An atmosphere of stale defensiveness has sunk over Kabul. The mood has been lowered by the protracted saga of the Afghan election count, almost two months on from the first round August 20 vote. It's a drama veering towards farce more often than post-modern play, as we wait endlessly for a result, that like Godot, does not want to come.

Winter has not yet arrived in Kabul, though the evenings are cold, quickly taking the heat of the sun out of the day. Afghan politicians are frustrated and twitchy, second-guessing the reasons for the U.N.-backed election watchdog's plodding. We are being solidly methodological to retain the confidence of all, says the Electoral Complaints Commission, as it examines thousands of dodgy votes. A thankless task, most likely. The ECC officials will be puzzling over whether a box of votes has been mass-endorsed for one candidate, and should not stand, or if the suspiciously similar ticks on the ballot paper are attributable to only one man in the village knowing how to write. Many of the rural voters will never have held a pen in their hand, argued one official. It is natural in such a tribal society for the village to establish a consensus on who to support. Do such ballot papers count? Remember Florida, and how 'hanging chads' and the U.S. Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore? It's that kind of agony.

Behind the scenes the whispers are that hesitation and delay are because the outcome is excruciatingly close, too close to call. President Hamid Karzai, once set clear for victory, may find first round success ripped from his grasp by the disqualification of votes stuffed into ballot boxes by his supporters. He'll likely win a second round, if it happens, against his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah; but there will have been a loss of dignity, of self-confidence and of an opportunity to stabilise Afghanistan and get on with fighting the Taliban.

Other more fraught scenarios are possible, as outlined by my colleague. Would Karzai gamble that the West has no alternative to him in Afghanistan? And that he can therefore afford to ignore the opprobrium that would follow if he rejected an outcome he did not like? Or are the suspicions of chicanery, back-room pressure on election officials and string-pulling by all involved just a proliferation of nonsense to fill the void left by the lack of a clear outcome?

Eventually the result will be out, perhaps by the time some of you get round to reading this. Most likely I will be back in London, watching from afar. Optimists would have it that clarity will clear the air, the Afghan political mood will lighten and spoils to all will come from the haggling over the shape of the next government.

Meanwhile Afghanistan is Limbo-stan. Obama won't decide his strategy on Afghanistan until he sees what kind of Afghan partner he has to deal with. At least until then, and possibly longer, he won't say yes or no to the extra troops that General Stanley McChrystal says he needs to carry out the counter-insurgency strategy that he has prepared. (Though he'll carry out a different strategy, with no or fewer extra troops, if that's what he's ordered to do by his commander-in-chief). So in this limbo - the Washington policy void is filled with echo-chamber exhortations across the political divides; the Taliban is emboldened; Afghanistan's neighbours are positioning themselves to benefit or at least guard against strategic loss should Washington fold its tent; and Western publics are wondering if there is a real purpose to their boys getting their limbs blown off while trudging through the fields of southern Helmand.

The U.S. "Religious Left" -- which has been active at the grassroots level to support President Barack Obama's drive for health care reform -- has now launched a campaign in support his other major domestic initiative: climate change legislation.

Faithful America, a coalition of progressive evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant and Jewish groups, unveiled a video on Thursday urging viewers to "TELL CONGRESS: STOP CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS EFFECTS." The campaign is called Day Six.

You can see the video below:

A climate bill aimed at reducing America's emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming is being crafted in the U.S. Senate. The House of Representatives earlier this year passed its own version.

The Day Six campaign also asks people to sign an online petition that urges senators to : "... support a climate bill that addresses the root causes of climate change and makes needed investments in vulnerable communities already experiencing its devastating effects."

The organizers say that: "'Day Six' is a reference to the creation story in Genesis, when God made human beings stewards of creation."

Many left-leaning and liberal groups of faith see a biblical imperative to curb the effects of climate change because poor and developing regions like Africa are seen bearing the brunt of its consequences. 

