Zekria Barakzai Deputy Chief Electoral Officer left Azizullah Ludin right chief of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission.
Kabul, Afghanistan- Well you all heard what happened yesterday, the great Karzai has been ratified another 5-year mandate to run Afghanistan into the ground even further. To paraphrase former CIA dog of war Milt Beardon, “What are we gonna bomb there? Just blow up bigger rocks into smaller rocks?” Afghanistan is already in a perpetual state of shambles. Karzai has pissed away the goodwill that followed the Bonn process and 2002 seems like eons ago. The man who once seemed like a reasonable intellectual hope for this country now seems insular and childlike pacing about in his palace ensconced in Kabul’s Green Zone like a caged elephant. I have a piece about Azizullah Ludin and the feckless Zekria Barakzai’s antics at the IEC yesterday in today’s Asia TImes. Meanwhile Kabul is gripped by a bogus swine flu scare and almost every Kalashnikov-toting security guard and traffic cop are donning cheap, green surgical masks due to an epidemic that has yet to materialize here. There is a real epidemic of suicide terror attacks and many laborers, who can’t spare a few Afghanis to but masks from street orphans wading through traffic, are being tasks to install new speed bumps all over town. Dear Kabulis: If massive blast walls installed in front of the Indian Embassy after it was attacked last year didn’t deter the recent suicide bombing there, what on god’s earth makes you think a succession of speed bumps is going to stop a determined bomber driving a lorry full of TNT?