President Hamid Karzai (left) and his rival Abdullah Abdullah.

Download MP3
Afghanistan will hold a deciding round of its problem-hit presidential poll on November 7th, pitting incumbent Hamid Karzai against his rival Abdullah Abdullah. News of the run-off vote follows weeks of mounting international pressure.
It comes a day after a UN-backed panel said it had clear evidence of fraud in August’s first round, lowering Karzai’s vote share below 50%. Initial results suggested Karzai, the incumbent, had received 55% of the vote, and ex-Foreign Minister Mr Abdullah 28%. Marco Werman talks with Waheed Omer, a campaign spokesperson for Karzai.

• BBC coverage
• Matthew Bell on a possible power sharing deal in Afghanistan
• Marco Werman’s interview with Dr Abdullah

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. It is official. There will be a run-off election in Afghanistan. The country’s election commission made the announcement today — and set the date for November 7th. The commission ruled that the first round of voting in August was marred by fraud. The candidate with the most first round votes was incumbent President Hamid Karzai. He had resisted calls for a run-off against his main challenger. But today — under international pressure — he agreed. Waheed Omer is a campaign spokesperson for Karzai. He puts a positive spin on the run-off announcement.

WAHEED OMER: Despite all its problems, one thing that it’s proved was that we had a policy in place and that policy’s worked. And we finally have a result, so it’s asking for a second round. I think the next round is very important, it is an historical opportunity for the people in Afghanistan to go again to vote and to choose their next leader. We have two tough weeks ahead of us and will try to make sure that this one is a better process.

WERMAN: Well, a couple of weeks ago,   Peter Galbraith, the former deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan told us that the following had to be done to prevent the recurrence of fraud: closing every polling station where there was fraud….

WAHEED OMER: [OVERLAPPING] Yes….

WERMAN: …Dismissing the election staff in every place that there was fraud, and I’m just wondering is President Karzai willing to take these steps?

WAHEED OMER: Well, I don’t think these steps that need to be taken by the president. These are the steps that…necessarily have to be taken by the Independent Election Commission. But one thing I should warn you. For the process that we had before, we…the election commission had to train 160,000 people and deploy them all over Afghanistan. With two weeks that we have for the second round, I don’t think we can expect a major change in the process or a major change in the structure of the Independent Election Commission. We just only have enough time to hold the next elections.

WERMAN: Right. Because I mean the logistical obstacles will be enormous. I mean it took up a long time to set up the first elections.

WAHEED OMER: [OVERLAPPING] Absolutely. Absolutely. So as far as we re concerned, we’re not very sure that we will be able to hold these elections in this time, but we have assurances from the Independent Election Commission. We have assurances from our forces in the eyes of NATO and the international community. And we hope that the international community stands by us in this very important juncture. And that we have an election that is seen as legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan people and in the eyes of the world community.

WERMAN: The election though, is run by the government of Afghanistan. So isn’t it up to the government to make sure that there’s security and that the election is fair?

WAHEED OMER: This is one misunderstanding that I need to correct, here. What we call the Independent Election Commission is the constitution body, but it is independent from the government. In other words, in Afghanistan the elections are not held by the government but by an independent commission which is a constitution body not attached to the government.

WERMAN: After all the allegations of fraud, do you think Afghans will be more or less inclined to come out and vote in a second round?

WAHEED OMER: Well, I see it from the other side. If we see it from another outlook, obviously this is a country not in a perfect condition in terms of security, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of poetical stability. But we have a policy in place. That policy resulted in a run-off. And that run-off is now being taken. So what I think is important at this juncture is that the people of Afghanistan trust the process because it works. And I don’t think that was is called irregularities in the elections will have any major impact on the next round of the elections

WERMAN: That was Waheed Omer, campaign spokesperson for Afghan president Hamid Karzai. He spoke to us from Kabul.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. The return of cultural treasures to their home country can be an emotional subject. Here’s an example from China. It concerns the Old Summer Palace — a vacation home for the Qing emperor and his court in the 19th century. The palace was looted and burned by invading European forces in 1860. Its many cultural treasures now sit in museums and galleries around the world — mostly in Britain and France. And China would like them back. The World’s Alex Gallafent has the story.