One the other side, the religious right -- a loose network of conservative Christians that is a key Republican Party base -- has been at the forefront of conservative efforts to rally public opposition to climate change legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

 Conservative Christian radio stations have spent the summer saying its "cap and trade" provisions are the biggest tax increase in U.S. history.

Which side do you think will have its prayers answered?

(PHOTO: A buffalo skull is pictured in Lake Naivasha, Kenya, the only fresh water ecosystem in the eastern Rift Valley, June 4, 2009, which is drying up due to drought and other factors/ REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya ).  

U.S. President Barack Obama enlisted the "Religious Left" on Wednesday to help galvanise public support for his faltering drive for healthcare reform, using the language of faith as he accused some of the critics of his biggest domestic project of "bearing false witness."

Obama made a brief pitch to a "call in" organised by various liberal and progressive faith groups called "40 minutes for Health Reform." It is part of  a campaign launched last week to counteract a movement to stop "Obamacare" that has been driven in part by conservative Christian activists.

"There has been a lot misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness," Obama said.

Obama took issue with some of the most emotive allegations that have been raised by social conservative opponents of his vision for overhauling America's healthcare and health insurance system.

“This notion that somehow we are setting up death panels that would decide on whether elderly people get to live or die  … that is just an extraordinary lie.”

"You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortions. Not true,” he said.

Liberal people of faith helped to propel Obama to power but it remains to be seen if they can make the difference on healthcare reform.

"In the weeks ahead the nation will hear a steady moral drum beat from the faith community," said Jim Wallis, a leading liberal evangelical of the activist Christian group Sojourners. The campaign will include prayer meetings, sermons and nationwide TV ads.

They face a competing chorus from the Religious Right which has focused on the allegation that Obama's healthcare plan will lead to federal funding for abortion -- a point denied by the president and many of his supporters (see previous blog).  But it is an issue that can gin up the Republican Party's conservative Christian base.

In America, both the political left and right must often appeal to people of faith because of the country's high rates of religious belief.

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama holds a town hall meeting about healthcare at the Kroger Supermarket in Bristol, Virginia July 29, 2009.  REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)

Liberal U.S. religious groups launched "40 Days of Health Reform" on Monday.

You can see our coverage here and a video of their nationwide TV spot below.

The campaign aims to energize efforts by President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party to overhaul America's healthcare system.

(PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama holds a town hall meeting about healthcare at the Kroger Supermarket in Bristol, Virginia July 29, 2009. REUTERS/Larry Downing)

America's "Religious Left" is jumping into the healthcare debate with a plan to launch a "40 Days for Health Reform" initiative starting Monday.

The move comes as conservative resistance hardens to President Barack Obama's attempts to overhaul America's healthcare system. This has taken the form of angry scenes at townhall meetings and has been driven in part by the "Religious Right," which claims on Christian radio stations and on the blogosphere that, among other things, "Obamacare" will result in taxpayer-funded abortion. That's a point disputed by most Democrats and their allies. 

The pro-faith-based healthcare reform campaign is organized by liberal leaning religious groups such as Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faith in Public Life. Borrowing a page from the Religious Right, the conservative Christian movement that rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as a key base for the Republican Party, the campaign will feature prayer rallies and a national TV ad.

 It brings together evangelicals, Catholics and mainline Protestants and  includes heavyweights from the Religious Left such as Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners. There are many people of faith in the United States who believe that coverage needs to be extended to the nearly 46 million Americans with no health insurance because of biblical calls to care for the poor and the sick.

In his campaign for the White House Obama had tapped into the religious community and frequently invoked his own Christian faith. It remains to be seen if the faith community can inject some energy into what some see as a faltering drive at health care reform.

One wonders if this part of Obama's ambitious domestic agenda has a prayer without such help.

A coalition of progressive U.S. faith groups and pastors has launched a push for affordable health care reform, an effort they say is rooted in a "scriptural call to act."

Radio ads will appear from today until July 4th in five states: Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Nebraska and North Carolina. The ads urge those states' Senators, whose votes could ultimately decide the fate of President Barack Obama's drive to transform America's health care system, to back legislation "that makes quality coverage truly affordable for every American family." You can see the ad script and audio here.

