Braving cold, rain and threats of Taliban attacks, Afghans gathered in long lines at polling places Saturday to cast their ballots to choose the successor to President Hamid Karzai.
If successful, the election will mark the first time Afghans have changed their leader at the polls in modern history, bringing to an end Karzai's dozen years in power.
No one expected a quick result, however; with three leading candidates likely to divide up the vote, none was expected to get the necessary 50 per cent to win on Saturday, and a runoff election was almost certain; it would likely be held no sooner than May 28, continuing Karzai's time in office for another two months at least. Even partial official results were not expected for a week.
With eight candidates in the race, the five minor candidates' shares of the vote made it even more difficult for any one candidate to reach the 50 per cent threshold.
The top three vote-getters are expected to be Ashraf Ghani, 64, a technocrat and former official in Karzai's government; Abdullah Abdullah, 53, a former foreign minister who was the second biggest vote-getter against Karzai in the 2009 election; and Zalmay Rassoul, 70, another former foreign minister, the only major candidate with a woman on his ticket as vice-presidential candidate, Habiba Sarobi. Polls showed Abdullah and Ghani in the lead, but polling in Afghanistan is notoriously unreliable.
Early in the day, in a high school near the presidential palace, an emotional Karzai cast his own vote for his successor. "I as a citizen of Afghanistan did this with happiness and pride," he said afterward.
The streets of the capital were almost entirely devoid of traffic, except for members of the police force and the military, who manned checkpoints every few hundred feet and searched nearly everyone passing by. Most people walked to vote. Long lines had already formed when polls opened at 7 am in a heavy rain in Kabul.
"People have realised that electing the president is far more important than standing in the rain," said one voter, Abdullah Abdullah, 24, who had the same name as the candidate he said he was planning to vote for at a Kabul high school polling place. "Whenever there has been a new king or president, it has been accompanied by death and violence," said Abdul Wakil Amiri, an attorney who turned out early to vote at a Kabul mosque. "For the first time, we are experiencing democracy."
To provide security for the voting, the Afghan government mobilised its entire military and police forces, some 350,000 in all, backed up by 53,000 NATO coalition troops - although the Americans and their allies planned to not get directly involved except in case of an extreme emergency.
A series of high-profile attacks on foreigners, including the murder of an Associated Press photographer and the wounding of her colleague, created an impression of greater violence, but were also indications that the insurgents did not have as much capacity to strike forcefully during this campaign. They did not manage a single major attack on any campaign event, for instance, and two attacks on the Independent Election Commission had little direct effect on the voting.
In the days before the voting, only one policeman was killed in attacks on convoys of election officials delivering materials, in Logar Province, according to the Afghan military. On election day, a bomb set off at a polling place in Mohammad Agha district of Logar injured four voters, while in Baraki Barak district voters complained that Taliban were in the streets preventing people from voting, Afghan officials said.
Even before the voting began, the authorities had already closed 750 polling centres, just over 10 per cent of the total, because of security concerns, and there were fears more would be closed on election day. Just how many would likely be a key issue in the aftermath of the voting, especially if closures were seen as disenfranchising one ethnic group over another.
Along with the threat of violence, the legacy of fraud from past elections cast a long shadow over Saturday's voting. Authorities have gone to unusual extremes to try to guarantee an election at least credible enough to satisfy international donors, who have pledged to continue supporting Afghanistan with billions of dollars in aid, but want to be assured of an election free of the sort of widespread fraud that discredited the 2009 voting.
Underwritten by $100 million from the United Nations and foreign donors, the election was a huge enterprise by Afghan standards. Some 3,200 donkeys were pressed into service to deliver ballots to remote mountain villages, along with battalions of trucks and minibuses to reach 6,500 polling places in all. The American military pitched in with air transport of ballots to regional distribution centres and to difficult-to-reach provinces.
While many international election observers fled the country in the wake of attacks on foreigners, or found themselves confined to quarters in Kabul, years of expensive preparations and the training of an army of some 70,000 Afghan election observers were expected to compensate, according to Western diplomats and Afghan election officials.
"We have so many controls now, it's going to be much safer this time," said Noor Ahmad Noor, the spokesman for the Independent Election Commission.
Many of the worst fears about this year's election have already failed to materialise. Many suspected that President Karzai would cancel them on security grounds, or even try to amend the constitution to prolong his stay in power; neither happened.
He pledged to stay out of the election campaign and not support any of the candidates, although there was no legal requirement for him to do so, and he forced his brother Qayuum out of the race so that he would not be accused of trying to start a family dynasty.
While there were persistent reports that Karzai's government was quietly supporting his preferred candidate, Rassoul, there was also evidence of government support in various parts of the country for all three of the leading candidates.
The Taliban for their part vowed to derail the elections and punish anyone who voted. Those who did would have to have their fingers dipped in indelible ink, and this time two types would be used to prevent fraud: invisible ultraviolet ink on one finger, and blue silver-nitrate ink on another. During the last election, it was discovered that nail polish remover could be used to remove the ink; this year, the solution is far more impermeable, meaning voters in troubled areas could be identified by insurgents for some three days.
That made the turnout in conflict areas all the more impressive. While in some provinces, such as Helmand, 72 of the 219 polling centers were closed because of security concerns, in others where there had been relatively little voting in 2009 many were opened.
In Kandahar province, for instance, the police chief, Abdul Raziq, said 234 of 244 polling centers would be open on election day. That did not assure people would vote at all of them, however, as some open polling places were in such dangerous areas participation seemed unlikely. And, many places officially opened before the election might be closed on election day itself, officials conceded. How often that happened would be a closely watched bellwether of the validity of the results.
