Rebels attack as Afghans go to the polls
Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades today, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques.
Violence killed at least 10 people around Afghanistan, trying to claw its way back from more than a quarter-century of conflict. Another two dozen died in the previous two days, including a French commando when his vehicle struck a mine, but there was no spectacular attack that officials had feared from Taliban militants who had vowed to disrupt the vote.
It appeared that tight security helped, with none of the fatalities at polling places, although officials reported thwarted plots to bomb a massive dam and smuggle explosives into polling places in pens and a clock.
But today was mostly about getting out to vote.
“We are making history,” President Hamid Karzai said as he cast his ballot. “It’s the day of self-determination for the Afghan people. After 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations and misery, today Afghanistan is moving forward, making an economy, making political institutions.”
Some 12.4 million Afghans were registered to vote for the national legislature and provincial assemblies at more than 6,000 polling stations, guarded by about 100,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 30,000 foreign troops.
Around eight million voted in last October’s presidential elections, and there were high hopes that even more would turn out today.
However – although top election organisers said they had no official turnout figures yet – some officials in the field, as well as independent election monitors, said there appeared to be fewer people voting.
“It’s hard to gauge the exact numbers, but the impression we have is that the turnout is lower,” said Saman Zia-Zarifi, deputy Asia director for New York-based Human Rights Watch, which has 14 observers monitoring the elections.
Chief electoral officer Peter Erben said voting started slowly, but “after the morning, it has seriously picked up all over Afghanistan.”
Polls closed at 4pm (1230BST), with those already in line still allowed to vote.
The vote was seen as the last formal step toward democracy on a path set out after a US-led force drove the Taliban from power in 2001, when they refused to hand over al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many people hoped the polls would marginalise the insurgents and end a spiral of violence that started in 1979 when Soviet troops invaded, before a devastating civil war and the oppressive rule of the hard-line Taliban.
The Taliban said they would not attack civilians heading to polls, but warned them to stay away from areas where militants might attack security forces and foreign troops.
Afghans clutching voter identification cards filed into schools with lessons still scrawled on blackboards, or stepped over piles of shoes to cast ballots in mosques. Tents served as polling stations in remote areas.
About 2,760 candidates are competing for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, parliament’s lower house, and more than 3,015 candidates are running for 420 seats in 34 provincial councils.
Women are assured 68 seats in the lower house, while 10 seats are reserved for Kuchi nomads. In the provincial councils, a quarter of all seats have been set aside for women.
With nearly three-quarters of the populace illiterate, voting was slow as people spent as much as 10 minutes going through ballots up to seven pages long to find pictures of candidates or symbols that represent them. Each voter dipped a finger in indelible purple ink to prevent repeat voting.
Women were segregated from men at many polling centres, entering through back doors and voting in separate rooms.
A handful of polling centres closed temporarily because of gunfire and others opened late or not at all due to security fears, Erben, the chief electoral officer said.
During the six months leading up to the vote, violence killed 1,200 people, including seven candidates and four election workers.
