The stolen election in Afghanistan

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.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

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.