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November 2, 2009 (LPAC)—The Afghanistan trap that the British have been working to lure the Obama Administration into, got stickier with the announcement by Abdullah Abdullah, the former Afghan foreign minister, who is President Hamid Karzai's chief rival, that he would not participate in the Nov. 7 runoff election. According to the Associated Press, Abdullah said he made his decision after Karzai turned down his demand for changes to the Independent Electoral Commission and other measures that would prevent massive fraud, such as occurred in the first-round election on Aug. 20. Abdullah stopped short, however, of calling for an electoral boycott. This would seem to call into question the legitimacy of the election and the legitimacy of the government to follow, but the top UN official in Kabul, Kai Eide, said in a statement that the next step is to "bring the electoral process to a conclusion in a legal and timely manner." And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that "It is now a matter for the Afghan authorities to decide on a way ahead that brings this electoral process to a conclusion in line with the Afghan constitution."

Meanwhile, Peter Galbraith, who was sacked, last month, as deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan after he alleged massive vote fraud in the Aug. 20 election, says that Karzai is going to run the same massive fraud that he did before. In remarks to the London Times before Abdullah announced his decision, Galbraith said, "It has become clear that Karzai has no intention of instituting reforms. He simply intends to repeat the same fraud." All of this "makes the Afghan war close to unwinnable," he said.