Amidst fraud complaints Afghanistan elections lose legitimacy

As the US military evaluates its strategy against the Taliban, Afghanistan awaits the results of the August 20th presidential elections.   

The latest count from Afghanistan election commission has President Hamid Karzai ahead with 46 percent of the vote and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah running second with 31 percent.  The electoral commission says that one-third of the votes has been counted.

The final vote count is not expected to be announced for another two weeks, after complaints of vote rigging and intimidation have been investigated. Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission is currently dealing with more than 2,000 complaints; it says that some 600 of these complaints are serious enough to change the outcome of the election.

Political analysts say these allegations of vote rigging could create serious problems for President Karzai and for US forces in Afghanistan.  FSRN spoke to author and media critic Norman Solomon. Solomon is the founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy and he´s currently in Kabul where he´s been reporting on Afghanistan´s post-election crisis.