Sarah Chayes Comments on Election Results

Sarah Chayes, a long-term observer (and resident) of Afghanistan, has posted her opinion on the results of the Afghan election at the LA Times. She believes that despite the huge turnout for the April 5th and June 14th elections the Afghan people were short-changed by Karzai's corrupt election mechanisms and the bargaining for the sharing of power between Ghani and Abdullah. Her opinion is that Afghanistan will not see a significant increase in good governance but just more corrupt officials taking their turn at the spoils. Read her Op-Ed in "New Afghan government; same old problems", Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2014. Chayes is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment and a contributing writer. She reported from and later lived in Afghanistan for most of the past decade and also served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Photo by U.S. Navy Captain Debbie Trader-Miller, 2007).