When electoral fraud is met by congratulations

By Stephen Gowans

It has become standard practice in many parts of the world for opposition candidates to decry as fraudulent election results that favor the incumbent. Charges of vote fraud are routinely levelled against governing parties that win elections contested by opposition parties backed by Western governments. 

For example, after (and even before) Zimbabwe’s last set of elections, the governing Zanu-PF party was accused of vote fraud, but the evidence for the opposition’s claim was gathered by organizations funded by the United States, a major backer of the opposition movement. Washington makes no secret of its desire to drive the incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, from power, by hook or crook, not because he’s corrupt, despotic or a human rights abuser, as Washington alleges, but because he has done what all foreign leaders back to Lenin have done who have fallen astray of Washington – failed to honor contracts and safeguard private property. (That’s not to say Mugabe and Lenin are alike in any way other than having committed what in Washington’s view is the supreme crime.) A cooked exit poll is not beyond the motivations and capabilities of US and British-backed anti-Mugabe forces, but that’s largely beside the point. Mugabe’s Zanu-PF did poorly in the election, and Mugabe, himself, failed to win a first round victory in the presidential election. If Zanu-PF rigged the vote, it blundered badly.

Similarly, the outcome of the last Iranian presidential election, which saw the return to power of the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was denounced by the opposition as a fraud. The charge was taken up by Western politicians, journalists and a substantial fraction of the Western left, despite the opposition’s failure to produce a single jot of credible evidence that the election was stolen. Worse, the sole methodologically sound public opinion poll taken prior to the election – funded by the international arm of the Republican Party, the IRI – predicted that Ahmadinejad would win by a wide margin – wider, it turns out, than the margin he actually did win by. This was a case of widespread distaste for Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Islamic Revolution leading to the collective dulling of critical faculties. To be sure, if one hated Ahmadinejad and fundamentalist Islam (or fundamentalist religion, period), witnessing Iranians embrace secular Western enlightenment values was bracing indeed. The only problem was there was no evidence it actually happened.

We might expect, then, that charges of vote fraud will be routinely levelled against governing parties that win elections contested by opposition parties backed by Western governments, and that the Western media will accept the charges uncritically. This happens regularly.

But what of cases in which the weight of evidence points to an incumbent, backed by the US government, winning an election by fraud? How might we expect Western politicians, Western media, and even the UN, to react? One would predict that they would try to cover it up, and failing that, minimize its significance. Conspicuously absent would be the indignant denunciations that attend the electoral losses of parties backed by Western governments.

In Afghanistan’s August presidential elections, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, who had initially been installed in his position by the US government, failed to win a first round victory. This we know now, largely owing to the efforts of the UN’s former number two man in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, who blew the whistle on extensive fraud perpetrated by the Karzai-appointed Independent Electoral Commission. [1] Also involved in the fraud, according to a recent New York Times report, was the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. [2]

Galbraith charged that the Karzai appointed electoral commission abandoned “its published anti-fraud policies, allowing it to include enough fraudulent votes in the final tally to put Karzai over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.” Galbraith estimated that “as many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent.” But when he “called the chief electoral officer to urge him to stick with the original guidelines, Karzai issued a formal protest accusing” Galbraith of foreign interference. Galbraith’s boss, Kai Eide “sided with Karzai”, effectively concealing the electoral fraud. [3] Eide told Galbraith that “the UN mandate was only to support the Afghan institutions in their decisions, not to tell them to hold an honest election.” [4]

At the centre of the fraud were ghost polling centres (1,500 inaccessible locations that were physically impossible to confirm the existence of), a corrupt election commission, [5] and the president’s brother. Ahmed Wali Karzai, “a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal trade” receives “regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency." He “orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots” [6] and “is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.” [7]

In other words, the UN was involved in an attempt to cover up vote fraud, while the CIA, through the president’s brother, was at least indirectly involved in perpetrating it.

