Word: afghanistan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This peculiar turn of events has left Afghanistan with a leader who, after discounting illegitimate ballots, did not meet the 50 percent vote threshold required to be declared president of Afghanistan after the first round of voting. While there was no guarantee that fraud would not plague the runoff as well, Abdullah’s participation in a second round of voting would have enhanced the legitimacy of the election. A runoff, which would have been subject to intense public scrutiny, would have at least represented a new opportunity for a more open election and given the victor some level...
...enforced by threat of death. But whether out of fear, political choice or sheer indifference, 12 million voters - representing 70% of the electorate, compared with just 30% in 2004 - stayed away from the ballot stations. A runoff election was expected to see an even smaller turnout. (See pictures of Afghanistan's mock election...
...become conventional wisdom even among the U.S. and its NATO allies that stability in Afghanistan will ultimately depend on a political settlement that somehow involves most of those currently fighting under the Taliban rubric. So just as the U.S. chose to avoid the very election it had forced Karzai to accept and turned instead to brokering a backroom deal that would dilute the incumbent's authority, any political solution in Afghanistan will have be negotiated on the basis of the real distribution of power, rather than votes cast in an election staged in the heat of a civil...
...pictures of the U.S. Marines' offensive in Afghanistan...
...refugees to head Down Under through human-smuggling rings in Indonesia. They point to the fact that Rudd sped up the processing for protection-visa applications, and has guaranteed permanent residency to the successful applicants; Rudd has countered that outside 'push factors,' including regional conflicts in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, are responsible for the surge...