ALEX GALLAFENT: According to a report in the state press, China plans to dispatch a team of experts around the world in an attempt to catalog the lost relics of the Old Summer Palace. The report says there may be one and a half million artifacts in more than 2,000 museums spread across nearly 50 countries. That’s a hint we’re not talking about any old summer home.

XUDONG ZHANG: …And at the height of the old summer palace, it was known to be, even to westerners like Victor Hugo and before him, Voltaire, all these Enlightenment European thinkers, it was known as “the garden of all gardens.”

GALLAFENT: Xudong Zhang directs the East Asian Studies department at New York University.

ZHANG: It was over the top. As a collection of artifacts, of wealth. Of cultural wealth, it was probably unrivalled in the world.

GALLAFENT: And it provoked in writers such as Victor Hugo a kind of “Oriental enchantment.” Here’s how Hugo described it — sight unseen — in a letter.

MALE VOICE:  “Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace — such was this building.”

GALLAFENT: It didn’t last. Britain and France invaded China in what was the second opium war — a war over trading rights and imperial reach. Xudong Zhang.

ZHANG: The Qing emperor just fled the capital. He was very afraid of the western military. So Beijing was more or less a defenseless city.

GALLAFENT: British and French soldiers ransacked the Old Summer Palace, collecting treasures along the way. And then, over two days, the British burned most of it to the ground. Today the palace lies in ruins. Xudong Zhang went to college right next door, at Beijing University.

ZHANG: The students in the early, mid-80s used it as a picnic ground, you know. Lovers would go there, maybe because it’s deserted. Just a bunch of ruins. Very quiet. Wild.

GALLAFENT: But Zhang says the ruins of the Old Summer Palace are a symbolic open wound — they remind Chinese of a humiliating episode in their history. James Hevia expands on that.

JAMES HEVIA: The summer palace has become a focal point in China, but it stands for this larger pattern of Western European warfare in China that runs right into the early 20^th century.

GALLAFENT: Hevia is a professor of International History at Chicago University — he’s currently in Beijing. And he says the Chinese were humiliated at both the repeated invasions of European imperial powers…

HEVIA: …And hence China’s weakness in being unable to defend itself against these encroachments.

GALLAFENT: Hevia adds that such a sense of humiliation is hardly limited to China. Many of the great western museums are filled with the spoils of war from places like Africa and Asia.

HEVIA: And I would imagine that the sense of humiliation in these other places over these things is similar to the Chinese. Although it may not be articulated in the same way, because other places are not as powerful as China is now.

GALLAFENT: Indeed, China today is resurgent. Xudong Zhang thinks that’s transforming the way people see the Old Summer Palace.

ZHANG: There’s a sense of China returning to its more comfortable historic position in history. And therefore you look at this Old Summer Palace and you begin to wonder as if for the first time, how could this thing happen to us? It’s unimaginable. Whereas in the early 80s when I was a college student in Beijing, of course it was imaginable! Because we were weak, we were just backwards…We got hit pretty hard. Everything was…it was nothing surprising. But now for the younger generation, this whole thing becomes: utterly unthinkable

GALLAFENT: Zhang says there’s another reason for renewed attention on the Old Summer Palace. He says that in the 80s and 90s, Chinese leaders were obsessed by catching up with the west. Now that China has had some success in that area, the new focus is balancing westernization with a kind of “Chineseness.” The Old Summer Palace fits the bill. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• The niqab in Islam

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: In Egypt, there’s a debate underway over whether Muslim women should cover their faces. Now one of the country’s highest religious authorities has weighed in. Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi is head of Cairo’s Al Azhar University. He recently called on a young girl to remove her niqab, which covers the face. And he suggested that he would ban female university students from wearing it. But as Aya Batrawy reports from Cairo, many women in Egypt disagree with him.