Some US news analysts, dismissing the affair as of little consequence, insist the runner-up, Abdullah Abdullah, stood no chance against Karzai in a fair vote anyway. But an honest account of the initial vote “would have had Karzai at 41% and Abdullah at 34%,” [8] putting Abdullah well within striking distance of victory in a run-off election. Abdullah, however, refused to participate, arguing that there was no reason to believe the run-off would be any less corrupt than the initial vote. He has a point. While Karzai’s electoral commission was asked to eliminate “the ghost polling centres and to replace staff who committed fraud,” Karzai increased the number of centres and rehired the authors of the initial fraud. [9]

The sole concern of officials in Washington – who, when their favored candidates abroad fail to win elections, present themselves as champions of fair elections and lead the charge to have the allegedly fraudulent election overturned — has not been that the Afghan election was stolen, or that Abdullah withdrew because the prospects for a fair run-off were slim. On the contrary, with Karzai winning another term as president only because Abdullah withdrew over legitimate fears the run-off election would be unfair, the official US response has been to “congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election and look forward to working with him.” [10] Instead, Washington’s sole concern has been the exposure of electoral fraud, and its effect in undermining the legitimacy of their man in Kabul (who never had much legitimacy in the first place.)

Contrast the US reaction with the sharp Western criticism of Robert Mugabe after Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off round of Zimbabwe’s last presidential election, claiming the conditions were not conducive to a fair vote. The difference is as wide as night and day.

Where are the stern lectures, the US-government and ruling class foundation-assisted nonviolent pro-democracy activists, the blanket mass media coverage of Afghanistan’s stolen election, the denunciations of Karzai as a dictator – all which attend the defeat of US-backed opposition movements in elections where the charges of fraud have become routine and the evidence for fraud bare to non-existent?

The reaction to electoral fraud, then, depends on the answer to a single question: Does Washington back the beneficiary of the alleged fraud or not? Or more fundamentally, does the beneficiary promote the sanctity of contracts, private property, free trade, free enterprise and free markets? If the answer is no, the reaction will be one of indignation and outrage, even where the evidence of fraud is thin to absent. If the answer is yes, the reaction will be muted, even where the evidence of fraud is voluminous and incontrovertible. Between Zimbabwe and Iran on the one hand, and Afghanistan on the other, official outrage, and therefore the outrage of the media, and therefore the outrage of the people, including a substantial part of the left, has been inversely proportional to the weight of evidence that fraud has actually occurred.

Washington cares not one whit about democracy — only about the interests of the corporations, investors and banks that dominate its policy-making. If “democracy” comports to those interests, well and good. If not, there are no phoney allegations of electoral fraud Washington is not prepared to take a hand in propagating, and no genuine electoral fraud it is unwilling to live with.

1. Peter W. Galbraith, “What I saw at the Afghan election,” The Washington Post, October 4, 2009.

2. Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, “Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on C.I.A payroll,” The New York Times, October 28, 2009.

3. Galbraith, October 4.

4. Peter Galbraith, “Karzai was hellbent on victory. Afghans will pay the price,” The Guardian (UK), November 2, 2009.

5. Ibid.

6. Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen, October 28.

7. Ibid.

8. Galbraith, November 2.

9. Ibid.

10. Statement of U.S. Embassy in Kabul, reported in Michael Muskal, “U.S. congratulates Afghan President Karzai on another term in office,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2009.

U.S. imperialism: Hidden in plain sight

By Stephen Gowans

The dominant U.S. approach to exercising influence over people in foreign countries is to operate through locals who are committed to U.S. imperialist values or fiercely oppose U.S. enemies. Locals, whether rulers, politicians, military officers, journalists, scholars or activists, are provided with opportunities, funding, training, equipment and support in exchange for assuming leadership roles on behalf of U.S. interests or against U.S. targets. The sine qua non of the paradigm is the appearance of independence. While locals may express admiration and support for U.S. positions, their own pro-U.S. stances, or opposition to U.S. enemies, are to be understood to have been arrived at independently. And, in many, if not most, cases, this is true. Locals who assume leadership roles on behalf of U.S. interests are often educated or trained in the United States, where they have absorbed pro-imperialist values. At the same time, the ubiquitous U.S. mass media convey pro-imperialist values to locals who haven’t been educated in the imperial nerve center. And some may, for their own (often class) reasons, be passionate opponents of individuals, groups or movements the United States government would like to eliminate. What matters is not how pro-U.S. positions, or anti-U.S.-enemy passions, are arrived at, only that some locals have them and that U.S. funding and support provide them with a platform to influence the political, military and informational landscape of their home country.

