Former president Hamid Karzai says Saturday's presidential election threatens Afghanistan's best chance of making peace with the Taliban and ending 18 years of war.
Karzai, still one of the most important political figures in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that the vote could destabilize the country. Previous elections in Afghanistan were plagued by violence and fraud allegations.
Karzai has pressed for a resumption of U.S-Taliban talks, which collapsed earlier this month after President Donald Trump said a deal that seemed imminent was "dead."
Karzai believes the best path forward is a resumption of peace talks if not between the US and Taliban, then among Afghans, including the Taliban. He says Afghans should plot their own course out of war.
Karzai says holding elections now "is like asking a heart patient to run a marathon." Holding the elections is a gamble, with some warning that a messy vote marred by violence and fraud allegations could trigger a political crisis and further disrupt chances of getting back to talks on peace.
Proponents of holding the vote argue that only elections can bestow the needed legitimacy on a new government to be able to claim a place at the negotiating table. During months of peace talks over the past year, the Taliban refused to negotiate with the outgoing government, which was cobbled together by Washington after 2014 presidential polls were mired in massive fraud and dismissed by the militant group as a US puppet.
Previous elections were deeply flawed. In the run-up to Saturday's vote, candidates have alleged that President Ashraf Ghani, a front-runner, is abusing his power by using the resources of government to help his election campaign.
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