peacefare.net

Wait and see

This morning’s New York Times offers polls that suggest the able Ashraf Ghani and opposition leader Abdullah (aka Abdullah Abdullah, but only because Westerners expect two names even if Afghans sometimes have only one) are running strong in the presidential race, which culminates in an April 5 election.  One of the polls also suggests that President Karzai’s much-anticipated endorsement of one of the candidates won’t have much impact, if it occurs.  While Ghani is a sharp critic of foreign aid to Afghanistan and Abdullah has opposed Karzai since losing to him in 2009, Washington would certainly prefer either of them to several of the more dubious protagonists.  They both rank as more sensible than the increasingly irascible Karzai.

By contrast, the Washington Post reports on a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that predicts

Afghanistan would likely descend into chaos quickly if Washington and Kabul don’t sign a security pact that would keep an international military contingent there beyond 2014 — a precondition for the delivery of billions of dollars in aid that the United States and its allies have pledged to spend in Afghanistan over the coming years. Read more