The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

It is a mark of how often the law is ignored in Afghanistan that President Hamid Karzai earned gushing international plaudits this afternoon for simply following the rules he threatened to boycott.

In conceding to a second round of voting he was merely admitting what the rest of the world has know for weeks – that more than a million votes in the August 20 election were faked, and that after seven years in charge he couldn’t muster enough support to win 50 per cent of the vote.

And that is hardly surprising, in a country that has seen an insurgency spiral out of control, while the government wastes few opportunities to steal from its people in what little territory they control. Trying to steal the election was perhaps just the latest example.

But no one mentioned the election fraud today. Instead the US senator, John Kerry, praised the President for showing genuine leadership and statesmanship by “moving the situation forward and embracing the constitution and the rule of law”. (Read more)