Save and read, if need be. -Ed
From: "Democracy Now!" <outreach@democracynow.org>
To: "Democracy Now! Daily Digest" <epearlag@earthlink.net>
Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 2:10 PM
Last week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the top
American diplomat at the United Nations in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith.
Galbraith had accused his boss at the UN mission in Afghanistan, Norwegian
diplomat Kai Eide, of helping cover up electoral fraud and being biased in
favor of Hamid Karzai. Galbraith has described the Afghan election as a
"foreseeable train wreck" and says the election has "handed the Taliban its
greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and
its Afghan partners."
ANJALI KAMAT: While the Obama administration continues to discuss sending
additional troops to Afghanistan, the country's international election
watchdog, the Electoral Complaints Commission, is expected to shortly begin
an audit of suspicious ballots from the August 20th elections. Initial
results gave the incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai nearly 55 percent
of the vote, but allegations of widespread fraud have delayed the final
results. Last month, the United Nations-backed commission ordered a recount
of ten percent of ballot boxes after finding, quote, "clear and convincing
evidence of fraud."
But the UN's legitimacy in Afghanistan has taken a serious beating. Last
week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the top American
diplomat at the UN shortly after the New York Times published excerpts of a
scathing letter from Galbraith to Ban Ki-moon. Galbraith accused his boss at
the UN mission in Afghanistan, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, of helping cover
up electoral fraud and being biased in favor of Hamid Karzai.
Eide has denied the accusations, and the United Nations maintains that
Galbraith was fired over a, quote, "personality clash" with Eide. Speaking
to the UN Security Council last week, Eide admitted to some fraud but added
that the expected audit would ultimately lead to a, quote, "credible and
legitimate result."
KAI EIDE: Yes, there has been fraud. There has been irregularities
committed by election officials, by candidates and their supporters, as well
as government officials. When the final result has been certified, it must
be respected by candidates and their supporters. What most Afghans, by far,
now want is to see the process come to an end, a government formed, and
their lives improved.
ANJALI KAMAT: The leading opposition candidate in Afghanistan, Abdullah
Abdullah, alleges massive fraud and expressed his concern over Galbraith's
removal for speaking out against the fraud.
ABDULLAH ABDULLAH: If the firing of Mr. Galbraith was on some technical
issues, I'll no say in it. If the issue was based on the fact that he was
for vigorous look into the issue of fraud, he was-in that case, I will say
that he has been talking on behalf of the people of Afghanistan, because
it's,
first and foremost, in our interest to have a vigorous look into the issue
of fraud, vigorous approach, and to preserve the credibility of the process.
AMY GOODMAN: In an op-ed published in the Washington Post Sunday, Peter
Galbraith describes the Afghan elections as a, quote, "foreseeable train
wreck" and says Kai Eide ordered him not to pursue the issue of fraud, fraud
that he says has, quote, "handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory
in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners."
We go now to Bergen, Norway, and we're joined by Ambassador Peter Galbraith
there.
Peter Galbraith, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you explain why you believe
you were fired?
PETER GALBRAITH: Well, I was fired because of a-as a result of a
longstanding disagreement with Kai Eide, the head of the mission, over-not
over how to handle electoral fraud, but over whether the UN should handle
it.
Let me first correct a couple of things in your introduction. My
recall-that's
the diplomatic term for it-took place before, or the decision to do it took
place before I wrote the letter to Ban Ki-moon. So the letter was not what
triggered the recall. And it appeared-it was leaked by someone to the New
York Times only after my recall had been announced. So it really was-it was
not the factor. But having learned that I was going to be recalled, I wanted
the Secretary-General to understand very clearly what the issues were. And
as I said at the beginning of that letter, I was-I thought it was
astonishing that the United Nations should dismiss the official who was
responsible for the elections because he was concerned about fraud in the
elections.
Now, I outlined, both in the letter and in the piece I wrote yesterday for
the Washington Post outlook section, what exactly the issues that I was
concerned about. First, the fraud was-it wasn't entirely preventable, but it
could have been very substantially reduced. And this is important, because
these elections have been a disaster for Afghanistan, they've been a
disaster for the international effort. If Karzai emerges as president at the
end of this process, his credibility is going to be much reduced for the
large part of the country. It clearly has undermined international support
for the Afghan effort. When I'm home in Vermont, people are saying, "Well,
what are we fighting for in Afghanistan?" Before, you could answer, "Well,
September 11th." Now people say we're fighting to hold a corrupt government
that has done this sort of thing in power. So, the elections-the issue of
fraud is hugely important.