Organizers also say that more than 600 clergy from 41 states and 39 denominations have said they will deliver sermons in coming weeks on the issue and urge their flocks to act. A pastors' guide to health care will also be distributed to 4,250 religious leaders along with a shorter version to wider church members.

PICO National Network, Faith in Public Life, Faithful America, Sojourners, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good are the main religious advocacy groups behind the campaign.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. The tactics being adopted by these liberal and centrist groups and activists are a carbon copy of the successful ones employed in the past by the U.S. religious right. The distribution of pastors' guides, the call for public policy to be guided by scripture (in this case compassion for the poor and the ill), the preaching of sermons on looming legislation -- it's all taken from the loose network of conservative Christians which has delivered many a vote for the Republican Party.

Conservative Christians remain a key base for the Republicans and they have also been decrying "Obama-care" on talk radio, the blogosphere and other outlets.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing.  Members of the audience shake hands with U.S. President Barack Obama after his speech about reforming America's health care system in Green Bay, Wisconsin, June 11, 2009.

(Dawn front page for Sunday, 21 June 2009)

Almost two million people have inexplicably disappeared from the estimates of the U.S. Muslim population that President Barack Obama has given recently. In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 4, he spoke about "nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today." On Sunday, the Karachi daily Dawn published an interview with him where he said "we have five million Muslims."

There was no explanation for the change, but his reason for citing the figure seemed to be the same. Shortly before his Cairo speech, Obama told the French television channel Canal Plus that "one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." He cited no figure there but mentioned seven million in Cairo three days later.

Many blogs, FaithWorld included, questioned that figure and noted that estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million. The U.S. Census Bureau cannot ask about religion on a mandatory basis but refers on its website to a Pew Forum study pegging Muslims at 0.6% of the population. The CIA World Factbook uses the same percentage figure. It translates into about 1.8 million.

Speaking to Dawn, Obama lowered his estimate but made his original point again. He said: "We have Muslim Americans who are doing extraordinary things. In fact, their educational attainment and income is generally above the average here in the United States. We have Muslim members of Congress. And, in fact, we have 5 million Muslims, which would make us larger than many other countries that consider themselves Muslim countries."

The downsizing puts the U.S. even lower on the this Wikipedia list of countries according to the size of their Muslim population, from 32nd place (after Kazakhstan and before the current #32 Tajikistan) to 38th (between Chad and Turkmenistan).

In the interview, Obama also spoke a bit about his visit to Pakistan as a student in 1981 that caused some confusion and speculation in the end phase of the 2008 campaign. Dawn's Washington correspondent Anwar Iqbal asked Obama if he planned to visit Pakistan soon and the president responded:

'I would love to visit. As you know, I had Pakistani roommates in college who were very close friends of mine. I went to visit them when I was still in college; was in Karachi and went to Hyderabad. Their mothers taught me to cook,' said Mr Obama.

‘What can you cook?’

‘Oh, keema … daal … You name it, I can cook it. And so I have a great affinity for Pakistani culture and the great Urdu poets.’

‘You read Urdu poetry?’

‘Absolutely. So my hope is that I’m going to have an opportunity at some point to visit Pakistan,’ said Mr Obama.

America may have a president and Congress that support abortion rights, but a new Gallup poll suggests that for the first time such a stance is not the majority view.

Gallup said on Friday that a new poll, conducted May 7 to 10, found "51 percent of Americans calling themselves 'pro-life' on the issue of abortion and 42 percent 'pro-choice.' This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995."

"The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50 percent were pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46 percent, in both August 2001 and May 2002."

Underscoring how divisive the issue remains, the poll further found that 23 percent of Americans felt abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and 22 percent said it should be legal in all circumstances.

Still, it found that 53 percent held to a middle view -- that is should be legal in certain circumstances. That figure, Gallup said, has been steady since 1975.

