Karzai Agrees to Run-Off: Second Afghan Vote Poses Risks for West

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By contrast, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday evening that the US administration can't afford to postpone sending additional troops to Afghanistan until the government problem has been solved. But if Obama were to go ahead and get the reinforcements moving, he would have to explain why he wants to support a corrupt government.

US General Stanley McChrystal has asked Obama for 40,000 more soldiers. The US currently accounts for 32,000 of the total 68,000 ISAF soldiers and has an additional 33,000 troops outside the ISAF structure in Afghanistan. Most Afghans no longer see them as liberators but as an occupation force -- part of the reason why Washington is looking for a new strategy to regain the confidence of the Afghan population.

West Caught in Credibility Trap

Afghanistan has long since turned into a credibility trap for the West. The country urgently needs international assistance, especially from the West. If NATO were to withdraw and leave Afghanistan to fend for itself, as a number of NATO member states keep demanding, the West will have lost once and for all -- it would be a capitulation in the face of the Taliban and a sign to the world that you can conquer NATO with suicide attacks and guerrilla tactics.

Now, Karzai's forced agreement to the run-off presents both Afghans and international election-monitoring agencies with a new dilemma: Even if the election commission insists it is preparing for a run-off and has already begun printing the material needed for the second vote, the fact is that no money has yet been set aside for the vote. Almost all of the $300 million (€200 million) it cost to hold the first election came out of the pockets of the international community, and it's unclear whether that kind of money can be amassed by early November.

Likewise, critics question whether a second vote would be any less fraud-riddled than the first. They say there is nothing to prevent a repeat of hundreds of thousands of "phantom votes" -- individuals who have registered under several identities in order to be able to cast multiple votes -- from being counted as they were in the initial election. Moreover, independent observers will not be able to travel into those remote regions that auditors believe produced the majority of falsified votes. As one Western diplomat based in Kabul put it: "The door's also wide open in early November for the same kind of cheating."

The run-off also presents international troops with a gargantuan task. Even if they play just a supporting role while letting Afghan forces provide direct security for the polling stations, ISAF's soldiers will still have to overcome enormous logistical hurdles. Indeed, after the first vote, high-ranking officers said that NATO units would not help provide security were there a second round of voting. The topic will certainly be high on the agenda as NATO defense ministers gather in Bratislava later this week.

The US secretary of state told CNN on Tuesday that Karzai would likely come out on top in the second round of voting. "I think one can conclude," Clinton said, "that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high."

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• Part 1: Second Afghan Vote Poses Risks for West
• Part 2: Door Wide Open for Cheating in November