Kai Eide - Firing of Peter Galbraith

Firing of Peter Galbraith

Further information: Peter Galbraith#United Nations Position

U.N. deputy special representative in Afghanistan Peter Galbraith, a subordinate of Eide, was fired by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon after he urged UNAMA to take actions to prevent fraud in the 2009 Afghanistan presidential elections and to take action, consistent with its mandate to support "free, fair and transparent" elections once the fraud took place. After being informed of his dismissal, Galbraith wrote Ban ki-Moon a letter accusing Eide of helping cover up electoral fraud and being biased in favor of Hamid Karzai.

On 11 December 2009 Kai Eide, announced that he would step down from his post in March. He said he was not resigning but simply fulfilling a commitment he made to his family in March 2008 to spend only two years in Kabul. de Mistura, a Swedish-Italian diplomat who earlier headed the U.N. mission in Baghdad,was appointed as his successor.

Eide proposed the appointment of a senior civilian representative to coordinate relief efforts by the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. He also urged the U.N. leadership to allow his successor to hire more staff from the United States and other Western countries, saying it would increase their confidence that their money is being properly spent.

According to Peter Galbraith, in an interview with The Cable, the internet news service of Foreign Policy, Kai Eide did not resign voluntarily as he claimed, but was forcibly removed. "Kai's problem was that he valued his relationship with Karzai above all else, including having honest elections" Galbraith said. "He was so discredited by the way he handed the election and the fallout from engineering my ouster. He cut his own throat."

Galbraith predicted that Eide would be replaced by Swedish diplomat De Mistura.

Shortly after this comment by Galbraith, Kai Eide accused Galbraith of proposing to enlist the White House in a plan to force the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to resign, and to install a more Western-friendly figure as president of Afghanistan. Then a new government would be installed led by the former finance minister Ashraf Ghani, or by the former interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali. Galbraith expained that he was trying to address a constitutional crisis precipiated by Karzai's maneuvering to stay in office a full year beyond the end of his term. In September 2009, the Karzai-appointed Independent Election Commission (IEC) voted 6 to 1 to override its own rules and include enough obviously fraudulent Karzai ballots so as to put Karzai above the 50% needed to avoid a run-off. The IEC then explained that, even if the Electoral Complaints Commission (a separate independently appointed body empowered to investigate electoral irregularities) threw out enough of these fraudulent ballots so as require a run-off (as, in fact, it did), it was not technically possible to have a run off before May 2010. Since Karzai's term had ended on 21 May 2009, he would illegally be in office a full year after his term ended incircumstances that could provoke unrest and even civil war. Nonetheless, Eide said that he told his deputy the plan was "unconstitutional, it represented interference of the worst sort, and if pursued it would provoke not only a strong international reaction" but also civil insurrection. Eide did not address the issue of Karzai's effort to unconstitutionally extend his term. It was during this conversation that Galbraith proposed taking a leave to the United States, and Eide accepted. Galbraith denied he had pursued the plan and both Vice President Biden and Special Representative Richard Holbrooke, two close Galbraith allies, confirmed that the matter was never raised with them.