Taliban Attacks Close Poll Booths as Afghans Vote For President
The U.S. and its allies are counting on a heavy turnout and a clear result to produce an administration strong enough to turn around an escalating war with Taliban militants that is killing record numbers of foreign troops and Afghan civilians.
Rocket and bomb attacks were reported from Kabul and at least three southern provinces. With the government formally banning news media from mentioning violence to avoid deterring voters, the extent of disruption was unclear. Kabul was calm and voting was light after a five-day spate of car bomb and rocket raids. Heavier voting was reported in the more peaceful north.
While President Hamid Karzai faces a divided opposition and is likely to win re-election, spiraling violence and economic stagnation mean he may not be strengthened politically. “A low turnout in a climate of fear may show the power of the Taliban to disrupt the government,” said Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistans Center for Research & Policy Studies.
Afghan authorities are hoping for a 50 percent turnout, election commission official Zekria Barakzai told Agence France- Presse. That would be a roughly similar number to 2004 but less than the 70 percent of eligible voters who cast ballots then.
Almost 6,200 polling stations opened, short of the 7,000 the election commission had planned to operate, commission official Barakzai said. Officials in southeastern Paktia province, which has a strong Taliban presence, said about 14 percent of stations remained closed because of Taliban opposition, the Afghan news agency Pajhwok reported.
Weaker Government
For the past eight years, Karzai and his international backers have failed to contain the fighting or fulfill Afghans aspirations for an economic recovery from three decades of war.
“Afghanistan and its government may emerge from this election weaker than before, not stronger,” said Mir. Afghans “dont feel the relevance for their daily lives” of either the government or elections, Mir said.
Two militants were killed in a gun battle with security forces near a police station in eastern Kabul, Agence France- Presse reported, citing an unnamed police officer. Taliban also attacked Baghlan town in the north of the country, stopping voting, the agency said. It said 22 guerrillas were killed, citing local police chief Mohammad Kabir Andarabi.
Measured by income, life expectancy and literacy, Afghanistan is the worlds fifth-poorest country, according to a 2007 report by the Afghan government and the United Nations.
Light Trickle
The militants have scattered leaflets in villages and towns warning they will cut off peoples index fingers if they bear the indelible ink that shows they voted.
Dropping his ballot into a clear plastic container, Karzai urged his countrymen to vote. “I request that the Afghan people come out and vote, so through their ballot Afghanistan will be more secure, more peaceful,” Karzai said according to the Associated Press. “Vote. No violence.”
In the 65,000-strong U.S.-led coalition, 281 troops have been killed this year, a rate 50 percent higher than last years record, according to the monitoring group iCasualties. More than 1,000 civilians were killed through June, 20 percent more than last years record high, United Nations figures show.
Obama Shift
The election is a key step as President Barack Obama shifts U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. The U.S. has taken pains to say it neither favors nor opposes Karzai, who many Afghans say is in power because of his international backing.
U.S. policy makers are counting on the “legitimacy that these elections will give Afghans about their own government and about the international role in Afghanistan,” said J. Alexander Thier, director of the Future of Afghanistan project at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.
An April security map prepared by the Afghan government and UN agencies showed that the Taliban either control or pose a “high risk” of attack in 40 percent of Afghanistan, according to Peter Bergen, a senior fellow at the Washington-based New America Foundation.