A few other things stand out. The percentage of Republicans and those who lean to that party who lablel themselves "pro-life" rose by 10 percentage points over the past year to 70 percent. As there was essentially no shift among Democrats on this issue (33 percent said they were "pro-life," unchanged since last year) much of the shift clearly came from the Republican side. Does this suggest a hardening among the party faithful, whose numbers have also been in decline, in reaction to the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama?

Much of the opposition to abortion in America has been faith-based, led mostly though not exclusively by conservative Catholics and evangelicals. The latter in particular have for decades been a key base of support for the Republican Party.

There has been much recent talk among the media and Republican strategists that the party needs to move away from divisive social issues like abortion and gay marriage in a bid to broaden a base which many see as shrinking. This poll will be ammunition for those who say the party needs to stick its guns on these issues.

The findings are sure to stir both sides of this emotional debate, especially as Obama seeks to fill a new vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, where the legality of issues such as abortion can ultimately be decided.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst - An anti-abortion protester holds a sign in front of the US Supreme Court building during the March for Life in Washington, D.C., January 22, 2009. 

The United States has decided to participate in planning meetings for the United Nations Conference on Racism in April in order to influence its final declaration. The conference, a follow-up to the 2001 meeting in South Africa that the U.S. and Israel walked out on because the draft declaration called Israel racist (that language was later dropped). Israel and Canada have already announced they would boycott "Durban II," as the conference is being called, and the Bush administration was opposed to the conference. But the Obama administration has decided to wade into the debate in the hopes of getting a better result.

(Photo: United Nations General Assembly, 26 Sept 2008/Eric Thayer)

Apart from the expected criticism of Israel, this conference in Geneva is also due to be a showplace for a drive by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to have the U.N. condemn defamation of religion. The U.N. General Assembly voted for just such a condemnation last December, for the fourth year running. While the non-binding resolution urged member states to provide "adaquate protection against acts of hatred, discrumination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general," the only religion it mentioned by name was Islam. Western countries opposed that resolution as contrary to the basic rights of free expression and opinion.

In statements in December, the freedom of expression rapporteurs of the United Nations, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) have called on the United Nations not to issue any such resolution.

President Barack Obama wants to reach out to Muslims and foster better relations between Washington and the Muslim world.  Should he show this by softening the U.S. stand on defamation of religions?

(Photo: Saudi women pose with Obama cutout in Jeddah, 6 Nov 2008/Susan Baaghil)

UPDATE: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that "the U.S. State Department set off alarm bells Sunday in the Jewish community by announcing that it would be taking part in consultations this week ahead of the conference" and the administration held a conference call with Jewish leaders to discuss the issue.  Read the full story here.

Is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Jakarta a hint that President Barack Obama will pick Indonesia as the first Muslim country he visits in his drive to improve U.S. relations with the Islamic world? There were lots of other suggestions when he first mentioned this back in December, including Egypt (the New York Times pick) and Morocco (judging by what might have been a write-in campaign on our comments page).

My tip at the time was either Indonesia or Turkey. In recent weeks, Turkey's star has probably faded as its relations with Israel soured recently. Those strains came after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan angrily accused Israeli President Shimon Peres of "knowing very well how to kill" in Gaza during a debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos and then stormed off the stage.

(Photo: Hillary Clinton with Jakarta schoolgirls, 18 Feb 2009/Supri)

Clinton said all the right things today, like telling the country where Obama spent four years as a boy that it was proof that modernity and Islam can coexist. "As I travel around the world over the next years, I will be saying to people: if you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can co-exist, go to Indonesia," she said at a dinner with civil society activists. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda reciprocated by telling her Indonesia shared the United States' joy at Obama's election and she should tell the U.S. president "we cannot wait too long" for a visit.

Obama spent four years in Indonesia after his American mother, Ann Dunham, married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro following the end of her marriage to Obama's Kenyan father. He told President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during a phone call after his election that he'd like to visit Indonesia again. It would help forge  greater cooperation between the two nations and give him a chance to try local food again including meatball soup, nasi goreng and rambutan, a local newspaper reported him as saying.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) will meet in Singapore in November. It's just a short flight from there to Jakarta.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)