Karzai's brother negotiates with Taliban for election safety

According to the Telegraph, Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali has been making deals with Taliban-affiliated groups in the Pashtun south to ensure that more polling stations can open, on top of attempts to buy votes.

A series of secret ceasefire deals have been agreed with Taliban commanders to ensure that voting can go ahead in Afghanistan's volatile south during next week's presidential elections.

Under the deals, brokered by Ahmed Wali Karzai – the controversial brother and campaign manager of the president, Hamid Karzai – individual Taliban commanders will agree to pull back on election day and allow the Afghan army and police to secure the polling centres.

A Nato spokesman confirmed that a number of deals between the Afghan government and insurgents were in the pipeline, saying: "We support any initiative that enhances security and enables the people of Afghanistan to vote."

It is likely that these 'Taliban commanders' are not hard-line ideological Taliban supporters, but those who allied with Mullah Omar out of convenience and therefore are the groups that the U.S. and Afghan leadership hope to pry away from the Taliban.

However, given the strong geographic ethnic divides that will split this election, these negotiations are problematic. If Karzai wins the elections because of percieved fraud, huge riots could break out across the north and in Kabul. Between these negotiations and the tribal militias that have been enlisted to protect polling centers in the south, the upcoming elections are shaping up to slant even more heavily towards incumbent Karzai.

The photo is from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Flickrstream.