Afghani Election Fraud

We all knew this would happen...

Karzai's Challengers Allege Fraud After Voting Starts
Afghanistan Election in Turmoil Over Worries About People Casting Multiple Ballots
By DANIEL COONEY, AP



KABUL, Afghanistan (Oct. 9) -- Afghanistan's first direct presidential election was thrust into turmoil hours after it started Saturday when all 15 candidates challenging interim leader Hamid Karzai alleged fraud over the ink meant to ensure people voted only once and vowed to boycott the results. But electoral officials rejected their demand that the vote be called off, saying an apparent mix-up with ink used to mark voters' thumbs was not severe enough to halt the historic vote. They said they would rule on the legitimacy of the vote later. ''The vote will continue because halting the vote at this stage is unjustified and would deny these people their right to vote,'' said Ray Kennedy, vice chairman of the joint United Nations-Afghan electoral body. ''There have been some technical problems but overall it has been safe and orderly.'' Karzai said the fate of the vote was in the hands of the electoral body, but he added that in his view ''the election was free and fair ... it is very legitimate''


''Who is more important, these 15 candidates, or the millions of people who turned out today to vote?'' Karzai said. ''Both myself and all these 15 candidates should respect our people - because in the dust and snow and rain, they waited for hours and hours to vote.''

Election officials said workers at some voting stations mistakenly swapped the permanent ink meant to mark thumbs with normal ink meant for ballots, but insisted the problem was caught quickly.

The boycott cast a pall over what had been a joyous day in Afghanistan, where millions of Afghans braved threats of Taliban violence to crowd polling stations for an election aimed at bringing peace and prosperity to a country nearly ruined by more than two decades of war. The Taliban was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in late 2001.

Voters queued for hours outside polling stations in bombed-out schools, blue-domed mosques and bullet-pocked hospitals to cast ballots, while more than 100,000 soldiers, police, U.S. troops and other security forces deployed to thwart attacks.

The international community spent nearly $200 million staging the vote. At least 12 election workers, and dozens of Afghan security forces, died in the past few months as the nation geared up for the vote. Karzai went into the election a heavy favorite, but needed to win a majority to avoid a runoff against the second-place finisher. Results were expected to take some time to tally because of the inaccessibility of many Afghan towns and villages.

The opposition candidates, meeting at the house of Uzbek candidate Abdul Satar Sirat, signed a petition saying they would not recognize the results because the glitches with ink opened the way for widespread fraud.

''Today's election is not a legitimate election. It should be stopped and we don't recognize the results,'' said Sirat, a former aide to Afghanistan's last king and a minor candidate given little chance of winning.

U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said the ink problem was not as pervasive as the candidates claimed.

''I don't think we can lose sight of the perspective. There are 23,000 polling stations in the country. We do not have indications it (the ink mix-up) was to a great extent,'' he said.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad arrived at Sirat's house after Karzai's challengers reiterated their charges in a second meeting. He made no comment other than to say he was there ''only to help.''

Khalilzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, has been widely criticized for perceived favoritism for Karzai, and he is seen by many Afghans as a puppet-master. After his arrival, several Afghans gathered outside the house joked that a resolution to the crisis was near because ''the big man has arrived.''

The issue of the ink was crucial because officials said before the vote that many people had received more than one registration card for the election by mistake. Vote organizers argued that the indelible ink would prevent people from voting twice, even if they had more than one card. About 10.5 million registration cards were handed out ahead of the election, a staggering number that U.N. and Afghan officials say was inflated by widespread double registration. Human rights groups said some people obtained four or five voter cards, thinking they would be able to use them to receive humanitarian aid.

Afghanistan has an estimated population of 25 million.

Massooda Jalal, the only woman in the field and one of the candidates to sign the petition, said she decided to protest after getting calls of complaint from her constituents.

''The ink that is being used can be rubbed off in a minute. Voters can vote 10 times!'' she said.

Another candidate, ethnic Tajik newspaper editor Hafiz Mansoor, also complained.

''Very easily they can erase the ink,'' he said. ''This is a trick that is designed to clear the way for cheating.''

Earlier in the day, Karzai, accompanied by heavily armed bodyguards, voted in a room at what was once the prime minister's residence. He rubbed his thumb to show reporters the ink did not rub off.

''It is not important who wins, but it is important that Afghanistan makes its own future,'' he told reporters before the call for the boycott surfaced. ''This is a very great day. God is very kind to us.''

All roads leading to Kabul and other major cities were heavily guarded and closed to most traffic. Heightened security measures appeared to work, despite plenty of signs Taliban rebels were trying to disrupt the polls.

On Friday, a bomb-sniffing dog discovered a fuel truck rigged with anti-tank mines and laden with 10,000 gallons of gasoline that three Pakistanis planned to detonate in the southern city of Kandahar, said Col. Ishaq Paiman, the Defense Ministry deputy spokesman. The blast would have killed hundreds and ''derailed'' balloting in the south, he said.