If successful, the election will mark the first time Afghans have changed their leader at the polls in modern history, bringing to an end Karzai's dozen years in power.
No one expected a quick result, however; with three leading candidates likely to divide up the vote, none was expected to get the necessary 50 per cent to win on Saturday, and a runoff election was almost certain; it would likely be held no sooner than May 28, continuing Karzai's time in office for another two months at least. Even partial official results were not expected for a week.
With eight candidates in the race, the five minor candidates' shares of the vote made it even more difficult for any one candidate to reach the 50 per cent threshold.
The top three vote-getters are expected to be Ashraf Ghani, 64, a technocrat and former official in Karzai's government; Abdullah Abdullah, 53, a former foreign minister who was the second biggest vote-getter against Karzai in the 2009 election; and Zalmay Rassoul, 70, another former foreign minister, the only major candidate with a woman on his ticket as vice-presidential candidate, Habiba Sarobi. Polls showed Abdullah and Ghani in the lead, but polling in Afghanistan is notoriously unreliable.
Early in the day, in a high school near the presidential palace, an emotional Karzai cast his own vote for his successor. "I as a citizen of Afghanistan did this with happiness and pride," he said afterward.
The streets of the capital were almost entirely devoid of traffic, except for members of the police force and the military, who manned checkpoints every few hundred feet and searched nearly everyone passing by. Most people walked to vote. Long lines had already formed when polls opened at 7 am in a heavy rain in Kabul.
"People have realised that electing the president is far more important than standing in the rain," said one voter, Abdullah Abdullah, 24, who had the same name as the candidate he said he was planning to vote for at a Kabul high school polling place. "Whenever there has been a new king or president, it has been accompanied by death and violence," said Abdul Wakil Amiri, an attorney who turned out early to vote at a Kabul mosque. "For the first time, we are experiencing democracy."
To provide security for the voting, the Afghan government mobilised its entire military and police forces, some 350,000 in all, backed up by 53,000 NATO coalition troops - although the Americans and their allies planned to not get directly involved except in case of an extreme emergency.
A series of high-profile attacks on foreigners, including the murder of an Associated Press photographer and the wounding of her colleague, created an impression of greater violence, but were also indications that the insurgents did not have as much capacity to strike forcefully during this campaign. They did not manage a single major attack on any campaign event, for instance, and two attacks on the Independent Election Commission had little direct effect on the voting.
In the days before the voting, only one policeman was killed in attacks on convoys of election officials delivering materials, in Logar Province, according to the Afghan military. On election day, a bomb set off at a polling place in Mohammad Agha district of Logar injured four voters, while in Baraki Barak district voters complained that Taliban were in the streets preventing people from voting, Afghan officials said.
Even before the voting began, the authorities had already closed 750 polling centres, just over 10 per cent of the total, because of security concerns, and there were fears more would be closed on election day. Just how many would likely be a key issue in the aftermath of the voting, especially if closures were seen as disenfranchising one ethnic group over another.
Along with the threat of violence, the legacy of fraud from past elections cast a long shadow over Saturday's voting. Authorities have gone to unusual extremes to try to guarantee an election at least credible enough to satisfy international donors, who have pledged to continue supporting Afghanistan with billions of dollars in aid, but want to be assured of an election free of the sort of widespread fraud that discredited the 2009 voting.
Underwritten by $100 million from the United Nations and foreign donors, the election was a huge enterprise by Afghan standards. Some 3,200 donkeys were pressed into service to deliver ballots to remote mountain villages, along with battalions of trucks and minibuses to reach 6,500 polling places in all. The American military pitched in with air transport of ballots to regional distribution centres and to difficult-to-reach provinces.
While many international election observers fled the country in the wake of attacks on foreigners, or found themselves confined to quarters in Kabul, years of expensive preparations and the training of an army of some 70,000 Afghan election observers were expected to compensate, according to Western diplomats and Afghan election officials.
"We have so many controls now, it's going to be much safer this time," said Noor Ahmad Noor, the spokesman for the Independent Election Commission.
Many of the worst fears about this year's election have already failed to materialise. Many suspected that President Karzai would cancel them on security grounds, or even try to amend the constitution to prolong his stay in power; neither happened.
He pledged to stay out of the election campaign and not support any of the candidates, although there was no legal requirement for him to do so, and he forced his brother Qayuum out of the race so that he would not be accused of trying to start a family dynasty.
While there were persistent reports that Karzai's government was quietly supporting his preferred candidate, Rassoul, there was also evidence of government support in various parts of the country for all three of the leading candidates.
The Taliban for their part vowed to derail the elections and punish anyone who voted. Those who did would have to have their fingers dipped in indelible ink, and this time two types would be used to prevent fraud: invisible ultraviolet ink on one finger, and blue silver-nitrate ink on another. During the last election, it was discovered that nail polish remover could be used to remove the ink; this year, the solution is far more impermeable, meaning voters in troubled areas could be identified by insurgents for some three days.
That made the turnout in conflict areas all the more impressive. While in some provinces, such as Helmand, 72 of the 219 polling centers were closed because of security concerns, in others where there had been relatively little voting in 2009 many were opened.
In Kandahar province, for instance, the police chief, Abdul Raziq, said 234 of 244 polling centers would be open on election day. That did not assure people would vote at all of them, however, as some open polling places were in such dangerous areas participation seemed unlikely. And, many places officially opened before the election might be closed on election day itself, officials conceded. How often that happened would be a closely watched bellwether of the validity of the results.
© 2014 The New York Times News Service