thedrifter
08-20-09, 06:41 AM
Marines deliver Afghan ballots by helicopter
Turnout low on election day in Afghanistan; Karzai favored to win another term
By Jason Straziuso and Robert H. Reid - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Aug 20, 2009 7:15:03 EDT
KABUL — Taliban threats appeared to dampen voter turnout in the militant south Thursday as Afghans chose the next president for their deeply troubled country. Insurgents launched scattered rocket, suicide and bomb attacks, violence that closed some polling sites.
Low turnout in the south would harm President Hamid Karzai’s re-election chances and boost the standing of his top challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. Turnout in the north appeared to be high, a good sign for Abdullah.
International officials have predicted an imperfect election — Afghanistan’s second-ever direct presidential vote — but expressed hope that Afghans would accept it as legitimate, a key component of President Barack Obama’s war strategy. Taliban militants, though, pledged to disrupt the vote and circulated threats that those who cast ballots will be punished.
A voting official in Kandahar, the south’s largest city and the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace, said voting appeared to be 40 percent lower than during the country’s 2004 presidential election. The official asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to release turnout figures. Associated Press journalists reported low turnouts in Kabul compared with longer lines seen in the 2004 vote.
Scattered reports of violence trickled in from around the country, including a rocket that landed near voters in Helmand province and an explosion at a voting site in Kabul. Clashes in Baghlan province closed voting sites and killed police.
Security companies in the capital reported at least five blasts, and Kabul police exchanged fire for more than an hour with a group of armed men; two suicide bombers died in the clash, police said. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that five gunmen were fighting with police.
Karzai, dressed in his traditional purple and green striped robe, voted at 7 a.m. at a Kabul high school. He dipped his index finger in indelible ink — a fraud prevention measure — and held it up for the cameras. Presidential palace officials released a rare photo of Karzai’s wife casting her vote.
“I request that the Afghan people come out and vote, so through their ballot Afghanistan will be more secure, more peaceful,” Karzai said. “Vote. No violence.”
Karzai, who has held power since the Taliban was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion, is favored to finish first among 36 official candidates, although a late surge by Abdullah could force a runoff if no one wins more than 50 percent.
Preliminary results were expected to be announced in Kabul on Saturday.
The top U.N. official in the country, Kai Eide, acknowledged scattered attacks but said the election “seems to be working well.” A U.N. spokesman said there were no early reports of widespread irregularities.
However, presidential candidate Ramazan Bashardost, who had 10 percent support in pre-election polls, said he washed off the supposedly indelible ink and called on authorities to “immediately stop this election.”
“This is not an election, this is a comedy,” Bashardost said.
Militants carried out a string of assaults around the country. In northern Baghlan province, insurgent attacks closed 14 polling sites, and the police chief of Old Baghlan city and several police were killed, said Abdul Malik, the provincial election director.
“Some of the stations are open, with the presence of our personnel, but there is no one coming to vote. I told them to wait until the end of the day before coming back,” Malik said.
An AP reporter in southern Helmand province said more than 20 rockets had landed in the capital of Lashkar Gah, including one near a line of voters that killed a child.
A blast at a high school in Kabul serving as a polling center wounded an election monitor and briefly shut down voting, an election observer named Ezatullah said. Abdullah Azizi, a 40-year-old teacher, said he was at Abdul Hai Habibi school when the explosion occurred.
“We don’t care about these blasts. It’s just people who want to sabotage the place,” Habibi said after voting reopened. “My wife, my mother and father are going to come now. The women were afraid when they heard the explosion, but now I’m going to tell them come here.”
The Foreign Ministry asked news organizations to avoid “broadcasting any incidence of violence” during voting hours “to ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people.” Because of that order, Afghan officials were reluctant to confirm violence reports.
At a high school in eastern Kabul, election workers were ready at 7 a.m., but no one was there. A 30-year-old shopkeeper whose store is about 100 yards away said he didn’t see the point. “I am not voting. It won’t change anything,” said Mohammad Tahir, 30.
