Mohammad Umer Daudzai, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff, said 25 November that foreigners should stay out of the delicate negotiations going on between Afghan authorities and the Taliban. “The last lesson we draw from this: International partners should not get excited so quickly with those kind of things. . . . Afghans know this business, how to handle it”, Daudzai said.
A man purporting to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a senior Taliban leader, is actually a shop-keeper from Quetta, Pakistan, according to Afghan intelligence reports. Mansour was helped by Nato forces to meet top Afghan officials, including Karzai. British intelligence officials reportedly arranged the meetings, according to a New York Times article earlier this week, while US officials kept their distance. One Western diplomat is quoted as saying that “we gave him a lot of money”.
Mansour held a post in the Taliban government before it was toppled by the US invasion in 2001. The British embassy in Kabul has refused to comment on the reports.
Links to other sites: BBC, Washington Post
Suicide bombers and commando-style Taliban militants have attacked several targets in the centre of Kabul, Afghanistan, leaving at least five dead and dozens wounded. The militants targeted government buildings and banks in the centre of the city 18 January, and Afghan security forces initially struggled to respond and restore order. Two central shopping centres are reported to be on fire, and Taliban militants have sought refuge in a cinema complex from which gunfire can still be heard.
A Taliban spokesman said that a suicide bomber had detonated a bomb near the entrance to the presidential palace, as President Hamid Karzai was swearing in new members of his government.
The US administration condemned the attacks as “desperate and ruthless”. Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the region spoke to reporters in New Dehli, India, hours after leaving Kabul earlier, saying “the people doing this certainly will not survive the attack, nor will they succeed. But we can expect this sort of thing on a regular basis,” reports Reuters.
Karzai was expected to announce a plan to integrate Taliban fighters into normal life at an aid conference in London, UK later this month.
Update 17:05 Afghan election officials have announced that Hamid Karzai is the elected president of Afghanistan and cancelled the second round of the election, scheduled for 7 November. They expressed fears for security and the cost of going ahead with an election without a challenger, who withdrew.
Afghan election officials were to announce this week whether to hold the second round of presidential elections due Saturday 7 November, after challenger Abdullah Abdullah announced his decision to withdraw from the race Sunday, 1 Novmber. Abdullah had asked for the head of the election commission to resign as a condition for his participation. The first round of the election was widely seen to be compromised by massive fraud in favour of President Hamid Karzai.
Western countries had insisted on the run-off, in order to provide Karzai with a semblance of legitimacy, ahead of important decisions by the USA, Afghanistan’s main backer in the war against the Taliban militants and the remnants of al-Qaeda in the country. US President Barack Obama is to announce a major new US strategy in coming days, and the US administration has said it needed a “credible partner” in Kabul. BBC, CNN, New York Times
At least three men armed with weapons, rockets and wearing suicide vests have attacked a guest-house compound used by the UN in central Kabul, Afghanistan. Reports say seven people, including three UN employees and the gunmen, were killed, and one seriously wounded in the attack early Wednesday 28 October. The death toll could go higher because of the serious nature of the injuries sustained by the wounded.
There were reports of explosions in other parts of the heavily guarded city, including a mortar attack on the Serena hotel, not far from the presidential palace, and used by visiting diplomats and journalists. No injuries were reported.
A Taliban spokesman confirmed that the group had carried out the attacks, and said it was because the UN was involved in organizing the Afghan presidential elections. The second round of the election must be held 7 November. Al-Jazeera, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said at a news conference in Kabul 20 October that there will be a run-off election 7 November between himself and his nearest opponent Abdullah Abdullah. Bowing to unprecedented international pressure, he said he accepted the revised results of the Independent Election Commission, which last week received the results of an investigation into massive fraud in the first round which invalidated up to a third of the votes. BBC, CNN, Reuters
Update 17:00 Reports from Kabul say that the Electoral Complaints Commission has finalized its tally and, discarding fraudulent ballots, the new total vote for Afghan President Hamid Karzai gives him 48 percent, less than the 50 percent necessary to avoid a run-off. The new results have been communicated to the Independent Election Commission, which has not yet decided whether to accept them. Nor is it clear what the reaction will be in the president’s office. AP, New York Times
Pressure is mounting on Karzai to accept a run-off election between him and the runner-up in last August’s elections, or to agree to some sort of power-sharing deal. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has been holding talks with both sides, and John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was also in Kabul this past weekend, 17 and 18 October. The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has been witholding the results of its investigation into massive electoral fraud, which may rob Karzai of his first-round victory. Karzai won with 54 percent of the vote.
A run-off election must be held within two weeks by law, but winter is closing in quickly in Afghanistan and would greatly hamper the logistics of a new election. The US administration is debating whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan to fight an increasingly powerful Taliban insurgency. On Sunday, 18 October, a top aide to US President Obama said that the Afghan government needed to be “a credible partner” for the US to be able to deal with it. CBS News, Christian Science Monitor, Reuters
