Announcing the renewal of their “mission to Afghanistan” through at least March of 2014, the United Nations expressed concern about the upcoming 2014 election, insisting it was “critical” for the election process to go credibly this time.
The 2014 Presidential election is set for April 5, 2014, and would-be candidates have already warned that they may not even bother if the system is as poorly set up as it was for the 2009 and 2010 votes.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai “won” reelection in 2009, though it would be more fair to say he achieved a second term in office by refusing to make any reforms until his opponent in the run-off vote simply dropped out.
If 2009 was an embarrassment, the 2010 parliamentary votes were an absolute travesty, with every single election in doubt, leading the election commission banning some apparent winners and eventually getting to the point where commission officials were just picking winners and losers seemingly on a whim.
Since then Afghanistan has gotten even more bribe-happy and corrupt, and no real reforms have been made, so there is no reason to believe the 2014 election, in which Karzai will not be able to run because of term limits, will be any more fair.
Why don't they stop bothering with the people of Afghanistan, and do what our (US) Government just did regarding Syria? According to the Washington Post, our Government has recognized the election of an "interim government" for Syria, headed by one Ghassan Hitto (an expat Syrian who has been in the US for the past many years). The Post reports that Mr. Hitto was "elected" by the "Syrian opposition," with the "election" winner "receiving 35 votes . . . of the Syrian National Coalition's 63 active members." Who could doubt that Mr. Hitto is an authentic democratically elected representative of the 20,820,311 folks living in Syria? With this model of democracy to follow, there should be no problem with having a perfectly clean, closely monitored election of an Afghan "interim government", the candidates to be drawn from, let's say 65 or even 70 expat Afghans belonging to an Afghanistan National Coalition. How could the 33,609,937 folks in Afghanistan possibly complain about that? After 12 years of US/NATO occupation and control of their nation, they've got to know they can trust us to do the right thing on their behalf.