The Afghanistan Conference in London this week was expected to be a just one more in a series of international talk-fests intended as a show of international solidarity with Afghanistan. Like the Hague, Paris, London, and Tokyo conferences before it, foreign ministers and envoys would gather to make vague speeches and announce their financial commitments to various programs. The difference, if any, in this case is that the conference was also initially intended to convince the world that the Karzai government was serious about governing well, about tackling corruption and addressing impunity that is causing the Afghan government to lose credibility with the Afghan people and the international community. At the same time (perhaps paradoxically) the conference would repair the breach between President Karzai and the international community over mutual accusations of interference, fraud, and corruption.

But the Afghans had a different idea. They didn't want the conference to focus on their foibles (understandably, from their perspective) but rather on how they are going to address the growing insurgency. The Afghan government has been working intensively to prepare a plan to create a national Peace and Reintegration Program, a new effort backed by international funding to lure insurgents off the battlefield with promises of protection and economic opportunity. ISAF, which has stood up its own reintegration cell, is strongly in support of this effort, as are the Japanese and other governments that announced contributions to a new Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund.

Then Karzai took things a step further -- and took his hosts by surprise -- by using his speech to call for high level negotiations with the Taliban leadership that would result in permanent political reconciliation. Karzai has opened this door repeatedly before, and there have been several attempts to engage Taliban leaders seriously in talks. But activity in the last few months has been much more intense, including a meeting in Dubai between outgoing U.N. SRSG Kai Eide and representatives of the Taliban leadership on Jan. 6, and the removal of 5 former Taliban from the United Nations Security Council sanctions list this week.

This is the first time that a serious effort to engage the insurgents has played out on the world stage, and for the moment has raised as many questions as answers. It certainly made the London conference more exciting than expected. The discussions about debt-relief and targets for the Afghan National Security forces happened as well, and you can read the conference communiqué here. 

J Alexander Thier is the Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is co-author and editor of "The Future of Afghanistan" (USIP, 2009). He lived in Afghanistan for about 7 of the last 16 years, and travels there frequently.

By J Alexander Thier

Mr. President, be practical, but do not abandon hope.

Is the continuation, or even expansion, of the American engagement in Afghanistan worth the investment?

I believe that answer is yes. The Afghan people, and those who have lived and worked among the Afghans, have not given up hope for a peaceful Afghanistan. In every part of the country there are Afghans risking their lives to educate and vaccinate children, to monitor elections and investigate war crimes, to grow food for their communities. They are not helpless without us, but they rely on us for the promise of a better future - a promise we have made repeatedly over the last eight years.

I understand that remaining committed to the stabilization of Afghanistan is not easy. It will be costly, in lives and taxpayer dollars. It is a challenging mission, in every way. Yet the alternatives, when examined honestly, are unbearably bleak. It is hard for me to imagine watching the Taliban's triumphant return to Kandahar, or Kabul - sending Afghanistan back to the dark days of forced illiteracy for girls and public stonings. Are we prepared to witness Afghanistan's women parliamentarians fleeing the country and thousands of our colleagues going into exile or face the consequences of having collaborated with the Americans? Will we stand by and observe the abandonment of hope as the next phase of the civil war begins and all our effort is swept away? And if future terror attacks are traced back to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or Pakistan collapses or its nuclear materials are stolen, how will we respond if asked: did we do everything we could to prevent it?

The Afghan government has not fulfilled its promise. No government that is unable to provide security to its population, and which is seen as corrupt and unjust, will be legitimate in the eyes of the population. It is this illegitimacy that has driven Afghans away from the government, and emboldened the insurgency.

Thus, the focus of our efforts to stabilize Afghanistan should not be exclusively, or even primarily, military. Instead, the real key to success in Afghanistan will be to reinvigorate critical efforts to promote Afghan leadership and capacity at all levels of society while combating the culture of impunity that is undermining the entire effort.

To overcome these challenges, and our own limitations, in addition to improving security we must do three things with our Afghan partners to rebalance our efforts: 1) radically prioritize what we want to accomplish; 2) address the culture of impunity and improve governance; 3) decentralize our efforts to reach the Afghan people; and 4) improve international coordination and effectiveness.

