In an interesting round of developments, Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of the Afghan runoff election scheduled for this coming weekend. Because of the lack of a challenger in the runoff election, the Afghan Independent Election Commission declared Hamid Karzai the winner of the presidential election. Here are details from the BBC. It’s an unusual outcome, as many were closely watching to see if the Afghans could conduct this presidential runoff, in short order, and in a way that could avoid the many allegations of fraud that surrounded the first round of elections.