AFGHANISTAN’S TOP election body gave warning yesterday that Taliban insurgents are expected to mount vicious attacks on polling stations during today’s presidential and provincial polls.
Zekria Barakzai, the deputy chief of Afghanistan's independent election commission, told the Financial Timesthe country had received a "clear sign" that militants were determined to strike at the infrastructure of the election as voters went to the polls. He said that fighters were targeting individual polling stations and sites.
Afghan officials and security experts had expected Taliban forces to concentrate their attacks on Nato and Afghan forces and government institutions in the run-up to the election, rather than terrorise civilians at polling stations.
The threat of attacks could keep voters away from polling stations and undermine the legitimacy of a closely contested election that has pitted President Hamid Karzai against almost 40 rivals. Turnout is expected to be about 40 per cent in the south and 60 per cent in the north.
“It’s an organised campaign to disrupt the process,” Mr Barakzai. “We have different types of Taliban. Local Taliban will not [do harm to the election]. They have links with tribal elders and they don’t have the will to disturb the process. But we have foreign Taliban whose aim is to cause disruption and bring chaos.”
He referred in particular to Taliban from Pakistan, Chechnya and the Arab world.
The official’s comments were made after four election workers were killed in Badakshan, in the north of the country, on Tuesday when their car hit a roadside bomb. The attack showed that the militants were prepared to strike well outside of what is considered the usual battleground of the insurgency in the south and east.
The campaign teams of the presidential candidates also said they feared violence towards the country’s 17 million voters today.
“We expect attacks on polling stations,” said Sediq Sediqqi, a campaign manager for Mr Karzai.
“When the Taliban were in power they were cruel. The fear of their cruelty is still here for everyone in Afghanistan. That fear makes them [powerful].”
The election commission has distributed about 85 per cent of its voting materials in a country where the mountainous terrain, quite apart from a raging insurgency, make elections some of the most challenging in the world.
It hopes to open 6,500 polling stations across the country, but concedes some parts of the country are unreachable. Mr Barakzai’s biggest worries were security and the influence of powerful leaders in remote areas to skew election results.
The Taliban has launched attacks on Kabul in the past few days in an effort to sap confidence in the election. Yesterday, three gunmen attacked a bank in Kabul, close to the presidential palace. A rocket was also fired into a district near Kabul’s centre.
These high-profile incidents are combining with local intimidation. In Zabol province in the Pashtun belt, local residents said they had been ordered to stay at home on pain of death. - (Copyright Financial Times Service 2009)