Prioritize. For too long we have been doing many things poorly instead of a few things well. In this critical year, it is essential to simultaneously scale back our objectives and intensify our resources. The U.S. and its partners should focus on security, governance and the rule of law, and delivery of basic economic development with a strong emphasis on agriculture.

Address Impunity and Improve Governance. The U.S. must act aggressively with its Afghan partners in the lead to break the cycle of impunity and corruption that is dragging all sides down and providing a hospitable environment for the insurgency. First, the Afghan President must demonstrate leadership on this issue, accompanied by the empowerment of an anti-corruption and serious crimes task force, independent of the government agencies it may be investigating. The international community must devote intelligence and investigative support, as well as the manpower to support dangerous raids. In the first few months, several high profile cases including the removal and/or prosecution of officials engaged in criminality, including government officials, should be highly publicized. The U.S. should approach this mission with the same vigor as other key elements of the counter-insurgency campaign.

Decentralize. A top-down, Kabul-centric strategy to address governance and economic development is mismatched for Afghanistan, one of the most highly decentralized societies in the world. The international community and the Afghan government must engage the capacity of the broader Afghan society, making them the engine of progress rather than unwilling subjects of rapid change. The new formula is one where the central government continues to ensure security and justice on the national level and uses its position to channel international assistance to promote good governance and development at the community level.

If international commitment to Afghanistan and the region can be sustained and local leadership empowered, the prospects for Afghanistan and its people carry with them the hopes of us all for a better, safer future.

J Alexander Thier, writing from Islamabad, is the Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US Institute of Peace. He is co-author and editor of "The Future of Afghanistan" (USIP, 2009). He lived in Afghanistan for about 7 of the last 16 years, and travels there frequently.

By J Alexander Thier

Today in Kabul both President Karzai and the Independent Election Commission announced that they would accept the findings of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) and agreed to a runoff election on November 7 this year. The ECC released its findings on Sunday, throwing out some 1.25 million ballots from the August 20 contest due to fraud.

With nearly one million of those ballots coming from Karzai's tally, his percentage of the vote dropped to 48.3 percent, below the 50 percent plus one needed to avoid a runoff. Dr. Abdullah had nearly 200,000 votes thrown out due to fraud, but saw his overall percentage climb to 31.5.

President Karzai said in a press conference that he and his government "welcome the decision made by the Independent Election Commission, we believe the decision is legitimate, legal and according to the constitution of Afghanistan." Karzai's acceptance of the outcome of the two-month-long fraud investigation by the ECC is a triumph for the ECC, the election process, and for Afghanistan as a whole.

During the last two months, many commentators have suggested that the elections are not meaningful to Afghans and that we should simply move on and accept Karzai's victory. But the most important and frequently overlooked aspect of this process was not simply about the outcome of the election itself, but whether the powerful -- in this case Karzai -- would be subordinated to the law. The election process and the ensuing fraud reinforce a narrative of corruption and impunity about the government. This perception feeds resentment and apathy towards the government and creates a conducive environment for the insurgency.

The fact that a long and deliberative investigation that collected thousands of complaints from citizens, that examined ballot boxes from all 34 provinces, and that brought Afghans and the international community together to support a difficult but just outcome, is truly cause for celebration.

Alexander Thier is the Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US Institute of Peace. He is co-author and editor of "The Future of Afghanistan" (USIP, 2009). He lived in Afghanistan for about 7 of the last 16 years, and travels there frequently.

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By J Alexander Thier

Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) released its findings on Sunday, showing that there were nearly 1.3 million fraudulent votes in Afghanistan's August 20 presidential election. In a letter to Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC), the ECC announced that it found some 210 polling stations riddled with fraud, from the sample of 350 polling stations it had examined. When this total is applied to the entire group of questionable ballot boxes, the result is over 2,100 polling stations disqualified, containing 1.26 million votes.

Those disqualifications leave incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai with some 48.3 percent of the vote, according to my calculations and those done by Democracy International. It also gave a small boost to Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the leading challenger with 31.5 percent of the vote, and third place finisher Ramazan Bashadost with just over 10 percent of the vote.

