More in follow-up to Chuck Spinney: An Aghan’s Angst Over Corruption…
A fundamental understanding of the Pashtun would make evident the problem with election rigging in Afghanistan. As a tribal group, nobody is elected to serve as a leader. Thus, voting, regardless what the West thinks, is not something that most Pashtuns care about or partake in. Thus, Karzai knew he had to rig the elections to win. The Hazara understand politics and thus have energized their ethnic grouping to participate as government bureaucrats and advance through educational means (there are more and more private Hazara private schools coming into existence than any other grouping, to include government sponsored). This was the crux of the problem with the last Parliamentary election, Hazaras won most of the seats from Ghazni Province, a primarily Pashtun area. Very few Pashtun voted but almost every Hazara did.
The past presidents of Afghanistan have all come to power through the Coup method, not through the electoral process.
And besides, the rural Afghan population could care less about a Central Government. This is more true among the Pashtun that do not look on Kabul as nothing more than a gathering point not a seat of power.
