Free Republic

Afghanistan’s two presidential candidates Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah have finally agreed a power-sharing deal, drawing a line under a contested election that has dragged out for almost six months. The agreement, which bestows substantial power on the losing candidate, was finalised on Saturday and made public in a ceremony on Sunday. Parties met late into the night over the past few days to seal the deal before Sunday, when an announcement of the final result of the UN-run election audit is expected. Negotiations, begun in July and finalised earlier this week, were drawn out because Mr Abdullah, the losing...

Tony Podesta's firm failed to file legally required disclosures after emails with his WH adviser brother A high-dollar lobbyist and fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign failed to file legally required disclosures for his advocacy on behalf of a foreign government in discussions with Clinton’s future campaign chairman, according to a political law expert. High-powered Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta emailed his brother John, a top White House adviser who would later chair the Clinton campaign, in January 2015. Tony wondered if John would attend a meeting with the Indian ambassador to the United States. “I’m at Camp David Friday,” John...

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his election opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, have broken down, a Western source close to the Afghan leadership told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Friday. According to the source, Abdullah will likely announce this weekend that he will boycott the runoff presidential election slated for November 7, a runoff that had been scheduled after intense diplomatic arm twisting by the United States.

In retrospect, United States President Barack Obama did a great favor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai by excluding him from his charmed circle of movers and shakers who would wield clout with the new administration in Washington. Obama was uncharacteristically rude to Karzai by not even conversing with him by telephone for weeks after he was sworn in, even though Afghanistan was the number one foreign policy priority of his presidency. Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Kabul to let it be known to Karzai that he was a fallen angel and unless Karzai mended his ways and did that...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 2005 – Free and fair elections in Iraq and Afghanistan represent the U.S. military's most significant accomplishment in 2005, the top U.S. enlisted servicemember said. Army Command Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey, senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began 2005 in Iraq as the senior enlisted advisor for Multinational Corps Iraq. He witnessed the Jan. 30 elections there and said the event and subsequent elections in Iraq and Afghanistan are significant on many levels. "I think elections are the key focus," Gainey said in an interview. "When you can go into...

Why still no big-font, front-page headlines screaming, “Millions Vote in Historic Middle East Election!” or “Democracy Comes At Last To Iraq” or “America’s Push for Iraqi Democracy Working”? Besides the politics of gloom — Bush at home and America abroad are always wrong — and the weariness with the violence, there has sadly been too small a constituency for trusting that Arabs should run their own affairs through consensual government. Remember the ingredients of the good old American foreign policy in the Middle East — the one that operated before the bad-new days of neoconservatism?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2005 – Just as election activities wrap up in Iraq, the people of Afghanistan are looking toward a historic event in their own country, as its National Assembly convenes Dec. 19 for the first time in more than three decades. Formation of the parliament marks the latest step in Afghanistan' path to democracy and follows the country's Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, a State Department official told the American Forces Press Service on the condition that he not be identified or quoted. Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and international military forces ensured a relatively safe and secure...

KABUL -- War-scarred Afghanistan took another step on Thursday toward forming its first parliament in more than three decades when the first provisional results from last month's landmark vote were released. But with key warlords and members of the ousted Taliban regime dominating initial counting in some areas, there was concern that the new body would become mired in the old power struggles that have broken down this destitute nation. "We have now completed the physical process of counting the ballot papers in all provinces across Afghanistan," said Peter Erben, head of the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) that organized...

KABUL, Afghanistan - A 27-year-old woman who is a defiant critic of Afghanistan's powerful warlords won one of the first seats declared Thursday in provisional results from landmark parliamentary elections, a key step in the nation's transition to democracy. The U.N.-Afghan election body reported "serious" cases of fraud, including ballot-box stuffing after election day. It excluded 299 polling stations from the vote count, but declared the Sept. 18 poll was still credible. President Hamid Karzai and NATO's chief diplomat, meanwhile, expressed confidence that a planned deployment of 6,000 NATO troops into volatile southern provinces would happen next year - a...

KABUL, Afghanistan - Powerful warlords, a former Taliban commander and women's activists were among the frontrunners as vote counting drew to a close Tuesday in Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections in more than 30 years. Preliminary results will be announced starting Wednesday or Thursday and in phases, in the event of unrest, officials said. Losing candidates are expected to bombard election authorities with complaints and accusations of cheating. Final certified results are due Oct. 22. Suspected Taliban insurgents who failed to stop 6.8 million Afghans from voting Sept. 18 resumed attacks this week. A bomb at a Afghan-Pakistan border crossing Tuesday...

