Afghans Vote in Strong Numbers Despite Taliban Threat

At NYT, "AFGHAN TURNOUT IS HIGH AS VOTERS DEFY THE TALIBAN":

KABUL, Afghanistan — Defying a campaign of Taliban violence that unleashed 39 suicide bombers in the two months before Election Day, Afghan voters on Saturday turned out in such numbers to choose a new president and provincial councils that polling hours were extended nationwide, in a triumph of determination over intimidation.

Militants failed to mount a single major attack anywhere in Afghanistan by the time polls closed, and voters lined up despite heavy rain and cold in the capital and elsewhere.

“Whenever there has been a new king or president, it has been accompanied by death and violence,” said Abdul Wakil Amiri, a government official who turned out early to vote at a Kabul mosque. “For the first time, we are experiencing democracy.”

After 12 years with President Hamid Karzai in power, and decades of upheaval, coup and war, Afghans on Saturday were for the first time voting on a relatively open field of candidates.

Election officials said that by midday more than three and a half million voters had turned out — already approaching the total for the 2009 vote. The election commission chairman, Mohammad Yusuf Nuristani, said the total could reach seven million.

But even as they celebrated the outpouring of votes, many acknowledged the long process looming ahead, with the potential for problems all along the way.

International observers, many of whom had fled Afghanistan after a wave of attacks on foreigners during the campaign, cautioned that how those votes were tallied and reported would bear close watching.

It is likely to take at least a week before even incomplete official results are announced, and weeks more to adjudicate Election Day complaints. Some of the candidates were already filing fraud complaints on Saturday.

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 an outright victory. A runoff vote is unlikely to take place until the end of May at the earliest.

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Also, at BCF, "Nothing to do with Islam.... Afghan Police Commander Shouts Allahu Akbar Shoots 2 Reporters Killing 1." And NYT, "Covering Afghan Vote, Until Shot by an Ally."