Hamid Karzai may be able to re-establish his legitimacy by winning a clean second round but if he doesn't, the consequences could be very grim, says David Blair.
Only a legitimate government can defeat a stubborn and resilient guerrilla movement. That awkward axiom of counter-insurgency warfare lies behind the bitter wrangling over Afghanistan's presidential election, which culminated in yesterday's announcement of a second round.
Hamid Karzai, sombre, downbeat and apparently chastened, publicly accepted the verdict of the Electoral Complaints Commission. This United Nations body chided him for the widespread ballot-rigging that marred the first round and knocked his share of the vote below the 50 per cent threshold needed for outright victory. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6393842/A-second-chance-for-Hamid-Karzai-but-also-one-for-the-Taliban.html#
Afghanistan’s run-off vote has been scheduled for November 7th, but whether or not the second round of voting between President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah can actually, credibly take place is going to largely depend on the weather.
The easternmost reaches of Badakhshan Province is already impassable, covered in snow likely until spring. This will likely only amount to a few thousand votes but if winter arrives just slightly earlier than normal this year, large swaths of the nation could be in the same boat.
With very little infrastructure outside the major cities, Afghanistan essentially shuts down during the winter and travel is next to impossible across much of the country until spring. This is, incidentally, why the insurgency seemingly slows to a snail’s pace during the winter months every year.
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/20/early-snowfall-could-derail-afghan-runoff/#
Conventional wisdom suggests that the terrorist strike by Jundallah in southeastern Iran on Sunday might have had the backing of the United States or Britain. But Jundallah today holds "fatal" attraction for a number of foreign powers that are interested in disorienting Iran's policies.
Both Washington and London scrambled with unusual speed to not only disclaim any hand in the strike that killed seven senior commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as well as 42 other people, but to condemn it in strong terms.
On Sunday, a US State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, was instructed to issue a categorical US denial. "We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives. Reports of alleged US involvement are completely false," he said.
The fact is that the attack was staged with careful timing. For one thing, the next major step in the diplomatic process involving technical-level discussions was to take place in Vienna on Monday to work out the details of a plan to ship a majority of Iran's stockpile of lightly enriched uranium out of the country to be enriched in Russia to a higher grade.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KJ21Ak03.html
Taliban guerrillas recaptured the birthplace of the Pakistani Taliban leader from the Pakistani army Tuesday, inflicting the heaviest military losses so far in Pakistan's high-stakes offensive in South Waziristan, a refuge for Pakistani extremists, Afghan insurgents and al Qaida.
A government attempt to foment a tribal uprising against the Pakistani Taliban also failed Tuesday. In a meeting with the top Pakistani official for the tribal areas, elders of the area's Mehsud clan refused a request to form a traditional militia, known as a lashkar, to battle the Taliban who've taken over their territory.
Separately, two suicide bomb blasts at an Islamic university in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, killed six people and wounded at least 20. In response, many educational institutions, including all schools and colleges in the Punjab, the country's most heavily populated province, announced that they'd close.
The Pakistani offensive appears to be first serious operation against extremists in South Waziristan since 2004, when the military entered the area for the first time. Pakistan has thrown some 30,000 soldiers into the fight against an estimated 10,000 Taliban, plus some 1,500 foreign jihadists closely liked to al Qaida.
However, Kotkai, a town surrounded by high mountains in the Sararogha area of South Waziristan, remained in Taliban hands late Tuesday after Pakistani forces were beaten back on the fourth day of the ground operation in South Waziristan.