The election offered a stark contrast in a nation that has endured many forms of imposed rule in the past 30 years - among them monarchy, Soviet occupation, warlord fiefdoms and the repressive Taliban theocracy ousted by the U.S.-led invasion following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

''I came here to vote so we can have democracy and stability and peace in Afghanistan,'' said Aziz Ullah, a 19-year-old Kabul shopkeeper. ''There used to only be a transfer of power by force or killing.''

Women voted at separate booths from men, in keeping with the nation's conservative Islamic leaning.

The European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sent observer missions, but neither said it planned to pass judgment on the fairness of the process, saying it would not be appropriate to try to hold Afghanistan to international standards. A small U.S. observer team also was monitoring the vote.

Peace and Love,
Dan

 

This is a joke. There were reports a couple weeks ago that poor people were selling their votes to wealthier Afghanis for the Afghan equivalent of about $100.

 

I think you people are missing the point, this is the 1st election in Afghanistan's history, and considering the security problem there, I'm amazed it happend at all. Of course theres going to be problems in it, but it's the 1st step to a democracy.

 

My opinion, but I think holding bullshit elections is not the appropriate first step to democracy. It is a terrible foundation to lay for democracy in a country.

 

Yes but the perfect way to ensure that the pro-western gas/oil pipeline puppets are given the image of "democratic" legitimacy to sell to the pro-war crowd by the mainstream media. Thats all this charade has been meant to achieve from the start.

 

The pipeline, which doesn't exist.


For people like LickHERish and Willow, elections in Afghanistan are the nightmare scenario. Who didn't predict the haters to do some desperate grasping for reasons to condemn it afterwards?

 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/10/10/afghanistan.elections/index.html

It was all 15 candidates that were upset, and there were Afgan citizens showing CNN reporters how easy it was to wash the ink off their ballot, basically to wash their vote away.

They did end up getting more ink though, that actually worked, so hopefully everything worked out fine. It would be a shame if the curruption begins even before the democracy...

 

The pipeline doesn't exist because the situation has been too chaotic to build the thing. The CONTRACT for the pipeline, however, certainly does exist.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3731746.stm

Observers approve Afghan election
International observers have endorsed Afghanistan's first presidential election, rejecting opposition calls for a new poll amid reports of fraud.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said demands by 15 of the 18 presidential candidates to annul the poll were "unjustified".

The local Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said the poll was "fairly democratic".

Saturday's poll was marred by claims of alleged flaws in the voting procedures.

The OSCE - which contributed to the 230 foreign monitors - acknowledged that there were some irregularities during the poll that should be investigated



However, OSCE Ambassador Robert Barry said "the candidates' demand to nullify the election is unjustified and would not do service to the people of Afghanistan who came out yesterday, at great personal risk, to vote".

Meanwhile, FEFA - the single largest observer group - said that "a fairly democratic environment has generally been observed in the overall majority of the polling centres".

The UN, which helped organise the poll, has praised the "massive" turnout in the election.

More than 10 million people were registered to vote, many of them refugees living in Pakistan and Iran.

The ousted Taleban regime has dismissed the election as foreign-sponsored and has said it will continue its armed struggle.

However, fears that militants linked to the Taleban would carry out their threat to sabotage the vote appear to have been largely unfounded.

Ink stains The vote was marred by reports that an ink used to stain voters' fingers to prevent them from casting their ballot more than once could be washed away.



This prompted all the candidates opposing interim President Hamid Karzai - the favourite to win the race poll - to call for the election result to be annulled.

However, several candidates on Sunday appeared set to drop calls for a vote boycott.

Their representatives told the BBC they would instead accept the findings of an independent inquiry into alleged irregularities.

Mohammed Mohaqeq, one of Mr Karzai's main rivals, was the first to announce he was withdrawing his backing for the boycott.

Mr Mohaqeq said he wanted a UN commission to investigate the election and he would accept its ruling on its legitimacy.

Other candidates are also withdrawing calls for a boycott in favour of a more conciliatory approach, according to the BBC's Andrew North in Kabul.

President Karzai criticised the move as an affront to the hopes of the millions of Afghans who braved bad weather and the threat of terrorism to turn out to vote.

He told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme on Sunday that a commission would inquire into the alleged voting malpractices. Counting centres have begun tallying the ballots but their task is unlikely to be completed soon - votes cast in far-flung reaches of the mountainous country will take days to arrive, some of them by donkey.

 

I would personally LOVE to see elections in afghanistan, but it almost makes me cry that it won't happen. the US has too much at stake to let the afghani people be free and have free elections, there is too much oil in the caspian sea to let them be free...sounds like the beginning to a political rap song

Peace and Love,
Dan

PS: The American government is willing to do anything to get Karzai elected, even using election fraud, why? http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0610/p01s03e-wosc.html#continue (Cool and worldly, Karzai is a former employee of US oil company Unocal – one of two main oil companies that was bidding for the lucrative contract to build an oil pipeline from Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to seaports in Pakistan)

 

Karzai is also quite happy to turn a blind eye to the resurgence of full scale poppy farming which ensures the international drug trade (overseen predominantly by the CIA) will once again be swimming in billions of narco dollars annually.