[SOUND OF A YOUNG GIRL STUDYING THE KORAN]

AYA BATRAWY: Young women studying the Koran at Al Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s premier seat of learning. Here, they study in all-female classrooms. Most are dressed modestly and wear the hijab, or headscarf. But there are also hundreds studying here who choose to wear the niqab – a full length covering from head to toe, often black, with only a small opening for the eyes. Zizi even has her eyes obscured by a black cloth and wears black gloves. She started wearing the niqab just nine months ago and says she doesn’t care if Sheikh Tantawi himself asked her to remove it, she wouldn’t.

[SOUND OF ZIZI'S VOICE]

BATRAWY: [IN ARABIC] I respect him greatly, she says, but there is something greater and that is God.

Such defiance is rare, but debate over the niqab has touched a raw nerve in Egypt, where some see its increasing popularity as part of an Islamist threat to the state. Others regard wearing it as a religious duty. So when Sheikh Tantawi recently told a middle school student to remove her face veil, he sparked an outcry. According to local news reports, the sheikh told the girl that the niqab has nothing to do with Islam and is only a custom. And he was reported to have said that he would issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against wearing it in his university. In a later effort to clarify his remarks, the sheikh appeared on a popular news program hosted by a woman who does not cover her hair.

[SOUND OF THE TALK SHOW HOST AND TANTAWI SPEAKING]

BATRAWY: He said that 99 percent of scholars agree that the niqab is not mandatory, so he is not going to follow the one percent that disagrees. And he explained why he said he urged a limited ban on the niqab.

[SOUND OF THE TALK SHOW HOST AND TANTAWI SPEAKING]

MOHAMMED TANTAWI: [In Arabic] The higher council of Al Azhar banned the niqab in a class of all females led by a female teacher because who is she hiding her face from? Does she want to say that she is right and everyone else is wrong? If that girl wants when the class is over to put on the niqab, she is free to do so.

BATRAWY: But the ban at Al Azhar has yet to take effect and the controversy continues. Al Azhar and its head have been accused of carrying out political orders. The government has also banned the niqab from the dormitories of state universities – shutting out dozens of students who refused to un-veil. Dr. Akram Shaar, an independent member of parliament who belongs to the politically banned Muslim brotherhood, says such moves are aimed at keeping Islamists out of universities – and are an attack on civil liberties.

DR. AKRAM SHAAR: [IN ARABIC] Do we ban scantily dressed women from university dorms? No. We do not agree with banning scantily dressed women nor do we agree with banning women wearing the niqab because this is a personal decision based on free will.

BATRAWY: This is merely the latest twist in a long-running back and forth over the face veil in Egypt. Until the beginning of the 20th century, upper-class women wore a sheer, silky veil over the face as a sign of their status and wealth. Later the veil was seen as a mark of oppression – removing it was an act of women’s liberation. Now many women are claiming it as a religious and civil right. Asmaa is studying at Al Azhar. All her niqab reveals are her large brown eyes.

[SOUND OF ASMAA, SPEAKING IN ARABIC]

BATRAWY: It’s not right to force a girl to do something she doesn’t want to do, she says, we will not allow anyone to step on our rights and the freedom to choose. Dozens of others currently barred from the dorms of Cairo University and elsewhere agree – even at the cost of an education. For The World, this is Aya Batrawy, Cairo.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Drinking water is an increasingly scarce commodity in much of the world. Peru’s capital, Lima, is no exception. A quarter of Lima’s eight and a half million residents lack basic water services. And climate change and population growth are only making things worse. Some Lima residents are left to rely on expensive and poor-quality water from trucks. But now, others have taken to using a simple innovation to harvest water from the coastal mists that often shroud the city. The innovation is called a fog net. The BBC’s Dan Collyns reports.

[SOUND OF RUNNING WATER]

DAN COLLYNS: They look like huge abandoned volleyball nets, facing west towards the Pacific on one of Lima’s many hillsides. They’re still an experiment, but they’re giving residents here a lifeline. Figures have appeared out of the fog and it’s Noe.

