By DPA,
Kabul : Turnout was low Thursday morning in Afghanistan’s presidential and provincial elections as rockets hit southern and northern provinces, but more voters turned out in the afternoon, defying Taliban threats to disrupt the balloting.
Hundreds of voters were lining up outside some polling stations, and hours-long waits were expected after security forces killed one would-be suicide bomber and arrested two more as they tried to enter polling stations.
Few deaths were reported in the early violence as 200,000 Afghan forces and more than 100,000 international troops provided security for the voting.
About 17 million Afghans are eligible to vote, among them President Hamid Karzai, the frontrunner in the presidential race, who cast his vote at a polling station near the presidential palace in Kabul early in the day.
Karzai is vying for re-election against about 30 candidates, including two women, in the second direct vote for president in the recent history of Afghanistan.
Former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, former finance minister Ashraf Ghani and former planning minister Ramazan Bashardost are the main challengers to the incumbent. All three had once served in Karzai’s government.
Initial turnout in Kabul was about three to four times lower than in the 2004 presidential election, possibly also out of fear of attacks, which in Kabul often occur early in the day, witnesses said.
But one early voter brushed aside the security fears.
“I was excited last night,” said Mohammad Zewar, a Kabul resident who was waiting before the polls opened in front of the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque, where a polling station was located. “I could not sleep and could not wait to come here.”
“The enemies are talking a lot, but I sure they can’t do anything,” he said.
Shaima Dedarshah, a voter at a polling station in central Kabul, also she was not afraid to come out to vote. “I am not afraid because you die once, and if I had not come out, I would have had it all the time, so I had to put the fear behind me.”
While Zewar and Dedarshah’s hopes for a peaceful election day were echoed by voters in other parts of Kabul, the Taliban claimed its militants attacked 16 polling stations throughout the country and closed several others.
Afghan officials confirmed that rockets fired by Taliban militants hit the capitals of at least four provinces, but there were no deaths. Sporadic shooting was also heard in Kabul.
In Kandahar, capital of Kandahar province in the volatile south, voters were reluctant to talk or show their fingers that were inked after they cast their ballots. The Taliban had threatened to cut off the fingers or slit the throats of voters.
The streets of Afghanistan’s second-largest city were quiet as civilian traffic and even bicycles were barred from the roads, leaving only ambulances and security vehicles on patrol.
The polling stations were equally quiet in the morning. Visits to three polling stations over the first three hours of voting revealed no more than 80 people and only one woman turning out as militants fired rockets and exploded bombs in Kandahar, beginning at 3 a.m. (2230 GMT Wednesday).
At least 10 blasts were heard, and police said they discovered and defused 12 homemade bombs.
The explosions waned in the afternoon, and voter numbers rose.
Defence Ministry spokesman Aahir Azimi said Thursday afternoon that reports from the provinces showed that the feared violence had not materialised and he described the conditions in Afghanistan as “normal”.
Thomas Ruttig, an election observer in the south-eastern province of Paktia, said he had expected worse.
“I drove out with a bit of fear that has not proven true,” said the co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent policy research organization.
However, he also spoke of a “very mixed picture”, saying turnout in districts near the provincial capital, Gardez, was low although those areas were quiet while districts farther from Gardez were hit by rockets. The Taliban blocked roads in one district to prevent voters from reaching polling stations, Ruttig said.
Turnout was good in the provincial capital of Gardez until a suicide bomber was killed at a polling station there, he said. Azimi told Tolo television that police shot the bomber before he could enter the polling centre.
Two other suicide bombers were arrested trying to enter polling stations in the northern province of Takhar, provincial police chief Ziauddin Mahmoodi said.
Meanwhile, in the northern province of Baghlan, a district police chief was killed when militants attacked a police post, a security source in the province said.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0230 GMT), and voting is to continue until 4 p.m. (1130 GMT). Initial results were expected about 48 hours after the polls close, the Independent Election Commission said.
Voters were electing not only a president but also 420 provincial council members for the country’s 34 provinces.
More than 270,000 election observers, including 2,000 foreign observers, were overseeing the balloting at more than 6,500 polling centres while the commission said it was unable to open voting stations in nine districts that remain outside government control.
Although Karzai led in recent opinion polls, he was not expected to receive more than 50 percent of the vote to win the election outright. If no candidate posts a first-round majority, a run-off would be held the first week of October.