Karzai Rival Steps Aside but Challenges Electoral Fraud - NYTimes.com

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By CARLOTTA GALL and ALISSA RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s last presidential challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, stepped aside on Sunday, leaving the field clear for President Hamid Karzai to serve another five-year term but challenging the legitimacy of the government in an emotional speech before thousands of opposition supporters here.

Mr. Abdullah said he was quitting to protest the behavior of the government and the Independent Election Commission, which, he said, were planning even more extensive fraud in the scheduled runoff vote on Nov. 7 than in the badly tainted first round in August. He also said he took into account the dangerous security situation in the country and the risks voters and the security forces faced in holding a runoff election.

“I hoped there would be a better process,” he said. “But it is final. I will not participate in the Nov. 7 elections.”

Mr. Abdullah made it clear he was not seeking confrontation with Mr. Karzai’s government: he did not call for protests or a nationwide boycott of the election process, and he said he would not tell his supporters they should not vote.

Still, his withdrawal immediately called into question how the Afghan democratic process could proceed at all. Even though Mr. Karzai’s aides insisted that the Nov. 7 vote would go on, American and other Western officials said they would push for a legal decision to make Mr. Karzai president rather than holding a new vote with just one candidate in a country actively engaged in a war with Taliban and Qaeda militants.

Obama administration officials on Sunday rallied around Mr. Karzai, saying that Mr. Abdullah’s actions were in line with the Afghan constitution and that a decision on troop levels in Afghanistan was moving forward with the matter of Mr. Karzai’s re-election now essentially settled.

“The president wanted an election that proceeded in the constitutional way, a runoff was called, and Abdullah exercised his rights as a candidate,” said David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior adviser, on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

Mr. Axelrod added that polling suggested that Mr. Abdullah “would have been defeated anyway.”

Mr. Axelrod and another close Obama adviser, Valerie Jarrett, both said Sunday that a decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan was still weeks away. And they pointedly noted that the chief American goal now in Afghanistan was to make sure Al Qaeda would not re-establish bases in Afghanistan, omitting any discussion of political and economic stability in Afghanistan itself.

Whether Mr. Karzai will be accepted as a legitimate leader will largely depend on his conduct in the coming days and weeks, one Western official in Afghanistan said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political nature of the remarks. Western leaders will be looking to his choice of cabinet for his willingness to reach out to his opponents across the ethnic and factional divisions, but also his selection of competent ministers who will tackle corruption and weak government, the official said.

“He can try and rehabilitate himself by actions that he means business, or he can continue as he has and see the international support slowly drain away,” the official said.

Mr. Abdullah’s supporters, who traveled from all over the country to hear his decision in Kabul, were unanimous in calling Mr. Karzai an illegitimate leader.

“Look at the government. No one feels governance in the whole country,” said Azizullah Wasefi, who served as a provincial governor under Mr. Karzai but supported Mr. Abdullah for president.

Yet the decision was clearly a hard one for Mr. Adbullah. He choked up at the moment of announcing it before his supporters and had to pause to drink water before speaking.

“It did not come easily,” he told the crowd, which began cheering at his announcement. He said people had died in the cause of establishing a democracy and a transparent electoral system had been one of the main aims of the last eight years since the Taliban was ousted.

Mr. Abdullah clearly signaled that he was positioning himself as a future player in Afghan politics. In a news briefing later at his home, he said:

“I did it with a lot of pain, but at the same time with a lot of hopes towards the future. Because this will not be the end of anything, this will be a new beginning.”

He continued: “Hopefully democracy will survive in this country, and I can assure our people that I will be at the service of the people and will promote the ideas of reform and change for the betterment of the lives of the people of Afghanistan.”

Mr. Abdullah has been under intense pressure from Western officials to avoid confrontation and end a two-month dispute over the election results.

The head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Kay Eide, who unsuccessfully attempted to broker an agreement between Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah at a meeting on Wednesday, praised Mr. Abdullah as showing a statesmanlike and dignified manner, and he called for a legal and timely end to the electoral process.

That call was echoed by other Western officials in Afghanistan, some of whom said that it was most likely that the Independent Election Commission or Supreme Court would declare Mr. Karzai the winner in coming days.

In a radio interview after Mr. Abdullah’s announcement, Mr. Karzai said he still believed the runoff vote would go forward. “I hope that the election will be held so our people can choose their president,” he said, but he added that he would respect any decision made by the election commission.

Mr. Abdullah’s supporters were mostly subdued after the announcement. But most of those interviewed said they supported the decision to withdraw in view of the joint threats of repeated government fraud and insecurity.

Still, some Afghans from the more stable areas of the country where his support base has been strong said they thought he could have won a second round. “The people want Dr. Abdullah!” said Habibullah Azimi, 19, a student from Ghor Province.

“This was a black and bitter decision, but we swallowed this bitter decision in the interest of future generations,” said Faizullah Mojadeddi, a member of Parliament from Logar Province just south of Kabul. “They want a democratic process, not a fraudulent one. Few people would vote if Mr. Karzai went ahead with the election,” he added.

Some warned that the general situation in the country would further deteriorate under another term with Mr. Karzai as president. “There will be more misery in Afghanistan,” said Najibullah Majidi, 37, a farmer from northwestern Afghanistan.

“Karzai has not won and if the international community does not prosecute the thief, what will happen?” asked Abdul Majid, 75, a tribal elder from a district of Mr. Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, where he said no one could vote because of Taliban threats. “This fire will spread,” he warned.

Against a backdrop of bargaining and diplomatic activity, Mr. Karzai stayed silent publicly. Only last month, Mr. Karzai succumbed to pressure from American and other Western officials, agreeing to accept the verdict of a United Nations-backed commission that put his vote total at under 50 percent.

To the horror of American officials here, Mr. Karzai had strongly considered overriding the Election Complaint Commission, a United Nations-backed body that found that nearly a million ballots had been forged for Mr. Karzai, and declaring himself the winner. Mr. Karzai still held a commanding lead over Mr. Abdullah — 48 to 27 percent — but the commission had pulled the president below 50 percent. That made a runoff necessary.

Only the forceful intervention of Senator John Kerry, who was visiting in Kabul, averted a full-blown political crisis.

But Mr. Abdullah concluded that without major changes to the election system, a second round would be as fraudulent as the first. His demands included the firing of the chief of the Independent Electoral Commission, which collected and counted the ballots, and the closing of hundreds of suspected “ghost” polling centers — fictional voting sites that were instrumental in allowing Mr. Karzai’s supporters to manufacture fake ballots. Mr. Karzai refused.

Those close to Mr. Karzai said there was a simple explanation for Mr. Abdullah’s withdrawal. Muhammad Ismail Yoon, a university professor close to Mr. Karzai, said Mr. Abdullah knew that if he went through with a second round, the Afghans would desert him. “No one invests in a loser in Afghanistan,” he said.

Joseph Berger contributed reporting from New York.