[WE HEAR DAN AND NOE GREET EACH OTHER IN SPANISH]

NOE NEIRA TOCTO: [IN SPANISH] My name is Noe Neira Tocto. I AM the head of this community. We’ve had these fog nets for two years now. Each net is eight meters by four and catches about sixty liters a day. So between the four nets we can catch about two hundred and-forty liters a day.

[SOUND OF A MACHINE, WEEDING]

COLLYNS: Olga Arce is one of the community leaders here in Bellavista. She’s doing a bit of weeding just around the fog nets and this hillside, because of the fog, is actually green, and verdant.

[SOUND OF WATER]

OLGA ARCE: [IN SPANISH] The people who live here are all migrants from the countryside outside Lima, so they know all about farming. We value our water because we use it for our vegetable gardens.

COLLYNS: A bus ride away, in the suburb of San Martin de Porres, it’s a very different picture. You can’t put fog nets here, and there’s no piped water either.

[SOUND OF A TRUCK, OF WATER]

COLLYNS: That was one of the private water trucks which distributes water through this area of San Martin de Porres where some two hundred and fifty thousand people live without running water. And they pay up to ten times more than you would pay in a middle-class neighborhood for their water. Just to fill up one barrel costs about fifty cents.

[WE HEAR AMANDA SOLIS SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

COLLYNS: Amanda Solis is one of hundreds of community leaders throughout Lima who are fighting for what they see is just a basic right to have access to running water. She said her children are suffering from parasites and intestinal infections because of the quality of the water which they have delivered by a private company. Amanda wants progress but it doesn’t seem to be happening fast enough for her.

[THE SOUND OF WATER / A DAM]

COLLYNS: This small dam on the River Rimac helps to provide at least some of Lima’s residents with water. Guillermo Leon, the director of Lima’s water board, Sedapal, says they’re committed to providing all residents with piped water by two thousand and eleven. But there’s a catch.

GUILLERMO LEON: [IN SPANISH] We understand that democracy means access to basic services. But we have to appeal to the solidarity of the people who already have water to reduce their consumption – there’s no point in laying new water pipes just to deliver a few drops.

COLLYNS: Mister Leon says that with a third of the country’s population now living in the capital, getting water to everyone can’t be achieved without someone making sacrifices. Climate change means less and less water is flowing from the Andes mountains. Fog nets may help those who live on the hillsides, but the sea mist cannot provide for all.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Dan Collyns there, in Lima, Peru.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: We turn now to Peter Galbraith. Until very recently, he was the number two United Nations official in Afghanistan. He was dismissed by the UN after a dispute over what to do about the fraud-tainted elections there. Galbraith says fraud will not be totally preventable in a run-off vote. But he thinks it can be minimized.

PETER GALBRAITH: That requires three steps. First, the United Nations and the international community has to stop treating the Independent Election Commission, this is the Afghan body responsible for running the elections, as if it were independent. It is not, it is a partisan, pro-Karzai body. Ideally one would want to replace the commissioners, but there’s not enough time to do it. They need to be supervised closely.

WERMAN: Sorry. Before you get to step two, we just spoke with President Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer, and he says they have nothing to do with the Independent Election Commission.

GALBRAITH: Other than the fact that Karzai appointed all its members and that the head of it meets weekly with President Karzai, and that the palace gives instructions to the head of the commission? [LAUGHS] Aside from that, that statement might be right.

WERMAN: Okay. So, steps two and three.

GALBRAITH: Secondly, now is the time to close what I call the “ghost polling stations.” These were polling centers in locations that are either controlled by the Taliban or so insecure that nobody could go to them. No Afghan election official could go there, no observer and of course no voters. But of course because they existed on the map it was possible for very large pro- Karzai results to be reported from these places. I had tried in fact in July to get these closed but I was overruled by the head of the UN mission. But now is the time to close them. They were the major source of the fraud. And the third thing that has to happen is that the Independent Election Commission staff who worked in places where fraud took place need to be fired, and new staff hired. That is because in every instance where there was fraud, the election commission staff either committed the fraud, cooperated with the people who committed the fraud, or knew about the fraud and failed to report it. And so there needs to be a clean sweep. That’s going to be the most difficult thing to accomplish in 2 weeks, but it’s essential.

