Karzai Elected President of Afghanistan

With the run-off officially over with the news of challenger Abdullah Abdullah dropping out, the ruling President Hamid Karzai was declared the winner by the nation's elections commission.

Afghan election officials canceled a presidential runoff and proclaimed the reelection of President Hamid Karzai on Monday, a day after Karzai's top challenger declared he would not take part in a second round of voting scheduled for Saturday because of a persistent risk of fraud.

"The Independent Election Commission declares the esteemed Hamid Karzai as the president . . . because he was the winner of the first round and the only candidate in the second round," commission's chairman Azizullah Lodin told a news conference.

Earlier, the commission's chief electoral officer, Daoud Ali Najafi, told reporters that there would be no second round of the presidential election following the withdrawal Sunday of Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister. Abdullah had demanded major changes to guard against a repetition of the widespread fraud that was found to have marred the first round in August. Faced with rejection of his demands, Abdullah said he was pulling out because the runoff would not be fair.

Lodin said that after consulting legal experts, the seven-member commission had decided by consensus to cancel the runoff and declare Karzai the winner of a second five-year term.

Peppered with questions about how the commission reached its conclusion, Lodin said, "It's like a wrestling match. If one wrestler refuses to wrestle, the referee raises the hand of the other and declares him the winner."

Solid analogy.

Biggest question this now lays on the table is how will it effect the Obama White House's strategy for the Afghan War.  For weeks, members of the Administration have been using the pending elections in the nation as the chief reason they haven't announced any sort of military strategy.  Now, there's smart stalling -- like waiting until a nation elects or re-elects a leader -- and there's stalling for the sake of stalling.  We've now entered the latter phase.

Current statements from the administration are they will not be saying anything about Afghanistan for the next couple of weeks.  That seems odd since many in the military intelligence community (and the diplomatic corps) saw the Karzai victory as likely.