Peter Galbraith
The Washington Post
Fraud has triumphed in Afghanistan’s presidential election, said Peter Galbraith. As the U.N.’s deputy special representative to that country, it was my job to help ensure a fair vote in August. But months ago I learned that at least 1,500 of Afghanistan’s 7,000 polling centers would be in places so remote and so insecure that they practically invited ballot-box stuffing.
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I reported this to Afghanistan officials, but they were all cronies of President Hamid Karzai, who angrily complained about my interference. My boss at the U.N., Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, told me to keep my mouth shut. Sure enough, Election Day yielded “hundreds of thousands of phony Karzai votes,” with some districts recording up to 10 times as many votes as were actually cast. When I pressed the matter, “Karzai issued a formal protest accusing me of foreign interference.” And so last week U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon canned me.
This election should have been “a milestone” in Afghanistan’s evolution from a nation of warlords, corruption, and violence to a true democracy. Instead, it was a cynical farce.
