Eideard

What – me worry?

A man who has been representing Taliban senior leadership in secret talks with the Afghan government appears to have been an impostor.

The man, calling himself Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the Taliban’s second-ranking official, was exposed after another man who knows Mansour did not recognise him during a negotiation session…

The secret talks with the impostor had been going on for months and were used by senior US officials to claim progress on the diplomatic front in the Afghan war.

NATO and Afghan officials told the New York Times they held three meetings with the man, who allegedly received large sums of money to take part in the negotiations.

The fake Taliban leader, who travelled from across the border in Pakistan, even met with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, in the presidential palace in Kabul, the capital. He was flown to the capital on NATO aircraft…

I’ll bet the TSA would have caught him, right?

Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton, reporting from Kabul, said US officials always held suspicions about the identity of the man.

“Americans here admit that they don’t often know what these people look like; that they can only go on who they say they are because these people have been hiding and fighting this insurgency for so long,” she said.

“So they have to go on trust to a certain extent, and it seems that this particular man has managed to get away with it.”

Har!

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Afghan electoral officials, releasing preliminary results of last month’s parliamentary election, said Wednesday that they had tossed out more than a million ballots because of proven or likely fraud.

The decision by Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission laid bare the enormous extent of malfeasance in the Sept. 18 vote, which initially was billed as a showpiece of the country’s nascent democracy.

But it also demonstrated the ability of formerly pliant electoral officials to disqualify ballots because of ballot box stuffing, wholesale vote buying or threats to voters from gunmen, among other offenses.

The large number of nullified ballots was an embarrassment to the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which had pledged that all efforts would be made to ensure that the election would be free and fair…

In the tainted 2009 presidential vote, the disqualification procedure fell mainly to a United Nations-appointed oversight body, which also must give its blessing to the final results of last month’s election.

The Independent Election Commission, or IEC, like many Western officials, had painted a somewhat successful scenario in the wake of the balloting, simply because so many Afghans turned out to vote despite Taliban threats, and because the insurgents staged no successful large-scale attacks on voting day…

“We can state with pride that the turnout exceeded our expectations,” IEC Chairman Fazel Ahmad Manawi told reporters. “In the current situation in Afghanistan, this amounts to success.”

Yup. We’re really getting good at this here nation-building thing.

US history in the region
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Afghanistan has begun disbanding private security companies operating in the country, shutting down eight firms and seizing over 400 weapons…

The move is part of President Hamid Karzai’s ambitious plan to take over all Afghan security responsibilities from foreign troops by 2014. Since Karzai’s decree in August, a plan has been drawn up for the process which is expected to be complete by the end of the year, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said. The United Nations and NATO-led International Security Assistance force had given it their support, he added…

The first targets are illegal armed groups operating as private security firms, companies with temporary permits and those who provide security escorts for foreign forces and have been engaged in criminal acts and security breaches…

General David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said late last month that Karzai was…prepared to allow companies operating from some fixed sites, including power plants, to continue their work…

Employees from the firms can join the Afghan security forces if they wish…

Kabul estimates that up to 40,000 Afghans are employed by these firms, seen as a parallel security operations outside government control. Their heavily armed guards forcing a route through traffic is a common sight on Afghan streets.

Many Afghans see them as operating with impunity, and they have been accused of a series of killings, crimes and scandals, but have rarely been convicted.

Ah, yes, a sovereign nation trying to impose sovereignty.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

A war of words between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the White House has escalated with Washington expressing frustration that an attempt to smooth over the feud had so far failed.

Karzai said he stood by remarks from last week accusing the West of carrying out election fraud in Afghanistan, and appeared to sharpen the criticism still further by singling out the United States specifically for blame.

The White House said it was frustrated on behalf of the American public, and invoked the sacrifice made by families who send their loved ones off to fight. There are more than 120,000 Western troops in Afghanistan, including more than 80,000 Americans, set to rise to 100,000 Americans this year.

Karzai’s continued defense of his anti-Western remarks could signal that he is pursuing a deliberate new policy of distancing himself from his Western backers, rather than simply having expressed frustration in a one-off outburst last week.

That could complicate U.S. counter-insurgency war strategy, which depends on showing a united front with Karzai’s government and persuading Afghans that troops are there to support it.

Karzai phoned U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday to smooth over the quarrel, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that since that phone call “it obviously didn’t get any better.

“The remarks are troubling and the substance of the remarks is simply just not true,” Gibbs said…

Gibbs said a May 12 visit by Karzai to Washington was still on and Washington would continue to work with Karzai, but had set benchmarks for his government. He did not expect Karzai’s remarks to affect consideration in Congress of the Obama administration’s request for funds to pay for the war.

Of course. Has the course of war ever affect Congress’ willingness to lay out taxpayer dollars?

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Afghan officials on have canceled plans for a runoff presidential vote, declaring President Hamid Karzai the winner after the withdrawal of his last remaining challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. The announcement capped a fraught election widely depicted as deeply flawed by corruption and voting irregularities…

Mr. Karzai and the Independent Election Commission had been under intense pressure from Afghanistan’s international backers, including the United States, to cancel the second round because of security perils and worries about a potential repetition of the vote-rigging that marred the first round. At a news conference, Mr. Ludin said Mr. Karzai had won the majority of votes in the first round “and was the only candidate in the second round.”

Accordingly, Mr. Ludin said, Mr. Karzai was “declared the elected president of Afghanistan.”

Advisers to President Obama called Mr. Abdullah’s decision a personal choice that would not greatly affect American policy and was in line with the Afghan Constitution. They portrayed the election of Mr. Karzai as essentially settled, enabling Mr. Obama to move forward with deciding whether to send as many as 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, although an announcement probably remains at least three weeks away…

Administration officials…sought to focus on security questions rather than governance and political stability, emphasizing that the chief American goal now in Afghanistan was to make sure that Al Qaeda would not re-establish bases there…

Mr. Abdullah has been under intense pressure from Western officials to avoid confrontation and end a two-month dispute over the election results. That has been in part because the outcome of the runoff had been identified as a vital benchmark before Mr. Obama was to announce his military strategy in Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to hold at least two Afghanistan meetings at the White House this week, following his session on Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he pushed his military commanders to return with more specific options.

The same questions we’ve been asking remain unanswered. At what point do we justify being the cops of the world?

Obama should move beyond conventional wisdom, beyond rule by politics and opportunist consensus.