KABUL — A Democratic Party strategist who helped Bill Clinton get into the White House is now assisting a former Afghan finance minister in his campaign to unseat President Hamid Karzai in upcoming elections.
James Carville said he joined the team of Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official, so Afghans had a viable choice in the Aug. 20 poll.
“This is probably the most important election held in the world in a long time,” Carville said late Tuesday. “This is probably the most interesting project I have ever worked in my life.”
The Obama administration has repeatedly said it does not support any of the 41 presidential candidates, and Carville said he is working as a private citizen. Nevertheless, the involvement of a strategist with such close ties with the Democratic Party — and in particular Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan — is likely to raise questions about Washington’s stance.
Karzai is the front-runner in the presidential race, even though many Afghans and international officials have slammed his performance.
Ghani, who had to renounce his American citizenship to compete in the election, served as Karzai’s finance minister. He has a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University. He left the government after the elections of 2004 and became chancellor of Kabul University.