The IEC, long accused of being biased in favor of Karzai, received the information from the ECC on Sunday but has yet to say whether it will apply these findings to the vote total and certify the results of the election. If accepted, these results would require a run-off between Karzai and Abdullah. The Afghan constitution calls for the run-off to proceed within two weeks of the announcement of the results, although preparations for the vote would likely take a bit longer.

Perhaps more importantly, it remains unclear whether Karzai will accept the outcome of the ECC decision. Afghan and international powerbrokers are reportedly filing in and out of the presidential palace, either trying to encourage Karzai to accept the decision or to make a power-sharing deal.

The two-month long post-election calamity -- longer than our own national electoral nightmare in 2000 -- has further contributed to Afghanistan's growing instability.

Stay tuned to the AfPak Channel for more election analysis as news breaks.

J Alexander Thier is the Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US Institute of Peace. He is co-author and editor of "The Future of Afghanistan" (USIP, 2009). He lived in Afghanistan for about 7 of the last 16 years, and travels there frequently.

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By J Alexander Thier

On October 7, 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom was launched. U.S. President George W. Bush announced that "U.S. forces have begun strikes on terrorist camps of al Qaeda, and the military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." He closed the statement with this self-appraisal: "To all the men and women in our military... I say this: your mission is defined; your objectives are clear; your goal is just."

This response to the events of September 11, 2001 was just, but the mission and objectives were never clear. Even in those earliest days, virtually devoid of self-doubt, there was a deep tension between the "war on terror" and the effort to create a sustainable anti-al Qaeda status quo in the wake of violent regime change.

The following spring, Bush made a speech at the Virginia Military Institute -- apparently burying his administration's disdain for nation-building -- by calling for a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan.  This speech was less a volte face than an acknowledgment of existing policy. Through the Bonn process in December 2001 that established an interim government and an international pledging conference in Tokyo in early 2002, Afghans and the international community had voted overwhelmingly for an approach that would reconstruct, and even democratize, war-torn Afghanistan. Sadly, despite the rhetoric, the scale of the effort needed to overcome Afghanistan's enormous challenges was never realized.

Eight years on, we are still betwixt and between when it comes to defining our objectives for Afghanistan. This conundrum is not due to mission creep or waffling, but rather the inexorable logic of intervention and the limitations of our capabilities. Afghanistan, its fabric of governance and society rent by war, became a petri dish of Islamist extremism and global jihadists. Unrepaired, its inaccessible landscape would continue to produce these horrific aberrations. And so, logically, to succeed in the anti-terror mission, we had not only to throw the bastards out, but put in something else that would prevent them from coming back.

Creating viable, legitimate governments out of the ashes of decades of conflict is a low-probability undertaking even in the best of circumstances. Everything can, and will, go wrong. Internationals will do too much, crowding out indigenous initiative, or too little, leaving the green shoots of renewal to whither. International troops will be seen as aggressive occupiers, or as ineffectual and value-neutral, failing to contain spoilers. A strong domestic leader will rile factional, ethnic, or sectarian divisions and a weak one will fail to unify in divisive times. A failure to deal with past abuses by powerful actors will undermine the possibility for reconciliation in society, or digging up the past will prevent the possibility for a stable political settlement. Indeed, every one of these charges has been made in Afghanistan in the last eight years.

Today our stated objectives remain largely the same -- destroy al Qaeda and build some semblance of responsible government in Afghanistan that can prevent the return of al Qaeda and provide some modicum of succor to its beleaguered population than the last three decades of despotism and chaos.

So what is different? On the plus side, it finally looks like the U.S. is serious about achieving these goals. In 2002, there were 10,000 international forces in Afghanistan. Now there are in excess of 100,000. U.S. spending on the creation of a new Afghan National Army and Police -- a centerpiece of our strategy from the start -- was $191 million in 2002. The 2010 request is $7.5 billion. The U.S. embassy in Afghanistan has six ambassadors, we are recruiting hundreds of civilians for missions around the country, and the diplomatic heavyweight of his generation, Richard Holbrooke, has been given license to pull together talent and resources from across the government to barnstorm the region. And our new, young, and energetic president is fully engaged.

