Tainted Saints

[Surprise! This is what happens when your only opponent suddenly and mysteriously drops out... -Ed.]

Hamid Karzai, the incumbent president, has been declared the winner of Afghanistan’s presidential election.Afghanistan’s election panel announced the decision on Monday after a runoff planned for November 7 was cancelled.

Karzai would have been the only candidate after his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew a day earlier.

Abdullah Abdullah cited the government’s refusal to make changes in the electoral commission.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been accused of dealing drugs. Charges, and accusations, have never quite stuck. Nor has American pressure ever been brought to bear in earnest. The New York Times, in an explosive story, provides something of an explanation:

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

At this point, everything about the U.S. policy toward the Afghan drug trade — from tolerance to eradication during the Bush administration to an evolving approach to cultivating alternatives — now ought to be questioned. As in questioned in open congressional session. CIA money funds a politically connected drug dealer. Opium funds the Taliban. We are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. How much CIA money has indirectly funded the Taliban? [more]

I always thought he was so cute in that little hat – turns out he’s as corrupt as the usual U.S. puppet (rather than just totally inept.)

Turns out Our Man Karzai got less than 50% of the vote — oops!