Some voters in the capital wanted to assess the security before voting.
“Yes, we are going to vote,” Abdul Rahman, 35, said as he stood 50 yards outside one polling center. He and his friends were waiting to see people vote safely before casting ballots. “If anything happens to the polling center, we don’t want to be too close to it.”
In the Helmand province town of Dahaneh — a former Taliban stronghold until U.S. troops invaded this month — U.S. Marines delivered presidential ballots in two Sea Stallion helicopters just after noon.
The next president will lead a nation plagued by armed insurgency, drugs, corruption and a feeble government. Violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan in the last three years, and the U.S. now has more than 60,000 forces in the country close to eight years after the U.S. invasion following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Karzai, a favorite of the Bush administration, won in 2004 with 55.4 percent of the vote, riding into office on a wave of public optimism after decades of war and ruinous Taliban rule. As the U.S. shifted resources to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan fell into steep decline, marked by record opium poppy harvests, deepening government corruption and skyrocketing violence.
Karzai has sought to ensure his re-election by striking alliances with regional power brokers, naming as a running mate a Tajik strongman whom he once fired as defense minister and welcoming home notorious Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, allegedly responsible in the deaths of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners early in the Afghan war.
Voter turnout in the insurgency-plagued Pashtun south is not only crucial to Karzai’s chances but also to public acceptance of the results. Karzai is widely expected to run strong among his fellow Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group which also forms the overwhelming majority of the Taliban.
Abdullah, son of a Pashtun father and a Tajik mother, is expected to win much of his votes in the Tajik north, where security is better.
The country has been rife with rumors of ballot stuffing, bogus registrations and trafficking in registration cards on behalf of the incumbent, allegations his campaign has denied.
———
Associated Press reporters Amir Shah, Fisnik Abrashi, Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Noor Khan in Kandahar and Alfred de Montesquiou in Dahaneh contributed to this report.
Ellie
Turnout low on election day in Afghanistan; Karzai favored to win another term
By Jason Straziuso and Robert H. Reid - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Aug 20, 2009 7:15:03 EDT
KABUL — Taliban threats appeared to dampen voter turnout in the militant south Thursday as Afghans chose the next president for their deeply troubled country. Insurgents launched scattered rocket, suicide and bomb attacks, violence that closed some polling sites.
Low turnout in the south would harm President Hamid Karzai’s re-election chances and boost the standing of his top challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. Turnout in the north appeared to be high, a good sign for Abdullah.
International officials have predicted an imperfect election — Afghanistan’s second-ever direct presidential vote — but expressed hope that Afghans would accept it as legitimate, a key component of President Barack Obama’s war strategy. Taliban militants, though, pledged to disrupt the vote and circulated threats that those who cast ballots will be punished.
A voting official in Kandahar, the south’s largest city and the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace, said voting appeared to be 40 percent lower than during the country’s 2004 presidential election. The official asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to release turnout figures. Associated Press journalists reported low turnouts in Kabul compared with longer lines seen in the 2004 vote.
Scattered reports of violence trickled in from around the country, including a rocket that landed near voters in Helmand province and an explosion at a voting site in Kabul. Clashes in Baghlan province closed voting sites and killed police.
Security companies in the capital reported at least five blasts, and Kabul police exchanged fire for more than an hour with a group of armed men; two suicide bombers died in the clash, police said. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that five gunmen were fighting with police.
Karzai, dressed in his traditional purple and green striped robe, voted at 7 a.m. at a Kabul high school. He dipped his index finger in indelible ink — a fraud prevention measure — and held it up for the cameras. Presidential palace officials released a rare photo of Karzai’s wife casting her vote.
“I request that the Afghan people come out and vote, so through their ballot Afghanistan will be more secure, more peaceful,” Karzai said. “Vote. No violence.”
