Kabul’s Catch 22

Sky News reports that the Afghan run-off will be cancelled after Dr Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of the vote. It’s unclear whether this report is totally accurate; but if it is it hardly comes as a surprise. As Sky’s Alex Crawford, quoting a senior source, says:

“There is absolutely, his words, ‘zero appetite’ for a run-off election with just one unopposed candidate and, therefore, a foregone conclusion as to who was going to be elected.

“It would be a return of the current president, Hamid Karzai.”

There was no guarantee that the second election would avoid the corruption and security issues that marred the first, but where does this leave the Kabul government and the wider Afghan project? With or without elections, the Kabul government and the agents of the nascent Afghan state are totally discredited, unable to extend their writ beyond the confines of Kabul’s security precinct. Karzai is the perpetual problem, but he alone is strong enough to form a government.