As I said, it was-it could have been significantly prevented. In July, I was
in charge, as Kai Eide, the head of the mission, was away, as he often was,
and I was working with the Election Commission and the Afghan ministers of
defense and interior to reduce the number of polling centers that were going
to be on the rolls on election day. And that's because I became aware that
if there were about 1,500 polling centers out of 7,000 that were located in
areas that the Taliban controlled or were so insecure that they in
fact-nobody from the security services or the Election Commission had ever
visited those places. These polling centers were never going to open. But as
long as they remained on the rolls, they provided an excellent opportunity
for fraud, because the people perpetrating the fraud, which, as it turned
out, included the Election Commission's staff, would be able to take the
materials, report that they had been open, and then report returns. And, of
course, no observer, no candidate agent and no voter could go to the
location to see whether in fact the center had opened. So there were about
1,500 ghost polling centers. I was making progress, with support from the
US, the UK, European Union, NATO. But, of course, the Afghan ministers
complained about what I was doing to the head of the mission. He sided with
them, ordered me not to do anything further. So that would have been the
best opportunity to address the issue of fraud.
After it took place, the UN had collected-we had run a twenty-four-hour
election control center through the election period and the initial
counting. We collected hundreds of incidents of fraud. And more importantly,
we collected information, extensive information, on turnout. And what our
information on turnout showed was that in key provinces in southern
Afghanistan, there was a tiny turnout, less than ten percent in a number of
cases, and yet a large number of votes recorded. That was very good evidence
of fraud. We wanted to provide this information to the Election Complaints
Commission. This is the UN-backed watchdog that, under Afghan law, is
supposed to investigate complaints against the election process. Kai Eide,
the head of the mission, said no. He didn't want this information shared at
all.
And finally, there was a third incident, but there were many others, but
these were the most important. In September, in early September, I was again
in charge, and the Independent Election Commission, which actually was not
an independent commission-it was appointed by Karzai and very much operated
on his behalf through this election process-I got word that they were
planning to abandon published safeguards, their own published safeguards, to
exclude fraudulent ballots from the final tally. And I got in touch with
them, and I said that we would object to that. This produced-within two
hours, the president of the country called in the American ambassador to
protest it. I was called in by the foreign minister. This was deemed to be
improper foreign interference. And instead of backing me up, Kai Eide sided
with Karzai.
And the result was where we are now. There is an electoral crisis in
Afghanistan, and the ability of the United Nations to deal with it is much
diminished. You heard the presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who's
the second place contender, but what was the message to him and to the
opposition when the United Nations dismisses the individual who was
responsible for supporting these elections because of concern over fraud?
How could he have confidence in the role of the UN as an impartial arbiter
at this stage?
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Ambassador Peter Galbraith. He was just fired
by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the top American diplomat at the
United Nations in Afghanistan. We're speaking to him in Bergen, Norway, and
we're going to come back to our discussion, including his feelings about a
surge of US troops in Afghanistan. Ambassador Peter Galbraith with us. Stay
with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Ambassador Peter Galbraith in Bergen, Norway.
He was the top US diplomat at the UN in Afghanistan, number two in the
mission there, just fired by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Anjali?
ANJALI KAMAT: Ambassador Galbraith, in your piece for the Washington Post
this Sunday, you write that your former boss, Kai Eide, ordered you not to
pursue the issue of fraud. Can you explain exactly how he did this?
PETER GALBRAITH: Well, Anjali, I covered that. I'd be happy to go over it
again. First, in advance of the election, he-when I was trying to reduce the
number of the ghost polling stations, he ordered me to stop doing that,
after the Afghan ministers complained about it, although, of course, they
were working for President Karzai, who would turn out to be the beneficiary
of the fraud.
At another stage in the process, we had collected very substantial data on
fraud and turnout. This was done by the UN staff at considerable personal
risk. Afghanistan is a dangerous place to operate. And then, we wanted to do
what our mandate is, which is to support the Afghan institutions, turn this
evidence over to the Election Complaints Commission. He ordered the mission
not to turn over the evidence, to sit on it. And then, when the Independent
Election Commission, which was really a pro-Karzai body, decided to abandon
its safeguards, he objected when I intervened with them to try to get them
to keep the safeguards.
His argument is that this is-that the UN Security Council resolution says
that the United Nations should support Afghan institutions in a Afghan-run
election, and therefore we shouldn't intervene. But, in fact, of course, the
mandate is to support a-not just elections, but free, fair and transparent
elections, not a fraudulent one.
And it's, in my view, absurd to say that the international community doesn't
have an interest in how these elections are conducted. First, taxpayers from
the wealthy countries, and particularly the United States, paid for these
elections. They cost over $300 million. So-and there's an obvious interest.
But second, and even more important, these elections were a critical part of
the political process in Afghanistan. The hope was that they would bring
greater stability. They have now brought much greater instability. They have
been the biggest strategic triumph for the Taliban since 2001. And with
100,000 troops there, of course, the United States and its NATO allies had a
huge interest in-that these elections be done properly. And frankly, the
United Nations mission failed to do its job.
ANJALI KAMAT: Ambassador Galbraith, I want to ask you about the audit that's
going to begin shortly. I want to turn to an excerpt of an interview on Al
Jazeera with Grant Kippen. He's the head of the UN-backed Electoral
Complaints Commission, and he's explaining why the audit will only look at
ten percent of the suspect polling boxes.