A recent example of how this paradigm operates is provided in an August 16, 2009 New York Times article by Thom Shanker (“U.S. turns to radio stations and cellphones to counter Taliban’s propaganda.”)

Shanker quotes Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. proconsul in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who acknowledges that the United States is losing the information war to the Taliban. In this, Holbrooke reminds us that war is multi-faceted, comprising not only military action, but other elements, as well. Warfare may be waged concurrently with or independently of military action: through economic means (trade sanctions, blockades and financial isolation); through non-violent warfare (destabilization); through sabotage; through cyber attacks; and through what concerns Holbrooke, information. Information warfare is “variously named public affairs, public diplomacy, strategic communications and information operations.” In plain language, it’s propaganda, a term invariably applied to the other side’s public affairs, public diplomacy, strategic communications and information operations, but propaganda all the same.

U.S. officials say they’re losing the information war because their “efforts to describe American policy and showcase American values are themselves viewed as propaganda.” The other reasons, unacknowledged by Holbrooke, are that the U.S. military has created considerable hardship, fear, and bloodshed in its efforts to quell opposition to its attempted conquest of Afghanistan and because, as the New York Times reported on July 28, 2009, the Taliban has bolstered its popularity by pursuing “a strategy intended to foment a class struggle,” rewarding “landless peasants with profits of the crops of the landlords,” the Taliban has ousted. To counter the Taliban’s growing popularity, Washington plans to “amplify the (anti-Taliban) voices of Afghans speaking to Afghans, and Pakistanis speaking to Pakistanis” by spending up to $150 million per year to “step up the training of local journalists and help produce audio and video programming, as well as pamphlets, posters, and CDs denigrating militants and their message.” By operating through locals, Washington hopes to conceal the “‘Made in the U.S.A.’ stamped on the programming.”

There’s little new here. For decades the C.I.A amplified the voices of citizens talking to citizens by funding anyone who had anything negative to say about the Soviet Union and Communism. As Frances Stonor Saunders revealed in her book The Cultural Cold War, anti-Communist leftists were particularly favored with C.I.A lucre, often channelled through philanthropic foundations – foundations parts of the Western left continue to receive funding from today. Just as Shanker reports that U.S. officials say they’ll amplify the voices of Pakistanis and Afghans who “denigrate the enemy”, so too did the C.I.A amplify the voices of Westerners who denigrated the Soviet Union and Communism. Since social democrats, Trotskyites and anarchists were already fiercely opposed to the Soviet Union, and being leftists could be presented as credible critics of Soviet Communism, they received the bulk of covert funding from the U.S. state, funding whose origins many were unaware of or chose to turn a blind eye to. Their mission: denigrate the U.S.S.R and Communism. This they were already doing, but C.I.A funding allowed them to do it more visibly, to a wider audience, and therefore more effectively. By doing so they justified U.S. engagement in the Cold War and, acting knowingly or unwittingly as U.S. agents, used Uncle Sam’s money to denigrate a shared enemy. Today, the common understanding of the Soviet Union and Communism carries over from the C.I.A amplifying the voices of Communism’s, the U.S.S.R’s, and Stalin’s political enemies. The amplification of categorically critical voices so thoroughly polluted scholarly histories of the U.S.S.R that historians have had to discard what was produced in the Cold War period and start afresh. It’s time too that Western leftists did the same. The fear of British historian E.H. Carr — that only the worst aspects of the Soviet experiment with socialism would be remembered, while the astonishing achievements would be forgotten – has been realized, thanks in no small part to the C.I.A and the anti-Communist leftists whose voices it amplified. Advances in human progress as significant as those achieved by the Soviet Union (full employment, free health care and education through university, no inflation, gender equality, mild and shrinking income inequality, low-cost housing and transportation, worker participation in enterprise management, support for national liberation movements, industrialization of underdeveloped regions) should no longer remain concealed behind the muck of C.I.A-backed Cold War propaganda.

