KABUL: The 10 weeks of chaos that dogged Afghanistan’s tumultuous election were accompanied by a string of diplomatic blunders that ended with the scrapping of a run-off imposed on President Hamid Karzai.

The decision to announce that November 7’s run-off would not take place came after UN chief Ban Ki-moon flew to Kabul to persuade the country’s nominally independent election commission not to stage a one-horse race.

Yet less than two weeks earlier, the United Nations was at the forefront of international arm-twisting designed to force Karzai into a second round despite his protestations that he won fair and square the first time.

‘It’s been the biggest mistake by the international community in the last eight years,’ said Nasrullah Stanikzai, an analyst at Kabul University.

‘There’s been no coordination between the United States and the Europeans... And they don’t have good coordination with the Afghan government.’ Karzai was catapulted to power in late 2001 after US-led coalition forces toppled the Taliban.

But warm relations between Washington and Kabul have steadily declined, with Karzai humiliated when he was reluctantly forced to announce his participation in the run-off, flanked by US Senator John Kerry and UN envoy Kai Eide.

But while diplomats managed to persuade Karzai to stand in a run-off, praising his ‘statesmanship,’ they failed to nail down the participation of Abdullah Abdullah, runner-up in the first round who quit the contest on Sunday.

There had been expectations that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would fly to Afghanistan over the weekend after a trip to neighbouring Pakistan.

But Clinton never made it to Kabul and was in Abu Dhabi by the time Abdullah’s camp was making it clear that their man would not take part.

Asked whether the outcome of a run-off with only one candidate would result in a legitimate government, Clinton appeared unfazed by such as prospect, saying such situations were ‘not unprecedented’ and occur in the United States.

But after the election commission decided to scrap the poll, the US embassy in Kabul said it welcomed the cancellation.

A European diplomat said the pressure on Karzai to compete in the second round was prompted by a desire to make him acknowledge the large-scale fraud that dogged the first round.

‘What was important was to make Karzai admit he had not won in the first round,’ said the diplomat.

However, Karzai was then able to keep the electoral institutions, which oversaw the rigging in August, intact for the second round — prompting Abdullah to conclude the contest would again be tilted against him.

Peter Galbraith, Eide’s deputy until a major fallout after the first round, says it was clear that fraud would have played ‘as large a part in the presidential runoff voting as it did in the original August balloting.’

‘Eide is the victim of his past passivity,’ he wrote in the LA Times.

Haroun Mir, head of Afghanistan’s Centre for Research and Policy Studies, said the UN made a series of mistakes and was guilty of ‘a lack of management and incompetence,’ with Eide failing to tackle concerns about vote-rigging.

‘Eide wanted to cover up to show the process was successful,’ he told AFP.

The sight of Karzai announcing the run-off alongside Kerry and Eide also reinforced the perception in Afghanistan that the president was taking his orders from foreign powers.

Faheem Dashty, editor of The Kabul Weekly, said such an overt display of influence was unfortunate.

‘For a young democracy such as ours, there is a need sometimes for pressure,’ he told AFP.

‘But when the pressure is so public and open, this gives a very negative impression to the people of Afghanistan that we are not independent,’ he said.

Mir said, however, that the United States knew exactly what they were doing by putting Karzai in his place as it wanted him weakened.

‘Now I think Karzai is very weak and he is not able to fight back when there is pressure on him,’ said Mir. ‘I think this is what the US wanted from the beginning.’— AFP