http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pol...?oneclick=true
Historic vote underway in Afghanistan
September 18, 2005 - 5:06PM
Moving forward ... an Afghan boy rides his bicycle past a monument plastered with electoral posters in the city of Herat.
Photo: AFP
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Afghans streamed into polling stations today for the country's first parliamentary elections in more than 30 years under tight security after Taliban militants vowed to disrupt the vote.
Despite security concerns officials expected a high turnout among the nearly 12.5 million Afghans eligible to vote in the next phase of a difficult path to democracy launched after the hardline Islamic regime fell in late 2001.
On the ballot papers voters will find a cross section of Afghanistan's strife-torn society, including warlords, drug kingpins, mullahs and - marking a step forward for the conservative country - women.
"I will vote for anyone who will help my country," said Abdul Rahim, 42, queuing to vote beneath the blue domes of the grand mosque in the western city of Herat.
President Hamid Karzai, who won Afghanistan's first presidential election in October 2004, said the vote showed the country was leaving behind decades of ruinous conflict.
"After 30 years of war, intervention and misery, today Afghanistan is moving forward," Karzai said as he cast his ballot at a special polling centre for senior officials in Kabul.
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Advertisement"It is making an economy, making political ins utions and today we are completing the whole process, completing the laying down of the foundation of the Afghan state ... That is why we are making history."
The 26,000 polling stations, scattered from the parched southern deserts to the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains, opened at 6am (1130 AEST) and were due to close at 4pm (2130 AEST).
Officials said voting hours may be extended to allow for queues as Afghans struggle with the newspaper-sized ballots required to fit in the 5,800 candidates taking part.
Full results are not expected until late October.
The UN, helping to organise election, has said voters should not be intimidated by Taliban warnings that they could be hurt if they go to the polls.
A e in violence linked to Taliban militants has left more than 1,000 people dead this year including a seventh candidate killed on Thursday.
Two policemen and four suspected Taliban rebels were killed in attacks hours before the polls opened but they did not affect voting, officials said.
Insurgents attacked a security post in the eastern province of Khost, killing two policemen and wounding two US soldiers and an Afghan soldier, Khost police chief Mohammed Ayob said.
Three suspected Taliban were also killed. Another was killed when he attacked a polling station in the southern province of Helmand late yesterday.
On the eve of the election security forces arrested 20 rebels who were laying bombs to blow up a dam in southern Afghanistan, while three policemen were killed in the capital late on Friday, government officials said.
Around 100,000 Afghan troops and police were deployed to secure the election, supported by 20,000 US-led coalition troops and 10,500 NATO-led peacekeepers.
Election organisers said first reports indicated that security problems had affected only a handful of polling centres.
Up for grabs are 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the national assembly, and 420 seats on the 34 provincial councils.
Sixty-eight seats have been reserved for women on the national assembly, a dramatic turnaround in the conservative country where women were barred from public life and forced to wear all-covering burqas under the Taliban.
W is such a fascist, racist, misogynist...Hitler!Sixty-eight seats have been reserved for women on the national assembly, a dramatic turnaround in the conservative country where women were barred from public life and forced to wear all-covering burqas under the Taliban.
W...spreading liberalism around the world better than any ing liberal ever has.
It's funny...the Iraq and Afghan parliaments have better female representation than America does...this in countries where womens rights were non-existent from time immemorial.
Afghans vote despite Taliban raids
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/news..._UK-AFGHAN.xml
David Brunnstrom
KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban fighters tried on Sunday to sabotage Afghanistan's first legislative election in decades, but voters still turned out for a ballot President Hamid Karzai said was a defining moment in the nation's struggle to rebuild.
More than a dozen attacks were launched across the southeast and two rockets were fired into a U.N. compound near an election centre in Kabul shortly after polls opened.
Only one rocket exploded, slightly wounding an Afghan worker, an election official said, and the joint Afghan-U.N. election commission said, on the whole, voting was remarkably peaceful.
"I'm so happy, I couldn't sleep last night and was watching the clock to come out to vote," said Qari Salahuddin, 21, at a polling station in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
About 12.5 million Afghans are registered to vote in the U.N.-organised $159 million (88 million pound) polls for a lower house of parliament and councils, the first legislative election since 1969.