While the paradigm is a long-standing one, what’s different today, from when the C.I.A covertly channelled funds to voices that served Washington’s interests, is that funding is no longer provided covertly. Washington learned a lesson when C.I.A support for anti-communist, anti-socialist and anti-national liberation movements came to light. Washington’s revealed hidden hand immediately undermined the legitimacy of these movements, setting back U.S. efforts to counter opposition to the unchecked spread of U.S. financial, military and corporate domination. From that point, greater openness was injected into funding individuals, groups and movements working against U.S. enemies. Rather than concealing Washington’s hand, Washington’s objectives would be concealed behind a rhetorical screen. Funding would be targeted at democracy promotion, international development, and public diplomacy – carried out openly, so that no one could say the hidden hand of U.S. imperialism was involved (though the overt hand of U.S. imperialism certainly was.) By dressing up U.S. imperialism in clothing that appealed to the sartorial preferences of the non-Communist left, the overt hand of U.S. imperialism was concealed behind honeyed phrases. Social democrats didn’t see imperialism; they saw humanitarian intervention, democracy promotion and the responsibility to protect vulnerable populations. Anarchists and Trotskyites didn’t see U.S. efforts to dominate other countries on Wall Street’s behalf; they saw the fight against tyrants, dictators and Stalinists.

And so it is that U.S. imperialism is concealed in plain sight. Washington’s funding of fifth columns, quislings, phoney ‘independent’ journalists and overthrow movements may be on the public record, but few know it, and even fewer are prepared to spend the time to make it widely known. Those who do are dismissed by social democrats, Trotskyites and anarchists – unwilling to rock the boat of U.S. imperialism under its humanitarian, anti-despot guise – as revealing nothing of significance. The money, training, equipment and support that flow in cataracts from the hands of Western governments, wealthy financiers and corporate foundations make no difference, they counter weakly. In this milieu, U.S. officials are now able to openly talk in the pages of the New York Times about how they plan to win the information war against the Taliban by enlisting locals as their mouthpieces – and openly acknowledge they are doing so to conceal the “Made in the U.S.A” stamped on the programming – without fear the exercise will be seen as illegitimate.

An Acceptable Dictator for Afghanistan?

Viceroy, Counsel-General, or CEO. Whatever he’s called, it appears that Afghan-born US foreign policy establishment figure Zalmay Khalilzad is being sized up for a new role: An “acceptable” dictator for Afghanistan.

By Stephen Gowans

From close to the end of the 19th century for twenty-five years, the real ruler of Egypt was Sir Evelyn Baring of the British banking establishment, Baring Brothers. Sir Evelyn ran Egypt’s affairs as Counsel-General, following the principle that the interests of British bondholders and those of the Egyptian people were identical. (1)

Was it Sir Evelyn that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had in mind when he prodded Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai to talk to the former US ambassador to occupied Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, about becoming the “chief executive officer” (that is, Counsel-General) of Afghanistan?

Or does Khalilzad, the Afghan-born member of the US foreign policy establishment, fit the bill as the “acceptable” dictator Washington and London have searched for, to strengthen their precarious hold over Afghanistan?

In a diplomatic cable leaked last autumn, then British ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, warned that,

“The current situation (in Afghanistan) is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust. The presence of the coalition, in particular, its military presence, is part of the problem, not part of its solution. Foreign forces are the lifeline of a regime that would rapidly collapse without them. As such, they slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis.” (2)

The only “realistic” path, reasoned the British ambassador, is for Afghanistan to be “governed by an acceptable dictator.”

A half year later, The New York Times (3) revealed that Khalilzad — who in Afghanistan had been “involved to a degree that is virtually unheard of for an ambassador” –- is being considered for a job that he and Karzai describe “as the chief executive officer of Afghanistan.” (4)

Washington denies ownership of the idea, but all the same, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative to the region, have signed off on it.

