ARTICLE: Afghan Election Poses New Tests for Washington, By HELENE COOPER and CARLOTTA GALL, New York Times, August 21, 2009

The problem here: a run-off allows all the anti-Karzai votes to coalesce around Abdullah, and if he wins, then we have a Tajik face on a decidedly northern-dominated Kabul government that we want to control the restive, Pashtun-heavy south, where voting seems to have been low.

Not exactly the unity government we were hoping for.