"Calm is prevailing in most areas and voters are flowing into our polling centres in a mood of call and joy," said Peter Erben, the election commission's chief electoral officer.
About 160,000 staff are on duty at more than 6,000 polling stations in some of the most scenic and remote terrain on earth, from the desert in the south to valleys among the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains in the north.
"I am so happy, so happy," says Khatereh Mushafiq, 18, her black veil decorated with white flowers pulled back from her beaming face as she went to vote at a girl's school in Kandahar.
"We (women) are also now taking part in the government and in society. People must take part, people must have a say."
MAKING HISTORY
The elections are part of an international plan to restore democracy in the Muslim country after the Taliban's overthrow in 2001. Karzai won presidential elections last year, the first in the nation's history.
"(It) is the day of self-determination for the Afghan people," Karzai told reporters after voting at a heavily guarded state guest house.
"That is why we are making history after 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations and misery."
Yunus Qanuni, who came second to Karzai last year and now heads an opposition bloc, criticised the exclusion of political parties from the process but still urged people to vote.
The election, which ends at 4 p.m. (12:30 p.m. British time), is expected to produce a fragmented national assembly focussing on local interests but Qanuni has vowed to challenge Karzai, who has not been involved in campaigning.
SEVEN PAGES
There were some reports of confusion over ballot papers that in some places list nearly 400 candidates, their photos and personal symbols, and run to up to seven pages. Across the country there are 5,800 candidates, all standing as individuals.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said militants had carried out 39 attacks, including the rocket attack in Kabul.
The insurgents had vowed, but failed, to disrupt preparations for the election, which comes nearly four years after U.S.-led troops drove the fundamentalist Islamic rulers from power.
Protecting voters are about 100,000 troops, including about 20,000 from a U.S.-led force and 10,000 NATO-led peacekeepers.
Seven candidates and six poll workers were killed in the run-up to the vote and police said attackers threw grenades into the house of a candidate in Nangarhar province in the east overnight, wounding five of his family.
Two policemen and three insurgents were killed in an ambush near the Pakistani border and a Taliban fighter was killed in an overnight attack on a polling station.
A U.S. military spokesman said there had been small attacks in more than a dozen areas in the southern and eastern provinces of Khost, Kandahar and Kunar.
A French soldier was killed and one seriously wounded when their vehicle hit a landmine in the south on Saturday, the Defence Ministry in Paris said.
I didn't see too many women in line...
That place is like the moon on acid.. (Afganistan).
Going into Afghanistan wasn't done to spread democracy, but to go after al Quaida and Taliban and only because of 9/11 (as for the blacks in NO, Repubs didn't give a about Afghanistan until 9/11). Having broken the country, the USA stayed to try to make it a democracy. An honorable goal, but USA will not have the staying power to get Afghanistan on its self-defensible, democratically stable footing. The jihadis simply want Afghanistan more than the USA, just like the Viet Namese wanted Viet Nam more than the USA did.
As always, the shifty rationales, goalposts, revisionism are always shifting with you right-wingers.
The country is still not pacified after 4 years, as brutally demonstrated by the attacks on the voters. Certainly had dubya finished, or concentrated on, the job in Afghanistan, rather than starting a bogus war in Iraq, Afghanistan would be truly pacified and much further down the path to civilization.
Without the USA/allies occupying Afghanistan, the country will revert to its age-old tribalism and Muslim "principles", which would be tough for today's hapless voters, but as a Muslim country and jihadi hot-spot, the ultimate fate of Afghanistan will be decided NOT by the USA (same story as Viet Nam).
Dude, you really need to go to college and learn some world view outside of the left wing talking points croutons.
Who said it's shifty? The US has always engaged in nation building, even with democratic leadership. Look in the mirror dumbass.As always, the shifty rationales, goalposts, revisionism are always shifting with you right-wingers.
The US could stay there in force for the next 100 years, it would never be pacified. That doesn't reflect failure on the Bush administration for giong into Iraq. People in that part of the world have been fighting for 1500 yearsThe country is still not pacified after 4 years, as brutally demonstrated by the attacks on the voters. Certainly had dubya finished, or concentrated on, the job in Afghanistan, rather than starting a bogus war in Iraq, Afghanistan would be truly pacified and much further down the path to civilization.
