Fired UN Official Peter Galbraith Accuses the United Nations of Helping Cover Up Electoral Fraud Committed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Last week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the top American diplomat at the United Nations in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith. Galbraith had accused his boss at the UN mission in Afghanistan, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, of helping cover up electoral fraud and being biased in favor of Hamid Karzai. Galbraith has described the Afghan election as a “foreseeable train wreck” and says the election has “handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.”

But the UN’s legitimacy in Afghanistan has taken a serious beating. Last week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the top American diplomat at the UN shortly after the New York Times published excerpts of a scathing letter from Galbraith to Ban Ki-moon. Galbraith accused his boss at the UN mission in Afghanistan, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, of helping cover up electoral fraud and being biased in favor of Hamid Karzai.

Eide has denied the accusations, and the United Nations maintains that Galbraith was fired over a, quote, “personality clash” with Eide. Speaking to the UN Security Council last week, Eide admitted to some fraud but added that the expected audit would ultimately lead to a, quote, “credible and legitimate result.”

       KAI EIDE: Yes, there has been fraud. There has been irregularities committed by election officials, by candidates and their supporters, as well as government officials. When the final result has been certified, it must be respected by candidates and their supporters. What most Afghans, by far, now want is to see the process come to an end, a government formed, and their lives improved.

ANJALI KAMAT: The leading opposition candidate in Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah, alleges massive fraud and expressed his concern over Galbraith’s removal for speaking out against the fraud.

       ABDULLAH ABDULLAH: If the firing of Mr. Galbraith was on some technical issues, I’ll no say in it. If the issue was based on the fact that he was for vigorous look into the issue of fraud, he was—in that case, I will say that he has been talking on behalf of the people of Afghanistan, because it’s, first and foremost, in our interest to have a vigorous look into the issue of fraud, vigorous approach, and to preserve the credibility of the process.

AMY GOODMAN: In an op-ed published in the Washington Post Sunday, Peter Galbraith describes the Afghan elections as a, quote, “foreseeable train wreck” and says Kai Eide ordered him not to pursue the issue of fraud, fraud that he says has, quote, “handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.”

We go now to Bergen, Norway, and we’re joined by Ambassador Peter Galbraith there.

Peter Galbraith, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you explain why you believe you were fired?

PETER GALBRAITH: Well, I was fired because of a—as a result of a longstanding disagreement with Kai Eide, the head of the mission, over—not over how to handle electoral fraud, but over whether the UN should handle it.

Let me first correct a couple of things in your introduction. My recall—that’s the diplomatic term for it—took place before, or the decision to do it took place before I wrote the letter to Ban Ki-moon. So the letter was not what triggered the recall. And it appeared—it was leaked by someone to the New York Times only after my recall had been announced. So it really was—it was not the factor. But having learned that I was going to be recalled, I wanted the Secretary-General to understand very clearly what the issues were. And as I said at the beginning of that letter, I was—I thought it was astonishing that the United Nations should dismiss the official who was responsible for the elections because he was concerned about fraud in the elections.

Now, I outlined, both in the letter and in the piece I wrote yesterday for the Washington Post outlook section, what exactly the issues that I was concerned about. First, the fraud was—it wasn’t entirely preventable, but it could have been very substantially reduced. And this is important, because these elections have been a disaster for Afghanistan, they’ve been a disaster for the international effort. If Karzai emerges as president at the end of this process, his credibility is going to be much reduced for the large part of the country. It clearly has undermined international support for the Afghan effort. When I’m home in Vermont, people are saying, “Well, what are we fighting for in Afghanistan?” Before, you could answer, “Well, September 11th.” Now people say we’re fighting to hold a corrupt government that has done this sort of thing in power. So, the elections—the issue of fraud is hugely important.

As I said, it was—it could have been significantly prevented. In July, I was in charge, as Kai Eide, the head of the mission, was away, as he often was, and I was working with the Election Commission and the Afghan ministers of defense and interior to reduce the number of polling centers that were going to be on the rolls on election day. And that’s because I became aware that if there were about 1,500 polling centers out of 7,000 that were located in areas that the Taliban controlled or were so insecure that they in fact—nobody from the security services or the Election Commission had ever visited those places. These polling centers were never going to open. But as long as they remained on the rolls, they provided an excellent opportunity for fraud, because the people perpetrating the fraud, which, as it turned out, included the Election Commission’s staff, would be able to take the materials, report that they had been open, and then report returns. And, of course, no observer, no candidate agent and no voter could go to the location to see whether in fact the center had opened. So there were about 1,500 ghost polling centers. I was making progress, with support from the US, the UK, European Union, NATO. But, of course, the Afghan ministers complained about what I was doing to the head of the mission. He sided with them, ordered me not to do anything further. So that would have been the best opportunity to address the issue of fraud.

After it took place, the UN had collected—we had run a twenty-four-hour election control center through the election period and the initial counting. We collected hundreds of incidents of fraud. And more importantly, we collected information, extensive information, on turnout. And what our information on turnout showed was that in key provinces in southern Afghanistan, there was a tiny turnout, less than ten percent in a number of cases, and yet a large number of votes recorded. That was very good evidence of fraud. We wanted to provide this information to the Election Complaints Commission. This is the UN-backed watchdog that, under Afghan law, is supposed to investigate complaints against the election process. Kai Eide, the head of the mission, said no. He didn’t want this information shared at all.

And finally, there was a third incident, but there were many others, but these were the most important. In September, in early September, I was again in charge, and the Independent Election Commission, which actually was not an independent commission—it was appointed by Karzai and very much operated on his behalf through this election process—I got word that they were planning to abandon published safeguards, their own published safeguards, to exclude fraudulent ballots from the final tally. And I got in touch with them, and I said that we would object to that. This produced—within two hours, the president of the country called in the American ambassador to protest it. I was called in by the foreign minister. This was deemed to be improper foreign interference. And instead of backing me up, Kai Eide sided with Karzai.

And the result was where we are now. There is an electoral crisis in Afghanistan, and the ability of the United Nations to deal with it is much diminished. You heard the presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who’s the second place contender, but what was the message to him and to the opposition when the United Nations dismisses the individual who was responsible for supporting these elections because of concern over fraud? How could he have confidence in the role of the UN as an impartial arbiter at this stage?