WERMAN: Right. And Waheed Omer also said that they would not be doing that. So I guess the question now is who will undertake and achieve these three steps, which obviously are loaded with politics and logistics, in the next 2 weeks, ahead of November 7^th?

GALBRAITH: Well, first the United Nations which is charged with supporting the Afghan institutions in these elections needs to understand that its role is not a passive one. We cannot do as Kai Eide, the head of the UN mission said and let the Afghans make their own mistakes. We in the United States and in the international community have a lot at stake in these elections. Not only did we pay 300 million dollars for them, but they very much affect the prospect for success of the military mission that our troops have. So it is incumbent upon the United Nations and the main countries, particularly the United States to put pressure on these Afghan institutions to take the steps that are necessary to assure an honest election.

WERMAN: Maybe you could elaborate on which institutions would actually do this?

GALBRAITH: Well it would be the Independent Election Commission. So they will be the ones who have to replace the staff, they will be the ones that have to close down polling centers where fraud took place, these ghost polling centers. And of course the commissioners, themselves being partisans, they will have to be lobbied or pressured to do the right thing.

WERMAN: Peter Galbraith you’re kind of in a position now to say I told you so. Your speaking out publicly resulted in your dismissal from your UN post as the deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan. Was there a way you think you could have handled things differently so that the allegations of fraud would have been taken seriously sooner?

GALBRAITH: Well let me be clear. I did not speak out publicly until after I had been dismissed. This was a private disagreement handled in the way in which diplomats ought to handle them. I was the deputy, Kai Eide was the chief of the mission. I spoke directly to him. I laid out to him what I saw happening and the great risk of fraud. But I didn’t break with him. I didn’t make public statements which would have been inappropriate. I mean, maybe if I had somehow resigned rather than been fired and done it before the election making a public statement. But frankly at that point I don’t think anybody would have listened. I did the appropriate course of action which was to argue  internally for us to take steps to reduce the risk of fraud, principally by closing polling stations that we knew in advance of the election would never actually open.

WERMAN: Would you like…do you see yourself having a new role in Afghanistan?

GALBRAITH: I think it’s very unlikely, frankly. One of the realities of the situation is that when people either resign over principle or are dismissed on a point of principle as was my case, there are many congratulatory emails and phone calls, but it’s never very good for anybody’s diplomatic career.

WERMAN: Peter Galbraith, the former deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan. Thank you very much for your time.

GALBRAITH: Well thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Now that Afghanistan has scheduled a runoff, the question remains how that new election might affect President Obama’s decision on troop levels for Afghanistan. The World’s Jason Margolis takes a look.

JASON MARGOLIS: As we’ve been hearing, the argument against sending more troops to Afghanistan goes something like this:  How can the US support a nation that doesn’t even have a credible government? That argument is weakened with a new runoff election, says Rick Ozzie Nelson at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

RICK OZZIE NELSON: You can’t underestimate how important these elections are. Personally I think this is the one critical piece, whether you’re on side of the counter insurgency approach, or the counter terrorism approach, you have to have a credible government.

MARGOLIS: But will a runoff deliver that credible government? No, says Candice Rondeaux, with the International Crisis Group.

CANDICE RONDEAUX: They’ve done nothing to fix the problem.

MARGOLIS: Rondeaux says election officials have done nothing to ensure a clean vote this time around.

RONDEAUX: There’s no voter registry. I mean can you imagine in the United States showing up at a polling station and not having your name checked against a list. I mean how could this happen?

MARGOLIS: Still, Richard Fontaine says that even if a runoff isn’t completely legitimate, that shouldn’t affect US military strategy. Fontaine was a foreign policy advisor to John McCain during his presidential campaign. Fontaine favors a stronger counterinsurgency policy in Afghanistan – clearing areas of fighters, holding territory, and building infrastructure and institutions. He argues that a surge in US troops helped stabilize Iraq in what he describes as an even more difficult political situation.

