Afghanistan’s political impasse
Will the Afghan runoff election resolve the country’s stalement?
Two months after Afghanistan’s disputed elections, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has finally admitted that he fell short of an outright victory in his country’s presidential elections.
The date for a runoff vote between Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, his main challenger has been set for November 7.
Fraud investigators have reportedly thrown out hundreds of thousands of ballots, bringing Karzai’s percentage of the vote under 50 per cent and triggering a new election.
But will the Afghan runoff election resolve the country’s stalement?
And beyond the election results, the main issues remain: How to fix Afghanistan? How to have a central government that has legitimacy? And what policy will the Obama administration pursue in the country?
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On Tuesday, we speak with Fariba Nawa, an Afghan-American journalist, and Christine Fair, who served as a political officer to the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul and is the author of Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations.
This episode of the Riz Khan show aired from Tuesday, October 20, 2009.