Dude, you really need to go to college and learn some world view outside of the left wing talking points croutons.
Who said it's shifty? The US has always engaged in nation building, even with democratic leadership. Look in the mirror dumbass.As always, the shifty rationales, goalposts, revisionism are always shifting with you right-wingers.
The US could stay there in force for the next 100 years, it would never be pacified. That doesn't reflect failure on the Bush administration for giong into Iraq. People in that part of the world have been fighting for 1500 years, it ain't gonna stop because the good old US of A is in the hood for a while.The country is still not pacified after 4 years, as brutally demonstrated by the attacks on the voters. Certainly had dubya finished, or concentrated on, the job in Afghanistan, rather than starting a bogus war in Iraq, Afghanistan would be truly pacified and much further down the path to civilization.
Damn, I hate ignorant liberals...
"The US has always engaged in nation building"
dubya SPECIFICALLY, sniffily said in the 2000 election, paraphrase, "I don't do nation building", playing to the isolationist, libertarian votes, and attacking Clinton role in Balkans, Haiti, wherever.
US did not go into Afhanistan or Iraq do to nation building but for exclusivley for retaliation for 9/11 and for WMD (pre-emptive defense, Iraq was going to attack USA even more, after Iraq had caused 9/11).
To talk about nation-building only after going in is shifing the objectives, rationales.
"it ain't gonna stop because the good old US of A is in the hood for a while."
Exactly, so when the US leaves, Afghanistan and Iraq will both fall to jihidis, Iranians, whatever. Afghanistan I supported, still do. But Iraq is total bull , US and Iraqi blood in the sand for Repub lies.
elpimpo4cc, the 4cc is your brain volume, estimate on the high side. plonk!
Bush isn't the first politician to speak out of both sides of his mouth. He won't be the last. And it's not just the Republicans.dubya SPECIFICALLY, sniffily said in the 2000 election, paraphrase, "I don't do nation building",
, for someone with as much hate as you show, you sure are doing a good job of holding Bush and republicans to standards that don't seem to apply to your "leaders" on the left.
Typical bull , head in the sand liberal.
He didn't do nation building till 911 left him with a ghost enemy.
Then nation building was one of the only things on the list.
And what better to piss off about every Islmonut on earth and to start with slapping saddam and his cronies like Tarak Aziz.
#1. The role of Nation Builder is supposed to fall to the UN...they aren't doing except protecting the most dictatorial backwards regimes in the world...
They don't want to serve their purpose in Afghanistan or Iraq....because they might get hurt.
The UN's role in the world today is to protect dictators, and them spend the rest of their time making resolutions and preventing any change in the hole status of third world countries...my guess is because it is run by the aristocracy of these third world countries and these guys are more pre-occupied with power and wealth than they are the humanitarian crisis they are enbabling and encouraging.
Meanwhile the evil Imperialists here in America are doing a better job of improving human rights conditions than the UN has ever done.
Bush doesn't want to build nations...he just doesn't have any alternative since the UN are corrupt cowards unwilling to make any sort of personal sacrifice to make the world a better place.
I mean Saddam is gone now...so even though the UN was against us enforcing their resolutions and clearly sided with a dictator...they should be in Iraq...but they aren't...because it's scary. They want to just leave it in a 3rd world state and about the US not doing anything to change it...that's what they do...that's all they do. They'd like nothing more than for us to pull out of Iraq...or let it fall to the most hostile fascist ideology in the world...then they could about us doing nothing.
But of course if one of France's colonies is getting uppity the UN is only too happy to go and prop it up...
You got rambo's gun? Which one 1 2 or 3?
I have not seen 2 or 3....
"as much hate as you show"
dissent against dubya and BS Repug Iraq war is not hate, but when dubya's bogus war in Iraq is causing so many wasted deaths and 1000s of knock-on problems, the dissent is white-hot.
"your "leaders" on the left."
right now, dubya is in the kithchen of "leading", he takes the heat.
I am not a liberal, but throw your BS out your ass, if you can pull your right-wing ideological head out of it.
Make a post about Iraq .... this is about Afgan Elections..
That was like out in left field not even on target.
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