RICHARD FONTAINE: There was a real perceived lack of legitimacy on the part of the national government in Iraq. And yet the coalition forces in Iraq, primarily American forces, were able to work in local levels both politically and in terms of bringing fundamental security to regions in order to turn the situation around for the better.

MARGOLIS: Fontaine says a clean election in Afghanistan would make the job of the American military easier. But he adds that a runoff is just another milestone in a very long fight.

FONTAINE: If you look at the nature of counterinsurgencies in the past, I’ve seen one figure that suggests that they last on the order of nine years or so. We’re eight years into this one, but there’s also a sense that in some ways we’re sort of beginning anew unfortunately, because of mistakes we’ve made in the past and lack of attention and under-resourcing of our efforts in Afghanistan.

MARGOLIS: Even if Afghanistan can pull off the appearance of a clean election, there will almost certainly be some political fallout. Jeremy Shapiro at the Brookings Institution says it’s clear that Karzai bowed to international pressure in agreeing to the runoff.

JEREMY SHAPIRO: So now what we’re faced with is moving forward with a very contentious relationship between the Afghan government and the international community.

MARGOLIS: President Obama spoke briefly to reporters today about the runoff. Mr. Obama said he was pleased with the steps taken and hopes to build on the progress. He did not address what the runoff might mean for his decision on what’s next for the US military in Afghanistan. For The World, I’m Jason Margolis.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Are you one of those people that just can’t throw anything away?

CLARK BOYD: …Afraid so, Marco.

WERMAN: Hm. The World’s Technology Correspondent Clark Boyd, there…. Clark, has the fact that you can save virtually everything on your computer’s hard drive made your pack rat tendencies even worse?

BOYD: …Ah, again, Marco, I’m afraid it has! [LAUGHS]

WERMAN: [LAUGHS] But fortunately you’ve been reading an interesting book about what our capacity for digital storage might be doing to us. Tell me about it.

BOYD: Yes, I didn’t realize that I might be damaging myself quite this much. It’s a new book by an author whose name is [PH] Victor Mayer Schoenberger. And he teaches at the National University in Singapore now. He was at Harvard for many years. And he’s written this book called: “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.”

WERMAN: So that’s a good thing to forget all this stuff, and maybe even throw it away.

BOYD: Well, his point is that throughout human history the default has been that it was actually very, very [LAUGHS] hard for us to remember. And he has a point. Think about the time and effort that it took to do cave paintings, or write things down on papyrus. Or carve [LAUGHS] messages into stone tablets. That kind of thing. And now he says in an interview that I did with him that our capacity to store everything digitally, so cheaply has changed the equation entirely.

SCHOENBERGER: With the digital tools that surround us, this balance has shifted. Shifted towards a default of remembering and an exception of forgetting. Because today it is so easy to store. To commit to digital storage enormous amounts of information that we are inundated with every day. And it is very hard, and costly and time consuming for us to actually delete something and to forget.

WERMAN: That’s Victor Mayer Schoenberger who’s the author of “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.” And I’ve got to say, I feel the same way. I store stuff in boxes, not necessary digitally and I forget that they’re actually in the box. So how is this adversely affecting us, Clark? Because there are more than 5 billion people on the planet and many of them don’t have much stuff.

BOYD: Well his point is it can affect us in a number of ways. It can affect us psychologically. He cites the whole idea of “American” and moving west, and being able to forget your past and forget what came behind. And moving that aside. And now he says the past just stays with us constantly. And he cites incidences from across the globe really, of people. I’ll use one example, a woman who put up a picture of herself at a party holding a drink on Facebook. And because that picture was as public as it was, she ended up being told she wouldn’t be a candidate for a given job. And his point is that you’re going to be seeing more and more of these kinds of cases. And his worry is that we’ll all just start to censor ourselves.

WERMAN: So, does he offer a solution aside from censoring yourself?