Karzai, who has held power since the Taliban was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion, is favored to finish first among 36 official candidates, although a late surge by Abdullah could force a runoff if no one wins more than 50 percent.
Preliminary results were expected to be announced in Kabul on Saturday.
The top U.N. official in the country, Kai Eide, acknowledged scattered attacks but said the election “seems to be working well.” A U.N. spokesman said there were no early reports of widespread irregularities.
However, presidential candidate Ramazan Bashardost, who had 10 percent support in pre-election polls, said he washed off the supposedly indelible ink and called on authorities to “immediately stop this election.”
“This is not an election, this is a comedy,” Bashardost said.
Militants carried out a string of assaults around the country. In northern Baghlan province, insurgent attacks closed 14 polling sites, and the police chief of Old Baghlan city and several police were killed, said Abdul Malik, the provincial election director.
“Some of the stations are open, with the presence of our personnel, but there is no one coming to vote. I told them to wait until the end of the day before coming back,” Malik said.
An AP reporter in southern Helmand province said more than 20 rockets had landed in the capital of Lashkar Gah, including one near a line of voters that killed a child.
A blast at a high school in Kabul serving as a polling center wounded an election monitor and briefly shut down voting, an election observer named Ezatullah said. Abdullah Azizi, a 40-year-old teacher, said he was at Abdul Hai Habibi school when the explosion occurred.
“We don’t care about these blasts. It’s just people who want to sabotage the place,” Habibi said after voting reopened. “My wife, my mother and father are going to come now. The women were afraid when they heard the explosion, but now I’m going to tell them come here.”
The Foreign Ministry asked news organizations to avoid “broadcasting any incidence of violence” during voting hours “to ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people.” Because of that order, Afghan officials were reluctant to confirm violence reports.
At a high school in eastern Kabul, election workers were ready at 7 a.m., but no one was there. A 30-year-old shopkeeper whose store is about 100 yards away said he didn’t see the point. “I am not voting. It won’t change anything,” said Mohammad Tahir, 30.
Some voters in the capital wanted to assess the security before voting.
“Yes, we are going to vote,” Abdul Rahman, 35, said as he stood 50 yards outside one polling center. He and his friends were waiting to see people vote safely before casting ballots. “If anything happens to the polling center, we don’t want to be too close to it.”
In the Helmand province town of Dahaneh — a former Taliban stronghold until U.S. troops invaded this month — U.S. Marines delivered presidential ballots in two Sea Stallion helicopters just after noon.
The next president will lead a nation plagued by armed insurgency, drugs, corruption and a feeble government. Violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan in the last three years, and the U.S. now has more than 60,000 forces in the country close to eight years after the U.S. invasion following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Karzai, a favorite of the Bush administration, won in 2004 with 55.4 percent of the vote, riding into office on a wave of public optimism after decades of war and ruinous Taliban rule. As the U.S. shifted resources to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan fell into steep decline, marked by record opium poppy harvests, deepening government corruption and skyrocketing violence.
Karzai has sought to ensure his re-election by striking alliances with regional power brokers, naming as a running mate a Tajik strongman whom he once fired as defense minister and welcoming home notorious Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, allegedly responsible in the deaths of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners early in the Afghan war.
Voter turnout in the insurgency-plagued Pashtun south is not only crucial to Karzai’s chances but also to public acceptance of the results. Karzai is widely expected to run strong among his fellow Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group which also forms the overwhelming majority of the Taliban.
Abdullah, son of a Pashtun father and a Tajik mother, is expected to win much of his votes in the Tajik north, where security is better.
The country has been rife with rumors of ballot stuffing, bogus registrations and trafficking in registration cards on behalf of the incumbent, allegations his campaign has denied.
———
Associated Press reporters Amir Shah, Fisnik Abrashi, Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Noor Khan in Kandahar and Alfred de Montesquiou in Dahaneh contributed to this report.
Ellie