The leader of Afghanistan since his appointment as chairman of the transitional administration in December 2001, Hamid Karzai is the face of the American democracy-building experiment in the middle eastern nation. Over the course of the past eight years, he has served as the constant presence American policymakers have needed to ensure some sort of stability for rebuilding and security efforts.
But Monday's revelations by United Nations-backed investigations into major fraud in August's presidential election, and the subsequent nullification of nearly one million votes (almost one-third of Karzai's total), have cast Karzai's ever-tenuous popular support into even more doubt. Karzai now faces a runoff election against his chief opponent, former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, after the vote invalidations lowered his total vote percentage to 48.3 — below the 50-percent threshold required to avoid a runoff in Afghanistan.
Karzai's popularity has been declining steadily since he was installed by the United States as Interim President of Afghanistan in 2002, although that could be an unfair statement to make, given the immense challenges with which he was presented very early in his tenure. Karzai was handed the reins to a nation completely fragmented along deeply engrained ethnic lines, one in which allegiances to individual provinces historically took political precedence over any macro-loyalty to a centralized power in Kabul. Karzai's reach never extended beyond the capital's city limits.
His effectiveness hasn't increased enough over the last eight years to allow him to adequately address the fundamental issues of government incompetence that hamper both institutional reconstruction and national progress in Afghanistan. Part of the blame can be passed on to coalition forces, particularly American, whose military resources and focus were largely rerouted to Iraq, severely crippling efforts to improve the security situation in Afghanistan and making it harder for the fledgling Karzai administration to function. However, a large part of the blame also falls on Karzai. Throughout the course of his tenure, the Afghan government has been tied to warlords, a flourishing narcotics trade, endemic government corruption and an utterly ineffective, inept bureaucracy.
Karzai has received the ire of many of his fellow countrymen as well as of his American backers, who have become frustrated with his lack of political accountability amid a situation that desperately requires it. The United States has stated that it will withhold additional troop deployments until the election mess is settled, and recent meetings have made it clear that the United States will not stand for continued incompetence from Kabul if Karzai wins the election. That said, Karzai's opponent Abdullah offers no guarantees of improvement either.
A trained ophthalmologist and acclaimed intellectual, Abdullah would give a new face to Afghan politics but, according to former United States Envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins, Abdullah is "less of a natural politician" than Karzai. Given Karzai's rather dubious political track record as a "natural politician," Abdullah's outsider status may be a positive force in Afghan politics.
Either way, Karzai and the Independent Election Commission must make good on their word and stick to the slated Nov. 7 runoff date, even as winter snows capable of blocking off half of the country loom. Any sort of power-sharing agreement between Karzai and Abdullah in place of a second vote will only further slow up the already-bumbling Afghan political machine, and this will neither increase political or institutional efficiency nor promote the principles of a liberal democracy. A central government seen as a sham in the eyes of the people is exactly what the United States wants to avoid as it seeks to quell rapidly growing instability in Afghanistan.
If Afghan snow falls before a second vote, the situation will be ripe for political chaos — but the mayor of Kabul, Karzai, must let democracy run its due course.
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Teddy Minch is a senior majoring in political science. He hosts "The Rundown," a talk show from 3 to 5 p.m. every Friday on WMFO. He can be reached at Theodore.Minch@tufts.edu.
