A little over 24 hours after the polls closed, President Obama stepped out on the White House South Lawn last week to pronounce the Afghanistan presidential elections something of a success. This was an important step forward in the Afghan peoples effort to take control of their future, even as violent extremists are trying to stand in their way, Mr. Obama said. I want to congratulate the Afghanistan people on carrying out this historic election. But now, as reports mount of widespread fraud in the balloting, including allegations that supporters of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, illegally stuffed ballot boxes in the south and ripped up ballots cast for his opponents, Mr. Obamas early praise may soon come back to haunt him. Afghanistans Electoral Complaints Commission said Friday that it had received more than 2,000 complaints of fraud or abuse in last weeks election. Mr. Karzais biggest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, showed reporters video of a local election chief in one polling station stuffing ballot boxes himself. The vote count has progressed very slowly in Afghanistan as of Friday, preliminary results with 17 percent of the vote in gave Mr. Karzai 44 percent and Mr. Abdullah 35 percent. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, a runoff must be held between the top two candidates. For Mr. Obama, who is on vacation here in Marthas Vineyard, and his administration, it is the worst of all possible outcomes. Administration officials have made no secret of their growing disenchantment with Mr. Karzai, who is viewed by the West as having so compromised himself to try to get elected including striking deals with accused drug dealers and warlords for political gain that he will be a hindrance to international efforts to get the country on track after the election. But Mr. Karzai, in a feat of political shrewdness that has surprised some in the Obama administration, has managed to turn that disenchantment to an advantage, portraying himself at home as the only political candidate willing to stand up to the dictates of the United States, according to Western officials. Case in point: a meeting the day after the elections last week between Mr. Karzai and Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obamas special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, at Mr. Karzais presidential palace in Kabul. A person familiar with the meeting, which also included Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, and the deputy ambassador, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., said that the three Americans went in to see Mr. Karzai and discussed two things: how Mr. Karzai would govern if he were re-elected, and how the elections had gone. The three Americans told Mr. Karzai, the person said, that the United States was maintaining a neutral position in the elections, and that it would leave decisions about whether a runoff was needed to the Afghan elections commission and the electoral complaints commission. Mr. Karzai told the Americans, according to this account, that he believed that he had won. Mr. Holbrooke, administration officials said, did not demand a runoff during the meeting, but did express concern about the complaints about fraud and ballot-box stuffing. The Americans left the meeting and described it as routine. A few days after, reports surfaced in international and Afghan news outlets that Mr. Holbrooke had demanded a runoff election in what one report characterized as the explosive meeting with Mr. Karzai, a charge which the Americans deny vociferously. The administration officials accused Mr. Karzais agents of leaking to the news media select portions of the exchange between the two men, in order to make it look as if Obama administration were trying to force the rightful winner of the Afghan presidential elections Mr. Karzai into holding a runoff to satisfy American demands. Mr. Karzai, a senior administration official said, has a longstanding pattern of creating a straw man of Americas positions, and rallying people around that. But contrary to those reports, no one shouted, no one walked out of the meeting, he said. Whatever the case, the atmosphere may now have become so poisoned between the United States and Mr. Karzai that the Obama administration will be hampered no matter what course it takes. Administration officials said initial characterizations of the success of the elections referred solely to the fact that they took place at all, despite threats by the Taliban and more than 200 rocket attacks in southern Afghanistan on election day. Those comments about the relative success of the elections were coming at a time when there was the fear that the Taliban would disrupt the process, another senior administration official said. The Taliban, the official said, launched hundreds of rocket attacks, and Afghans still voted. Publicly, the administration line remains that Mr. Obama is waiting for the Afghan complaints commission to rule on the validity of the vote tallies and on less numerous fraud allegations lodged against Mr. Abdullah. The process may take weeks. Asked if Mr. Obama regretted his initial assessment that the elections appeared to have been successful, a White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said, The presidents view is were all waiting for the results to trickle in just like everybody else. Mr. Burton added: We think that, with the mechanisms in place to address any allegations of fraud, that they will work. That may not be enough for Afghans. The allegations of fraud are very serious, throughout the country, and the international community has an obligation to ensure that the complaints commission investigates all of these complaints, said Saad Mohseni, head of the Moby media group of radio and television stations based in Kabul. We had rockets raining on some towns, suicide bombers in the cities, gunfire, and yet people turned out to vote, Mr. Mohseni said. People took their lives in their hands, and therefore they deserve better. (NYT)