Some time ago, the chief correspondent for one of our country's leading newspapers reported: "Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word 'quagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy. . . . Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? . . . Echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable." One might at first suspect that the selection comes from a recent article about Iraq. In fact, it was written about Afghanistan -- only a month after war there began and only two weeks before the...

Something remarkable happened in Afghanistan this month. The war-torn country held its first parliamentary election in 35 years and 12.5 million people, men and women, were registered to vote. Terrorists mounted a desperate attempt over the preceding months to stop the election, but to no avail. Despite killing 1,000 people, including seven candidates and six poll workers, several of them women, the harbingers of destruction failed to intimidate the Afghan people. And thanks to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces, violence was at a minimum the day of the election. As Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal put it, "After all their boasting,...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – The people of Afghanistan woke up this morning to a brighter future, after successfully voting in their new leadership in a day marked by limited violence near only a handful of voting stations. Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and international military forces ensured more than 12.5 million registered voters had an opportunity to participate in the National Assembly Elections in a relatively safe and secure environment. Jahwedolah, an ANP patrolman said, “It’s a historical day that we have today…it will be good for our future and we will have a good future.” “The election...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2005 – The successful parliamentary elections in Afghanistan Sept. 18 have proven wrong all critics of U.S. efforts in that country, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a Pentagon news briefing today. Critics of the war in Afghanistan were not just wrong, they were harmful because they made the cause seem hopeless, Rumsfeld said. The millions of Afghan citizens who turned out to vote proved them wrong, and terrorists weren't able to affect the elections, he said. "Terrorists have done everything in their power to try to intimidate the millions of Afghan voters and the literally thousands...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Airpower was in full effect as aircraft and crews supported Afghanistan’s National Assembly elections Sept. 18 by deterring attacks on the ground. U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II and EC-130H Compass Call aircraft and U.S. Navy EA-6B Prowlers here have stepped up efforts to provide safe and secure conditions as the elections bring Afghanistan one step closer to democracy. Airpower will be a major factor to the success of the elections and the follow-on political process, said Lt. Col. Dave Evans, Operation Enduring Freedom air component coordination element plans officer who is deployed from...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Some filed into schools to cast their ballots amid lessons still scrawled on blackboards. Others stepped over piles of shoes to vote in mosques. In remote areas, tents served as polling stations. Across Afghanistan, millions of people lined up at polling stations in defiance of a Taliban boycott call and militant attacks to vote for a new parliament Sunday. It was the last formal step in starting a democracy aimed at ending decades of rule by the gun. “Today is a magnificent day for Afghanistan,” said Ali Safar, 62, standing in line to vote in Kabul. “We...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2005 – For the third straight day, Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and coalition forces stymied enemy efforts to disrupt elections, as Afghan voters filled the more than 6,100 polling stations in every province today, military officials in the Afghan capital of Kabul reported. Afghan National Police, ANA and coalition forces detained three suspected enemy fighters in Wardak and Ghanzi provinces; discovered and destroyed at least six improvised explosive devices in Khost, Kunar and Paktika provinces; fought off direct enemy attacks in Khost, Nangarhar and Paktika provinces; and discovered a weapons cache near the forward operating...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2005 – The people of Afghanistan successfully voted in new leaders Sept. 18. Limited violence was reported near only a handful of voting stations, military officials said. Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and international military forces ensured more than 12.5 million registered voters had an opportunity to participate in the National Assembly elections in a relatively safe and secure environment. "It's a historical day that we have today. ... It will be good for our future, and we will have a good future," Jahwedolah, an Afghan police patrolman, said. The election results will not be known...

Al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahiri has dismissed the legitimacy of Afghanistan's parliamentary elections in a new tape broadcast by Aljazeera. In the tape, Al-Zawahiri played down US accomplishments in Afghanistan, saying it had just managed to move Taliban's government from Kabul to the mountains and countryside. The tape aired by Aljazeera was produced by al-Sahab Productions which usually distributes al-Qaida's videos. The taped interview of al-Zawahiri had appparently been conducted to commemorate the fourth anniversary of September 11 attacks on Washington and New York. "What did they do, they drove Taliban's government out of Kabul, but it has been active...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Some filed into schools to cast their ballots amid lessons still scrawled on blackboards. Others stepped over piles of shoes to vote in mosques. In remote areas, tents served as polling stations. Across Afghanistan, millions lined up at polling stations in defiance of a Taliban boycott call and militant attacks to vote for a new parliament Sunday. It was the last formal step in starting a democracy aimed at ending decades of rule by the gun. “Today is a magnificent day for Afghanistan,” said Ali Safar, 62, standing in line to vote in Kabul. “We want dignity,...