Washington is concerned “that any belief that the West was behind the plan would harm its chances inside Afghanistan,” which means, even if US officials are prodding Karzai to take on Khalilzad as CEO, they’re not going to admit it. This is to be seen as an idea Karzai had himself, possibly implanted by Brown, but in no way bearing a stamp marked Made in the USA.

Apart from his duties as ambassador to occupied Afghanistan, Khalilzad also served as US ambassador to occupied Iraq and the UN.

He is said to have considered challenging Karzai – who has increasingly fallen out of favor with his imperial masters in Washington — for the presidency in elections scheduled in August, but missed the May 8 deadline for filing and didn’t want to relinquish his US citizenship.

As an assistant professor at Columbia University, Khalilzad worked with Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the Carter administration policy of backing the Islamic resistance to the reforms introduced by the pro-Soviet revolutionary government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Brzezinski sought to draw the Soviet Union into (as he put it) its own Vietnam, by backing the reaction to the Afghan Revolution. The outcome was an end to a project of advancing Afghan literacy, education and women’s and economic rights, and the plunging of the country back into the darkness of warlordism and feudal backwardness.

Khalilzad later worked at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank which brings together CEOs, scholars, and government and military officials in discussion groups to formulate policy to reflect the interests of the corporations and hereditary capitalist families that provide its funding and furnish its directors. CFR policy papers are then submitted to the US State Department, to be turned into policy by the former CFR personnel who are routinely placed in senior State Department positions.

There is a continual migration of personnel between the CFR and the State Department, and Khalilzad, no less than other fixtures of the US foreign policy establishment, moved easily between the two organizations. He followed up his stint at the CFR by moving to the State Department, where he worked with Paul Wolfowitz, who would later become architect of the US war of conquest on Iraq, and acted as an advisor on US support for the feudal and religious reaction in Afghanistan.

His State Department duty was followed by a job at the RAND Corporation, a research organization set up by the US Air Force in 1948, to formulate policy on national security. There, Khalilzad founded its Center for Middle Eastern Studies and its journal Strategic Appraisal.

While at Rand, the future ambassador to Afghanistan acted as a liaison between UNOCAL (now Chevron), which was looking to build a pipeline through Afghanistan, and the Taliban, which, at the time, formed the government. Soon after, Khalilzad joined Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and other neo-conservatives in the Project for a New American Century, a think thank that promotes an overt military imperialism under the rubric of “promoting American global leadership.”

As ambassador to occupied Afghanistan, Khalilzad was accused of scheming behind the scenes to favor Karzai –- Washington’s favored candidate – over other candidates in presidential elections. Khalilzad’s influence as ambassador was so strong, that Afghans nicknamed him ‘the Viceroy,” likening him (accurately) to a colonial governor. (5)

With Afghans strongly opposed to US domination, their opposition expressed in armed resistance and growing anger over civilian deaths caused by US military operations, Washington is trying to pull a veil over the influence it wields in the country. As former British ambassador Cowper-Coles warned, the West needs an acceptable dictator, someone who can execute US foreign policy goals from within the country, while at the same time claiming independence from the US government.

Khalilzad, as a private citizen with no current formal connection to the US government, offers Washington the prospect of plausible deniability that it is running the show in Afghanistan. If Khalilzad steps in as CEO, Washington can claim that day-to-day decisions are being made by a private citizen with no formal ties to the US government.

Even if Washington isn’t orchestrating Khalilzad’s consideration as CEO, we can be sure, given his background, that his administration of Afghanistan’s affairs would rest on the same principal Sir Evelyn Baring used to govern Egypt: that the interests of foreign bond holders and those of the natives are identical.

1. A.L. Morton, A People’s History of England, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1938.
2. The New York Times, October 4, 2008.
3. The New York Times, May 19, 2009.
4. It is the practice in some circles to refer to countries as economies. Those of us who live in a G-8 country are advised to be proud of living in a G-8 economy. The idea of a chief executive officer of a country (as separate from the president, the chief of the executive of a republic) takes this idea one step further. A country now becomes, neither country nor economy, but a business.
5. The Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2004.