Confirming the talk that leaked out during that Friday news dump, Abdullah Abdullah, the runner-up in the Afghan presidential election, officially dropped out of the runoff due to continued concerns about fraud in favor of President Hamid Karzai.

“I will not participate in the election,” Dr Abdullah told supporters, saying his demands for ensuring a fraud-free election had not been met.

But he stopped short of calling for a boycott of next Saturday’s vote.

Mr Karzai had rejected his demand that election officials who presided over the first round should be dismissed.

Afghanistan will continue to hold the election, but obviously it has no legitimacy, despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attempt to claim otherwise (“We see [elections] happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward.”). We may see a move toward a unity government with a place for Abdullah in a Karzai coalition.

If the Western powers involved in Afghanistan really wanted an election to go forward, they would have at least tried to soothe Abdullah’s fears of fraud. Especially given Clinton’s statement today, it’s clear that there was no taste for a runoff election. And yet, I don’t see how an election with one candidate will prove the viability of the government. Abdullah supporters in the first round measured about 30% of the country, and nobody knows how they will react to this news.

With a decision by the White House on troop escalation just days away, I don’t feel this does much for Afghan stability.