Peter Gailbraith Unplugged: Former U.N deputy tells the full story of Afghan presidential elections

Whether it's the preposterous scale of the voter fraud or the very public letter to U.N Secretary General Moon, the scandal surrounding the August 20th presidential elections may have marked the turning point in the War in Afghanistan. The U.S has now officially aligned itself with a leader whose corruption knows no bounds, and the international organization sent to impartially oversee Afghan elections has just been found in bed with him.

The whistleblower, the U.N's former #2 man in Afghanistan, Peter Gailbraith, has penned an article in Time Magazine, for the first providing his full version of the story. The title, How the Afghanistan Presidential Election Was Rigged is a good indicator of what he thinks went down.

I had been pretty flabbergasted at the sheer number of false votes Karzai had received, and assumed that the ballot-stuffing had something to do with running up numbers in Karzai-friendly locations. Gailbraith explains how the fraud was actually rather counter-intuitive:

In July, I learned that there were 1,500 polling centers (out of a total of 7,000) sited in places either controlled by the Taliban or so insecure that no one from the IEC, the Afghan army or the Afghan police had ever visited. It was obvious that these polling centers would never open on election day. They were also perfect vehicles for fraud. Since no observer, campaign representative or voter could go to the locations, it would be easy for the election staff — on its own or in collaboration with local officials — to say voting had taken place and then report a tally.

The article is a dazzling indictment of the U.N, which is not exactly popular in American political circles to begin with. Every time someone insists on the need to keep fighting, let's remember that though we fight against some evil dudes, we do it on behalf of corrupt ones too.