Afghans Vote in Strong Numbers Despite Dangers

Braving cold, rain and Taliban attacks, Afghans gathered in such long lines at polling places that voting hours were extended nationwide so they could cast their ballots to choose the successor to President Hamid Karzai on Saturday. Rather than the widespread disruption that the Taliban had promised in recent months, the thing most on display was determination, as Afghans turned out in higher numbers than expected, including in some places where votes were scarce in the 2009 election. There was no heavy barrage of attacks, though fears of potential violence did keep roughly one in eight polling centers closed nationwide.

For the first time, Afghans were voting on what appeared to be an open field of candidates, after Mr. Karzai's dozen years in power. Accordingly, no one expected a quick result from the vote on Saturday: the top three candidates were expected to closely divide up the vote, and a runoff election seemed certain. That election would likely be held no sooner than May 28, continuing Mr. 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 percent threshold that would allow them to win outright. The leading candidates going into the vote were Ashraf Ghani, 64, a technocrat and former official in Mr. Karzai’s government; Abdullah Abdullah, 53, a former foreign minister who was the second biggest vote-getter against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 election; and Zalmay Rassoul, 70, another former foreign minister, who is the only major candidate with a woman on his ticket as vice-presidential candidate, Habiba Sarobi. Informal polls in recent weeks showed Mr. Abdullah and Mr. 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 Mr. 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, swamped by a heavy rain, were almost entirely devoid of vehicle traffic, except for members of the police force and the military, who were on duty at 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 a.m. in Kabul and other major cities. “People have realized that electing the president is far more important than standing in the rain,” said a 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 mobilized 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 no direct involvement except in case of an extreme emergency.

Authorities did not expect that, however, as the overall level of violence in the months leading to the voting was much lower than before the vote in the summer of 2009, when Mr. Karzai was re-elected in 2009. This time, the Afghan security forces are nearly twice as numerous, and the election is taking place before the traditional start of the fighting season, both factors that have reduced violence by anywhere from 9 to 25 percent compared to the pre-election period in 2009, according to United Nations officials.

A series of high-profile attacks on foreigners, including the murder on Friday of an Associated Press photographer and the wounding of her colleague, created an impression of greater violence, but were also indications that 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 police officer was killed in attacks on convoys of election officials delivering materials, in Logar Province, according to the Afghan police. Halfway through election day, four voters were reported killed in a smattering of incidents, including two in insurgent attacks in the east — one in Kunar Province, the other in Paktia province.

A bomb set off at a polling place in the Mohammad Agha district of Logar killed two voters and wounded two others, but the polling place reopened half an hour later, according to the district governor, Abdul Hamid. An election observer there, Qazi Nasim Modaser, said, “Now people are going back to the polling station.”

Even before voting began, the authorities had already closed 750 polling centers, just over 10 percent 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. The 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, this year’s election is a huge enterprise, especially given Afghanistan’s forbidding terrain. Some 3,200 donkeys were pressed into service to deliver ballots to remote mountain villages, which along with battalions of trucks and minibuses, reached 6,500 polling places in all. The American military pitched in with air transport of ballots to regional distribution centers 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. The American ambassador, James Cunningham, called the election a “really historic opportunity for the people of Afghanistan to move forward with something we’ve been trying to create together with them for several years now.”

Despite an increasingly troubled relationship between the Americans and Mr. Karzai, who refused to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States, Mr. Cunningham said he had assurances from all the candidates that whoever won would sign the agreement upon taking office.

Many of the worst fears about this year’s election — that Mr. Karzai would cancel them on security grounds or try to amend the constitution to prolong his tenure in power — did not materialize. Mr. Karzai pledged to stay out of the election campaign and not support any candidate, although there was no legal requirement for him to do so, and he forced his brother Qayum out of the race so that he would not be accused of trying to start a family dynasty.

While there were persistent reports that Mr. Karzai’s government was quietly shoring up Mr. Rassoul as a preferred candidate, there was also evidence of government support in various parts of the country for all three leading candidates.

The Taliban for their part vowed to derail the elections and punish anyone who voted — easily identifiable by the ink their fingers would be dipped in to confirm they had cast their votes. This time, election officials used two types of ink: 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 that participation seemed unlikely. And many places officially opened before the election might be closed on election day itself, officials conceded. How often that happened will be a closely watched bellwether of the validity of the results.

“Voting on this day will be a slap to the faces of the terrorists,” said Rahmatullah Nabil, the acting head of the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan domestic intelligence agency. But some were still too concerned to vote. “I won’t cast my vote because last night the Taliban came to us and warned us that we will be killed if we choose to vote,” said Parwiz, a 30-year-old villager from Bati Kot district in Nangarhar province, where at least 23 percent of the polling centers were closed, and many others were in dangerous areas.

Others were defiant.

“Threats exist always and we are used to it,” said Jahanzaib, 28, a farmer from Mohmand Dara district in Nangarhar. “I will use my vote. That is my right and the only way to transfer power from President Karzai to someone else.”

Hajji Noor Mohammad, a farmer in Panjwai District, in Kandahar Province, was unable to vote in 2009 because there were so many Taliban around. He plans to vote this time, he said.

“Today most people realize the importance of the election because the tribal elders were now telling us to use our vote and come out,” he said.

Noting the Taliban threat to disrupt the election, Nicholas Haysom, the United Nations’ top election official here, said, “The failure to disrupt the elections will mean that they will have egg on their face after the elections.” More women than ever are on provincial ballots, and two are running for vice-president, marking the first time a woman has ever run for national office here.

At the women’s polling station in the Nadaria High School, in Kabul’s Qala-e-Fatullah neighborhood, among those lining up to vote was Parwash Naseri, 21. Although wearing the blue burqa that is traditional here, she was still willing to speak out through the privacy mesh covering her face.

She was voting for the first time for her children, and for women’s rights, she said, speaking in a whisper.

“I believe in the right of women to take part just as men do, to get themselves educated and to work.”