GRANT KIPPEN: We have two processes in place at the moment. One is the-are
the investigations with respect to the complaints that we've received to
date, and there are some 2,300 complaints that we've received since polling
day. The other is the process I just mentioned, the audit and the recount
process. And we've-you know, this audit and recount will look at those
polling stations there, where we believe more information needs to be
gathered in terms of the manner in which the process was conducted. So, at
this point in time, we will continue to work through these two different
processes and make decisions based on the information we collect.
So, in terms of the other 90 percent, at this point, we've not received
complaints that affect the other 90 percent, maybe a little bit less, but,
you know, by and large, the complaints that we deal with come from the-from
different candidates and individuals, and we'll be focusing on that.
ANJALI KAMAT: Ambassador Galbraith, your response? And can you explain if
these ten percent of suspect ballot boxes, if they include the 1,500 polling
stations that you mentioned, the ghost polling stations?
PETER GALBRAITH: They include many of the ghost polling stations. The
Independent Election Commission published guidelines, the ones that I tried
to keep in place, that they chose to abandon, because they, in fact, would
have harmed Karzai, those guidelines said that they would quarantine for
further examination polling places in certain categories-for example, if it
had more than 600 votes. Why? Because 600 ballots was all any polling
station got. If it reported more than 90 percent of the vote for a single
candidate, if the polling station was closed, these results would all be
excluded. The IEC included those results. And now the-and that created about
3,500 polling stations in that category.
What the Election Complaints Commission is doing is doing a sample of those
3,500, looking at them-I think it'll be about 350 of these polling stations.
They'll do an audit. That means they'll open the ballot box, look, for
example, to see if the ballots were all marked the same way; look to see if
there were any ballots in the ballot box to begin with; were the ballot
papers folded, because if they weren't folded, that means they weren't put
into the ballot box by a voter, because you could only get them in through
the slot by voting. Anyhow, there are a number of audit techniques that they
have. If it turns out that that random sample shows that almost all of it's
fraudulent, they will then exclude the full 3,000, and then we'll see
whether that leads to a runoff.
I have confidence in this process, which incidentally was only started after
the disagreement between the head of the mission and myself became public.
But there is a problem with it, which is not in any way the fault of the
Election Complaints Commission. And the problem is that the fraud was
committed on a massive scale. Up to a third of the votes for President
Karzai were not actually cast by voters. This process will catch some of the
fraud, hopefully a lot of the fraud, but a lot of the fraud will remain
undetected. And so, that's what makes it-is going to make it so hard for
Afghans, and particularly those who support the opposition, to have
confidence in the final outcome.
AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Peter Galbraith, have you been pressured by the
United Nations not to speak to the press? And then I want to ask you about
the latest attack over the weekend. Eight US troops, two Afghan police
officers died. Do you support a military surge in Afghanistan?
PETER GALBRAITH: Well, to answer your first question, I want to emphasize
that this disagreement between myself and the head of the mission, it was
longstanding, it was serious, and it was private. I did not choose to speak
out. I did not speak out as long as I was working for the United Nations.
Unfortunately, somebody else, a third party, leaked the news of this dispute
in mid-September, and it became a worldwide story, unfortunately. For my
employment prospects, almost all the print coverage was favorable to me and
highly critical of my boss.
At the time that I was being recalled, the Secretary-General sent word to me
that I should not talk to the press. I agreed, provided that the United
Nations gave an accurate description of what was at issue, which nobody
disputed, namely that this was a result of a disagreement over how to handle
electoral fraud. Even that wasn't quite right, because it was really a
disagreement about whether the United Nations should handle electoral fraud.
But I went along with the how to handle electoral fraud. That was language
proposed, incidentally, by the United Nations, not by me. That was all
agreed.
And then, when my recall was announced, that wasn't the language that was
used, and immediately, UN press officials began to background the story,
that this was a personality clash. Well, that's not true. Kai Eide and I had
been friends since 1994. We worked together in the Balkans. He actually
introduced me to my wife, who is Norwegian, which is why I'm speaking to you
from Bergen, Norway. And this was a serious policy disagreement, and this
effort to minimize it was a great disservice to the staff of the United
Nations, who worked so hard on the election issues, all of whom-there's no
disagreement within the UN mission. Everybody disagrees with the head of the
mission. It was a disservice to them, and frankly, it was a disservice to
the Afghan people to cover up, in a final effort to cover up, the issues
here.
Now, to turn to your question on whether there should be an additional surge
of US troops, I'm against that at this time, for the simple reason that for
the counterinsurgency strategy that is being proposed to President Obama,
for that to work, you need to have an Afghan partner, a government, which is
capable of establishing a reasonably efficient and honest administration in
the areas that the US troops then have-first have cleared. And we don't have
an Afghan government that's a credible partner. Given this election mess, a
large part of the country is not going to accept Karzai, if he in fact
emerges from this as the legitimate leader. And so, under those
circumstances, the counterinsurgency strategy can't work, and therefore, in
my view, it really makes no sense to put in additional troops.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Ambassador Peter Galbraith, we want to thank you very
much for joining us, joining us from Bergen, Norway. He was the top American
diplomat at the UN, number two man at the UN in Afghanistan, just fired by
the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. His books include The End of Iraq: How
American Incompetence Created a War Without End and also the book Unintended
Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies.
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