Word: afghanistanism
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...early returns from Afghanistan's presidential election had the smell of a decorous massage job. With 10% of districts reporting, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, the former Foreign Minister, were tied, with about 40% each. But few of those votes came from Karzai's Pashtun strongholds in the south, where turnout was light - owing to Taliban threats - but heavily managed. "It's not exactly one man, one vote out in the rural areas," a Western diplomat told me. "The tribal leader gathers everyone together and says, 'We're voting for Candidate X.'" In some cases...
...That is why Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says the military situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. "Last week I spoke to a couple of Army Rangers who had just engaged the enemy," Mullen told me. "They said it was like fighting the Marines. The Taliban were well trained, better organized, much tougher fighters than they'd been in the past." And that is why it is widely expected that General Stanley McChrystal will be requesting more troops when his review of the situation on the ground is completed in a few weeks. I'm told that President...
...country's 34 provinces. As a result, even as some observers posit a Karzai victory, it's still hard to gauge where the candidates actually stand - and the extent of the impact of the Taliban's pre-election campaign of intimidation. (See pictures of election day in Afghanistan...
...candidate. Additional footage appeared to show Karzai campaign officials looking over the shoulders of voters as well as a polling station that apparently remained open two days after election day. Abdullah warned that if such evidence is ignored, "this is the type of regime that will be imposed on Afghanistan for the next five years. With that sort of system - with a system which has destroyed every institution, broken every law - Afghanistan cannot succeed...
...officials, meanwhile, say they are working to avoid the prospect of post-election unrest. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has met with Abdullah and Karzai to insist they refrain from claiming victory until results are complete. Yet the longer the process drags on and the barbs fly, analysts say, the greater the space for troublemaking. "It is dangerous for each side to keep supporters [charged up] for the future," says Nasrullah Stanikzai, a politics professor at Kabul University. (Read how a contested election result in Afghanistan may help...