Afghanistan's Continued Corruption: Karzai's Power Grab:

Power Grab

February 23, 2010

After his brazen bid to steal his re-election, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, swore that he would do better — and the Obama administration swore it would ensure that he did. He hasn’t. It didn’t.


Mr. Karzai’s latest travesty: Issuing a presidential decree to take total control of the country’s electoral watchdog commission. Yes, that is the same commission that exposed widespread fraud in the 2009 vote.

At a time when American, NATO and Afghan troops are putting their lives on the line to battle the Taliban, Mr. Karzai seems interested only in his own political power. That is hugely destructive. Mr. Karzai’s failure to build a credible, honest and even minimally effective government is the Taliban’s No. 1 recruiting tool.

The Electoral Complaints Commission adjudicates violations and will play an important role in the September vote for a new Parliament. By law, it has five members: three non-Afghans appointed by the United Nations and two Afghans, one named by the Supreme Court and one by a human rights commission. Mr. Karzai will now be able to appoint all five members.

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We were puzzled and disturbed last year when the Obama administration didn’t — or couldn’t — persuade Mr. Karzai to run a reasonably clean race. Aren’t tens of thousands of American troops and billions of dollars in American aid enough leverage? There can be no justification for the administration’s failure to prevent this latest power grab. The reaction from the American Embassy in Kabul — it said the composition of the watchdog group is “an issue for the Afghan government and people to decide” — was embarrassingly anemic.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/opinion/24wed2.html?ref=opinion

Afghan Leader Asserts Control Over Election Body

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: February 23, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — To the dismay of his political opponents and many of his international backers, President Hamid Karzai has moved to ensure that he can handpick members of an electoral monitoring commission, removing significant United Nations oversight of future elections.

Using a loophole in the Afghan Constitution, the Karzai government unilaterally rewrote the election law, and the president put it into effect by a legislative decree on Feb. 13.

Under the new version, the five members of the Election Complaint Commission, created to oversee voting irregularities, will now be chosen by the president after consultation with the parliamentary leadership....

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/asia/24karzai.html?ref=world

Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace Sign in to Recommend

February 23, 2010

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has long called European contributions to NATO inadequate, said Tuesday that public and political opposition to the military had grown so great in Europe that it was directly affecting operations in Afghanistan and impeding the alliance’s broader security goals.

“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st,” he told NATO officers and officials in a speech at the National Defense University, the Defense Department-financed graduate school for military officers and diplomats

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Mr. Gates’s blunt comments came just three days after the coalition government of the Netherlands collapsed in a dispute over keeping Dutch troops in Afghanistan. It now appears almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops there will be withdrawn this year. And polls show that the Afghanistan war has grown increasingly unpopular in nearly every European country.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/europe/24nato.html?ref=world