On the negative side is everything else. The warlords -- so power-mad and destructive during the civil war of the 1990s that even the Taliban were a better alternative -- have taken over the asylum. Their ascendancy and association with the government, along with the narco-mafia, once again has the Afghans looking for alternatives. The insurgency grows in brutality and reach every year. For eight years the Afghan government and their international partners have stood up repeatedly at lavish international conferences pledging security, good governance, accountability, and economic development for Afghanistan. Over $65 billion has been pledged for Afghanistan since 2001. Yet, most Afghans -- especially those in the south and east, where the insurgency has most affected the country -- have not seen the fruits of promises.

The biggest difference of all, though, may be time. Eight years ago, the Afghan people, the American people, and the rest of our partners the international community believed that our goals were both just and achievable. Now there is a crisis of confidence that even with the best of intentions we can achieve our goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

For those of us who witnessed Afghanistan in its darkest days before 2001, we still hope it can get better, and know it can get far worse. There are also larger issues at stake, for the U.S., for NATO, and the region. What we need now, as in 2001, is renewed leadership from both the Afghans and the U.S. and NATO to forge a just and reasonable path, bringing the vast majority of Afghans, Europeans, and Americans, who still want peace in Afghanistan, together to rebuild the coalition and improve our combined performance. As President Obama said in France in April 2009, "This is a mission that tests whether nations can come together in common purpose on behalf of our common security."

J Alexander Thier is the Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US Institute of Peace. He is co-author and editor of "The Future of Afghanistan" (USIP, 2009). He lived in Afghanistan for about 7 of the last 16 years, and travels there frequently.

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By J Alexander Thier and Sara Thrall

The slow trickle of results from Afghanistan's August 20 presidential elections paired with its high volume of fraud complaints is pushing that country's already fragile political system into crisis. Thus, anxiously awaiting the vote totals like everyone else, we decided to try and extrapolate the outcome based on the official vote totals released by the Independent Electoral Commission.

As of August 31st, results from 47.8% of polling stations had been released. These include vote tallies from all 34 provinces, but at different rates. Votes from only 2.7% of polling stations in Nuristan have been added to the count, whereas 86% of the total polling stations in Jowzjan have been recorded.

In order to reach a result, we have weighted the partial votes from each province as if the results were 100% of polling stations reporting. Thus, if Balkh province is reporting 100 voters with 50% of stations reporting, we counted Balkh as having 200 voters, and multiplied the candidates individual tallies by the same factor as well.

Caveat Emptor

There are a slew of provisos here about our method and the results.

• The percentages reported are the number of polling stations and not the number of actual votes; however, our calculation counts the percent reported as equivalent to the percent of votes. It may be that some polling stations are larger than others -- perhaps with urban results reporting in but not rural areas, thus skewing the eventual totals.
• This same problem could also skew the way in which people voted. We assume 40% for Karzai at 60% reporting will also mean 40% for Karzai at 100% reporting. Maybe urban voters, or those from safer areas (where reporting presumably came in first) won't vote the same as those in other areas.
• Several provinces still have low percentages of poling stations tallied which reduces the likely accuracy of their extrapolations, e.g. Paktika at 6.2%, Kandahar at 13.7%, Helmand at 12.9%
• The initial releases are only for "clean" stations, which means that the data entry of the results form revealed no automatic red flags (e.g. a station that has 600 votes cast all for one person). Polling stations with implausibly high numbers of votes will only be added towards the end (if at all), which could effect the outcome.
• Our result is based on the relative accuracy of the total extrapolated number of votes, which could also be off. This is important because it's not about who comes in first, but rather whether one of the candidates tops 50%. If the total extrapolated votes is too high or too low, it would make all the difference in a tight race.

And the Winner Is...?

All that said, as demonstrated in the chart available here, we show Karzai with 49.2% of the vote and Abdullah with 26.7%, out of a total of 5,644,906 votes. That suggests a run-off, but with Karzai at a substantial advantage in the second round. It also shows that the outcome may be very close to the 50% mark, which means that decisions to include or exclude votes based on allegations of fraud may well decide the whole election.

J Alexander Thier is the director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace, where Sara Thrall, the author of "Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan: Necessary and Inadequate" (University of London, SOAS Masters Thesis, 2008), is a program assistant.

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