What a mess! - the sequel

Breaking news. Breaking news.

At once it's all going fast in Afghanistan. It took them ages to count the results of the 1st round (which took place last August), but the last 3 days have been a rollercoaster of self-destructing democracy.

Opponent Abdullah Abdullah warned about fraud in a 2nd round, run-off between him and sitting president Karzai. The next day (yesterday) he pulls out of the race leaving the democratic process in limbo with a 2nd round set for November 7th but with only 1 candidate remaining - Karzai. And then today the 2nd round is cancelled and Karzai sworn in.

What a mess! Clearly not from the handbook of traditional, solid democracy.

What legitimacy will Karzai have now? What representative power? Karzai is weaker than ever and the US and its Allies have egg on their faces. Sticky stuff. The future looks pretty rocky for Afghanistan.

Why not let the 2nd round happen anyway? Even with only 1 candidate. The independent election commission said it was better to scrap the 2nd round to save money and for security reasons. What crappy reasons! The US and its Allies have invested billions of money into Afghanistan (troop deployments, economic development,...), so what would an extra round of democracy cost in reference to what has been spent already? Since when has the democratic process a pricetag? And fears of security? So is that a confirmation that the ruling powers, be it the Afghan forces or be it NATO, cannot guarantee the safety of a next round of voting?

Or is the truth something else? What if the democratic process would run its course and there would be a 2nd round. Indeed with only Karzai on the ballot paper. What if the turnout would be just a few percentages? That would totally undermine Karzai's legitimacy. What if the voters turn up but a majority spoils their ballot - which is their democratic right. And thus that you might then end up with Karazi getting less than 50% of the voters that came to the voting stations. How embarrassing would that be? That would totally be democracy in limbo.

So were Kabul and Washington DC and London and Berlin afraid that the 2nd round might be full of those ugly surprises and thus better to kill it off here and now?

One thing is for sure, democracy is not the winner at all here. It has crashed and is dented, critically wounded, maimed. More than ever Karzai will look like a puppet of NATO. The ghosts of Vietnam are roaming the mountains....

Human behavior in Afghanistan has inflected bloody wounds on itself. Self mutilation.