By Kim Sengupta in Nad-e Ali and Jerome Starkey in Lashkar Gah
Millions of Afghans defied Taliban threats to cast their ballot in the country’s second-ever presidential election yesterday but the turnout looked to be well down on the poll that brought Hamid Karzai to power, hinting at turbulence when initial results are announced in a few days time.
The Associated Press reported that only 40-50 per cent of Afghanistan’s 15 million registered voters had cast ballots, compared to 70 per cent in 2004. But Mr Karzai brushed aside such concerns and praised Afghans for having the courage to take part in the democratic process.
“The Afghan people braved rockets, bombs and intimidation and came out to vote,” he said after the polls closed. “We’ll see what the turnout was, but they came out to vote. That is great.”
Earlier in the day, the incumbent cast his ballot at a Kabul high school. Dressed in his traditional purple and green-striped robe, he dipped his index finger into indelible ink – used to prevent people voting twice – and held his hand aloft for the cameras. Heading into yesterday’s vote, opinion polls gave him 44 per cent of the vote, almost 20 points ahead of his nearest rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah but not more than the 50 per cent needed to avoid a run-off.
Barack Obama has made Afghan-istan his war, boosting the number of US troops to more than 60,000 in a bid to decisively crush the Taliban, and after the polls closed he commented: “We had what appears to be a successful election in Afghanistan, despite the Taliban’s efforts to disrupt it.” His envoy for the region, Richard Holbrooke, toured polling stations in the capital Kabul and declared: “So far every prediction of disaster has turned out to be wrong.”
Afghan electoral officials said 6,192 polling stations had opened from the mountains of the north to the poppy fields of the south, about 94 per cent of the planned total. The government said nine civilians and 14 members of the security forces had been killed in a total of 135 incidents across the country on polling day. Voting was extended for an hour to compensate for some temporary security closures.
In Lashkar Gah, the capital of the volatile southern province of Helmand, the polls had been open less than 20 minutes when the first Taliban rocket hit. Just metres from the edge of a football field where election officials were still waiting for their first voter, the young boy lay dying. (Read more)