BOYD: Well, he does. He offers up a solution that he calls the “expiry date.” Now imagine being able to take a digital photograph, and when you save that photograph it asks you do you want to save this for five years? Do you want to save it for one year? And then one year, five years later, that picture pops up and says do you want to forget this picture? [LAUGHS] Or is this something that you still feel is worth remembering?

WERMAN: But doesn’t that go against the whole idea of digital in the first place? I mean, don’t we want to keep this stuff?

BOYD: Well his point is that we’re keeping too much of it. And so we should be as discerning as we have been in the past and let some of it go. And that would be, being healthy and being human.

WERMAN: Clark, good to check in with you.

BOYD: Good to check in with you, Marco. Bye bye.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. And this is the World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Debate continues to rage over US troop levels in Afghanistan. The military has requested tens of thousands of new troops. Today the White House said that President Obama’s response to that request is weeks away. Meanwhile, consider this: Even if Mr. Obama agreed to send all the forces the Pentagon has asked for, the number of US troops in Afghanistan would still be lower than the number in Iraq. Today, the president met with Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. Mr. Obama used the opportunity to reaffirm his commitment to pull all US combat troops out of Iraq by next August. Joost Hilterman is an Iraq expert with the International Crisis Group. What are the US troops doing in Iraq right now, Joost?

JOOST HILTERMAN: Well, they’re doing what they have been doing for a long time. Which is to assist the Iraqis in security operations to provide air support, to provide capacity building training of Iraqi security forces, to provide logistic support. And of course, they have started the process of transferring over responsibilities to the Iraqis ahead of a withdrawal. And they are actively planning the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

WERMAN: Right. And give us your assessment of just how stable the new Iraq is right now.

HILTERMAN: Well it remains unstable. I was just there a week ago. It was fairly calm, but I fear that the situation could deteriorate because we are facing elections in January and so far the Iraqi parliament has not been able to agree on an elections law. It has missed its deadline. We don’t know when the law will come into being, and there’s even talk that the elections may be postponed. And that could augur a period of instability and that….Even if elections occur fairly soon, that instability may continue because of problems that may occur in the forming of a new government. And all of this is happening just as US forces are starting to withdraw. Probably as early as March.

WERMAN: Well, right. I mean, could there still be a failed Iraq for the Obama administration? What would lead to that?

HILTERMAN: Well, anything is possible at this stage. Iraq could improve, and Iraq could collapse. Maybe we’ll see something in between. But I think that the troop withdrawal, while necessary, is coming without a real exit strategy. In fact the hand over may be occurring, but that Iraqi forces at the Iraqi institutions may not yet be strong enough to withstand a rather rapid American withdrawal. Because keep in mind that combat troops need to be out by August 2010 and what remains is 50,000 troops which are largely non-combat troops. But were there to provide training, maybe some forms of support, but simply will not provide the kind of leverage that the United States has had in Iraq up until now.

WERMAN: To what extent is this really up to Iraqis? Do they seem to have a long term strategy for their country?

HILTERMAN: Well, there is no other effective political system in Iraq. So while individual Iraqi politicians may have a long term strategy in mind, there is no effective way of planning such a future. There are no institutions that can bear it. And this is the real problem, is that Iraq still does not have a cohesive, functioning state system. Even the security forces, which are in the process of being rebuilt are…still are not cohesive, and certainly lack strength in many critical areas.

WERMAN: Do you think, Joost, that Iraq could be in danger of becoming a forgotten war?

HILTERMAN: Well I think it will be very difficult to forget it because it may jump right back at us. If in fact the situation implodes, as it might. If there are protracted negotiations over a new government for example, just as US troops are being pulled out. Or, we may forget it if indeed the situation somehow stabilizes. But then it’s no longer a war. So I think if it’s going to be a war, it will be very hard to ignore it. If the situation stabilizes, then all the better for it. And then I think the United States will retain a fairly strong civilian presence through the huge embassy and through aid programs. So that, I think, would be a hopeful scenario.

WERMAN: Joost Hilterman with the International Crisis Group. Thanks for your thoughts.

HILTERMAN: My pleasure. Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.