Afghanistan's troubled presidential election was rocked by more turmoil today as both candidates vying to succeed Hamed Karzai pulled their observers out of a ballot audit meant to determine the winner of a June runoff.
First, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, pulled his monitors from the audit to protest the process that his team claims is fraught with fraud.
Then, the United Nations, which is helping supervise the US-brokered audit, asked the other candidate, former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, to also pull out his observers in the interest of fairness.
The UN team said the audit then proceeded without both candidates' teams.
It was not immediately clear if the pullout meant the two candidates would reject the audit results and thereby also the final result of the election. That could have dangerous repercussions in a country still struggling to overcome ethnic and religious divides and battling a resurgent Taliban insurgency.
The US brokered the audit of the eight million ballots from the presidential runoff as a way to end what had been a debilitating impasse over election results. But the audit itself has proceeded in fits and starts this summer as both sides argued over every ballot.
Abdullah came in first during the first round of voting in April but preliminary results from the June runoff showed Ahmadzai in the lead. That sparked accusations of rampant fraud from the Abdullah camp.
Ahmadzai's camp also alleged voting irregularities and both sides agreed to the audit after a visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in July.
It was decided the process would be led by the UN and Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, and observed by monitors from each candidate's campaign team.
Yesterday, Abdullah's camp threatened to boycott the audit if their concerns over fraud were not addressed. Then today, it followed through on the threat and pulled observers from the recount, which is being carried out in warehouses on the edge of the capital, Kabul.
"It is full of fraud," said a spokesman for Abdullah, Fazel Sancharaki, after the pullout. "Nobody is paying attention to our demands.
