Afghan Election Quiet After Months Of Violence

by IPS/Pajhwok Afghan News Agency

(IPS) KABUL -- Afghanistan's landmark national assembly and provincial elections passed off in relative peace on Sunday, though marred somewhat by charges of coercion by partisan officials and by stray violence.

A rocket attack on the capital, injuring a security guard, and other incidents of violence indicated continuing opposition to the elections overseen by 30,000 United States-led allied troops.

Some 5,800 candidates are in the electoral fray, widely seen as the next step towards a democratic polity, in the war-ravaged country, after last October's presidential elections in which the U.S.-backed, Hamid Karzai emerged victorious.

Of Afghanistan's 28 million people, 12 million people were eligible to vote in Sunday's elections which are being fought on a non-party basis and largely along ethnic lines and ancient tribal loyalties.

Karzai's victory marked an end to years of tribal conflict among mujahideen (freedom fighter) warlords that successfully ousted Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s, but then fell upon each other.

Indeed, many of the candidates are former mujahideen commanders, who fought Soviet troops, while others had fought alongside U.S. troops to overthrow the fundamentalist, Taliban regime in late 2001.

With such a history, candidates were prone to using force or personal influence in Sunday's polling which, however, was peaceful, considering that nearly 1,200 people perished in violence during the last six months, including seven candidates.

Residents of Baghlan, Kapisa and Herat provinces told reporters from the Pajhwok Afghan News agency that some polling agents, staff and police officials had forced them to cast votes for particular candidates.

In Mahmud Raqi, provincial capital of Kapisa, a group of voters complained that the supporters of Iqbal Safi, a candidate for the Wolesi Jirga (249-seat lower house of parliament), tried to coerce them while concerned authorities failed to intervene.

The official in charge of polling in the area, Mohammad Sabir, admitted that some people were found using unfair means, but added that they were stopped.

But voters including women and older citizens turned out in strength in many areas. In the southeastern Khost province, a 130-year-old voter, Pattak Khan, who was helped into a polling station by family members, said he was "pleased that men and women were taking part in building Afghanistan."

Karzai was among the first to cast his vote at a polling station set up within the sprawling presidential palace. "I am very happy that the people of Afghanistan are able, after 30 years of pain and suffering, to elect their representatives," he said.

Karzai said he saw Sunday as day of self-determination for Afghans. "It is a matter of great happiness, thank God, that today the people of Afghanistan are electing their national assembly and provincial council delegates."

But voting was thin in areas still under the spell of the Taliban (Islamic scholars) whose government was ousted in the 'war-against-terror,' unleashed on them by the armed forces of the U.S, and its western allies, following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Karzai's mother, Sirajo Karzai, was among those who exercized their franchise at a polling station in the southern city of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. "The elections being held under my son's presidency give me immense pleasure," she told Pajhwok.

The president's mother was flooded with requests from women, who had come to vote in a city where they were invisible just five years ago because of severe restrictions placed on women by the Taliban.

In poll-related violence, two rockets landed in the high-security Pul-i-Charkhi area of Kabul soon after polling began. Zalmai, a police official, told Pajhwok that the attack was launched from the mountains overlooking the city, and that one the rockets had wounded a security guard.

Pitted against the Karzai government and its policies is the National Understanding Front, led by opposition leader Muhammed Yunus Qanooni, who stood against Karzai in the October presidential elections and collected the second largest number of votes.

Among issues the elections are being fought over are charges of corruption levelled against the Karzai regime which is heavily backed by the powerful Pashtun community, to which the president belongs.

Results from counting the ballot booklets are not likely to be completed for at least three weeks.