 

KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.N. helicopter sent to retrieve ballots crash-landed Tuesday in the snowy mountains of northeastern Afghanistan (news - web sites), electoral officials said. Nobody was injured and no ballot boxes were on board, but the accident was the latest snag holding up the massive task of recovering votes in the country's first presidential election.




The helicopter went down at high altitude in an area of rugged Badakhshan province known as the Wakhan corridor, which borders China, Tajikistan and Pakistan, said David Avery, chief of operations for the Joint Electoral Management Body.



The plane had yet to pick up any ballot boxes, but its loss will slow the recovery of ballots in the landmark presidential vote that took place Saturday, Avery said. The province has about 360,000 registered voters.



"We don't think we'll be able to recover the helicopter," Avery said.



The U.S. military was air-dropping warm clothes and food to help eight survivors from the crash survive the freezing night before a planned rescue operation on Wednesday, U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said. He said the helicopters suffered an engine failure.



The tally of votes from Saturday's election was to begin Wednesday at the earliest, and final results were not expected until late October.



Chances for a conclusive result improved Monday after interim President Hamid Karzai's main challenger, ethnic Tajik candidate Yunus Qanooni, backed away from a boycott of the vote, indicating he'd accept an independent commission to investigate vote-fraud allegations.



Karzai is the clear favorite to win, but his ability to consolidate his rule would be undermined if the opposition refuses to acknowledge the vote results.



German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the first foreign leader to visit since the election, all but declared Karzai the winner on Monday.



In addition, an exit poll conducted by an American group closely tied to the Republican Party projected Karzai would win with the outright majority needed to avoid a second round. The survey by the International Republican Institute said Karzai would finish ahead of Qanooni by an overwhelming 43 percentage points. The group did not release a full breakdown of its data.



Qanooni said he would accept an investigation by an independent panel of election experts into opposition complaints that the supposedly indelible ink used to mark voters' thumbs in some polling stations could be rubbed off, allowing some to vote more than once.



"I don't want to be against the election and I appreciate the good will of the people of Afghanistan," Qanooni said. "I want to prove to the people of Afghanistan that the national interest is my highest interest."



He said he made his decision after a meeting with U.N. representative Jean Arnault and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.



The announcement followed similar statements Sunday by Massooda Jalal, the only female presidential hopeful and ethnic Hazara candidate Mohammed Mohaqeq.



There were indications another rival, ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, might be considering backing down as well. Dostum traveled to Kabul Tuesday from his home in the north, and his spokesman said he was considering accepting a compromise.



Electoral officials say the candidates have until Tuesday afternoon to submit formal protests, and the officials were waiting to receive them before they began the count.



Election organizers agreed to set up the panel Sunday in hopes it would end the crisis that emerged when all 15 opposition candidates declared the boycott while voting was under way Saturday.







The election has been hailed as a success by U.N. officials, Bush and other world leaders. International electoral observers have said the attempt to nullify the vote was unjustified.

Schroeder said the poll "was a great step toward democracy and stability" and predicted a Karzai win. "It is my opinion that he will do it, and in the first round," he said.

A high voter turnout in Afghanistan, which never before has tasted democracy, and a failure of Taliban rebels to launch a massive attack have also been held up as proof of success.

 

Yeah why doesn´t he just snap his fingers and make it go away?

Karzai never worked for Unocal, and Unocal dropped out of the pipeline project six years ago (i.e. three years before 9/11 and before the invasion of Afghanistan). They have since repeatedly confirmed that they have no interest in the project.

http://www.unocal.com/uclnews/2004news/063004.htm

Well, no, that doesn´t exist either. A ´protocol´ was signed by governments in the region saying they all agree someone should build a pipeline, but that means nothing. There is no contract, no consortium has been formed, and no western oil companies have expressed any interest.

This is one of those myths that is just too convenient to ever go away. The funny thing is that all the pipeline is intended to do is deliver gas to Pakistan and India. Whoopee.

 

Karzai DID work for Unocal...

http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=674&print_page=true&include_comments=true

http://www.theinsider.org/mailing/article.asp?id=615

http://www.iacenter.org/afghan_warcr.htm

Peace and Love,
Dan

 

Unfortunately, multiple references on conspiracy websites do not prove much. Most of these links don't actually provide any source or proof, they simply repeat what other conspiracy websites say.

What's interesting is that you cannot find a single reliable news source from any part of the political spectrum which repeats this story that Karzai worked for Unocal. Furthermore, nobody is able to say where or when or in what capacity Karzai worked for Unocal. No details are available, just the endlessly repeated claim.

My own theory is that the stories are mixing up Zalmay Khalilzad, US Ambassador to Afghanistan, with Karzai. Khalizad did work for Unocal.

Look, Unocal has denied Karzai worked for them. If its true, go sue them.