Published: September 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/world/asia/01nations.html?hpw
KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations fired its No. 2 official in Afghanistan on Wednesday after the diplomat, Peter W. Galbraith, wrote a scathing letter accusing the head of the mission here of concealing election fraud that benefited the campaign of the incumbent president, Hamid Karzai.
Toby Talbot/Associated Press
Peter W. Galbraith in 2007.
The head of the mission, Kai Eide, angrily denied the accusation, and senior United Nations officials and diplomats said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had decided to recall Mr. Galbraith because of irreconcilable differences with Mr. Eide, who is Norwegian.
“He reaffirms his full support for his special representative, Kai Eide,” said a terse statement attributed to Mr. Ban’s spokesman. The day before, Mr. Ban also expressed confidence in Mr. Galbraith in a news conference at the United Nations headquarters.
But the letter to Mr. Ban from Mr. Galbraith, the highest-ranking American official working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, made clear the depth of the animosity between Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Eide and illustrated the profound concerns that remain among some international observers that the presidential election was hopelessly undermined by fraud.
“For a long time after the elections, Kai denied that significant fraud had taken place, even going to the extreme of ordering U.N. staff not to discuss the matter,” Mr. Galbraith wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
“And, at critical stages in the process,” he wrote, “he blocked me and other U.N.A.M.A. professional staff from taking effective action that might have limited the fraud or enabled the Afghan electoral institutions to address it more effectively.” U.N.A.M.A. refers to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
Mr. Eide and Mr. Galbraith had clashed repeatedly, United Nations officials said, and their different approaches came to a climax over the vote recount after the election on Aug. 20. Their disagreement was so severe that Mr. Galbraith proposed that he return to the United States for several weeks, and Mr. Eide accepted that suggestion. Until now, United Nations officials had been saying that Mr. Galbraith was expected to return to Kabul.
With American officials increasingly accepting the idea that Mr. Karzai will be the next president despite many well-documented irregularities in the election, Mr. Galbraith’s stance put him at odds with both the Obama administration and the United Nations.European Union officials, though, have been more vocal about the fraud.
In the letter, sent earlier this week, Mr. Galbraith suggested that Mr. Eide effectively sided with Mr. Karzai at critical junctures in the campaign, playing down credible reports of widespread fraud and preventing United Nations staff members from intervening to prevent it.
Without the fraud, Mr. Galbraith wrote, Mr. Karzai would have been forced into a runoff against the second-place finisher, Abdullah Abdullah.
Mr. Karzai won 54.6 percent of the vote, according to the preliminary tally, but Afghan national elections officials are now conducting a recount and fraud review under the oversight of a United Nations-backed agency that could reduce his vote total.
“Given our mandate to support ‘free, fair and transparent’ elections, I felt U.N.A.M.A. could not overlook the fraud without compromising our neutrality and becoming complicit in a cover-up,” Mr. Galbraith wrote.
In a telephone interview late Wednesday, Mr. Eide sharply disputed Mr. Galbraith’s assertions, saying that he never took any actions to benefit Mr. Karzai, that he strictly adhered to Afghan constitutional and electoral procedures and that, at times, he had been more aggressive in confronting Mr. Karzai than had other Western officials.
“I completely reject that I have been more favorable to one candidate than to any other,” he said.
Mr. Eide said much of his dispute with Mr. Galbraith boiled down to what was proper under Afghan law. “I cannot be a political freelancer,” he said. “I have a mandate which is serious and I do take it seriously. The disagreement was whether to respect the Constitution and respect the process in place.”
He said he had had a “close dialogue” with Mr. Karzai that had, “at times, been a very difficult dialogue.”
United Nations officials said, for example, that Mr. Eide had aggressively objected to Mr. Karzai’s decision in the spring to name Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a Tajik warlord, as his first vice president on his re-election ticket.
The campaign of Mr. Abdullah responded swiftly to Mr. Galbraith’s removal. Salih Mohammad Registani, Mr. Abdullah’s deputy campaign manager, called his dismissal “the first sign that fraud is victorious over the law.”
In his letter to Mr. Ban, Mr. Galbraith outlined a handful of episodes that alarmed him.
Fearful of “ghost” polling stations that would never open because of a lack of security — but which would report fraudulent ballots — Mr. Galbraith wrote that he had pressed the Afghan ministers of defense and interior to secure the sites or shut them down. But he said the ministers “complained about my intervention and Kai ordered me to drop the matter.”
“As it turned out, most of the electoral fraud occurred in these ghost polling centers,” he wrote. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, Gen. Zahir Azimi, said he was not aware of any complaint before the election.
In addition, Mr. Galbraith wrote that United Nations field staff members collected data showing a “minuscule” turnout in southern provinces that somehow would report large numbers of votes for Mr. Karzai. But once it became clear that the data “would be deeply disturbing to President Karzai,” he said, Mr. Eide “ordered the staff not to share the data with anyone.”
As the Afghan national election commission prepared to abandon certain safeguards, a move that would result in the inclusion of large numbers of suspect ballots for Mr. Karzai, Mr. Galbraith urged the commission to reconsider.
But Mr. Karzai and other Afghan officials protested. “Kai sided with Karzai in this matter, seemingly indifferent to the fact that these fraudulent ballots were the ones that put Karzai over 50 percent,” Mr. Galbraith wrote.
He wrote that after the elections, Mr. Eide told Mr. Karzai he was biased in his favor, and that “those who are out to get you are also out to get me.”
Mr. Galbraith said when he asked about this, Mr. Eide “explained that being biased did not mean he was supporting Karzai, and I accept that explanation.”
“But I am not sure President Karzai sees it that way.”
Several United Nations officials disputed points that Mr. Galbraith raised. They said, for example, that the United Nations could not organize the election and also act as an observer, critiquing the process. They also said it would have been wrong to close polling stations simply on the assumption that voters would not turn out. It was preferable, in their view, to have the stations open and then allow the fraud investigation process to confront any problems.
Ultimately, Mr. Ban decided the dispute between Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Eide became too public, diplomats said. “There is scope for honest differences of opinion in terms of approaching a particular issue, but we expect the team to move in a unified fashion,” said Under Secretary General Vijay K. Nambiar, Mr. Ban’s chief of cabinet.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Kabul, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations. Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul.
