were actually just kicking the first dictators out of their to let the second one in. the human’s rights commission in the U.N. isn’t what you might call the most trustworthy, recently, they led an inquiry over Israel’s offensive in the Gaza strip, of course Lebanon wasn’t pointed out at all, since the three countries behind this U.N. body are China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia who not only entertain friendly relationships with Lebanon, but are known as some of the worst Human Rights countries in the world.

After sustained discussions all last week between Kharzai and Abdullah, these discussions finally broke off Friday, when Abdullah stated that he was pulling out of the race altogether, afraid that the second round will be the same as last. As the only man to oppose the Kharzai government, some of us with more cynical approach on things, might laugh at Afghanistan less than acceptable attempt at democracy.

 Voters on Nov. 4, will only have one name on their ballots this time around, so the choice won’t be difficult, some Western experts say that at least if we can get a legitimate government up in Afghanistan at least it will help. I say that the Taliban were doing things better in their time, they had most of Afghanistan under control, no mess over corrupted elections, since there weren’t any to begin with. Oh, and did I mention the Taliban sent out another round of threats against those who would go out to vote? Well, in that case why not just stay home, not vote, give Kharzai his government let him continue with his human rights bashing like the Taliban, except the Taliban didn’t have to go through this mess to call themselves a government.