KABUL, 13 October 2004 — The Taleban did not attack polling sites in Afghanistan’s historic presidential elections to avoid killing ordinary Muslims, Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said yesterday. “In order to avoid bloodshed of innocent Muslims we did not target the polling stations,” he told AFP by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

Militants from the ousted Taleban regime spent months making fiery threats of attacks on election day but even in Afghanistan’s insurgency hit south and southeast voter turnout was unexpectedly high. “We had operations, but not in places where the nations were gathering,” he said. “There were large swathes where they could not hold elections. In Zabul province excluding the capital, they could not hold elections in any of the districts,” Hakimi said.

Electoral officials in southern Kandahar said that in Zabul’s Deh Chopan district voter turnout was low because of Taleban threats but polling sites across the province remained open. Eight policemen and three civilians were killed in land mine attacks in Kandahar on election day and the days before and after but there were no major attacks on polling sites. Officials said the Taleban’s failure to violently disrupt the election could demoralize the militia and impact its efforts to attract new followers.

“They are not destroyed, but we hope the successful election will demoralize them. I am talking about the small groups, the underdogs,” Kandahar Governor Mohammed Yusuf Pushtun said. “I think the Taleban have lost popular support and the Afghan people have spoken,” said Colonel Dick Pedersen, commander of US-led forces in southern Afghanistan.

Vote counting was still on hold yesterday as opposition candidates, backing down from threats not to recognize the result, awaited an international inquiry into charges of multiple voting. A breakthrough in the crisis hanging over the shattered Central Asian state’s first exercise in democracy was reached Monday when Yunus Qanuni, the main rival to US-backed interim President Hamid Karzai, said he would accept the election result after the inquiry.

Several other candidates, among a group of 14 who declared in the middle of Saturday’s vote that they would boycott the results, have adopted a similar stance. The dispute tainted an otherwise jubilant day as millions of Afghan men and women flocked to polling stations for their first-ever say in choosing their leader, three years after the Taleban regime was ousted by US-led forces.

Col. Dick Pedersen, commander of US-led forces in southern Afghanistan, said the militants had “lost popular support and the Afghan people have spoken.” Candidates who demanded the election be scrapped were seen as creating more effective sabotage than what the Taleban had threatened.

With the United Nations’ establishment of a three-person panel to investigate irregularities, hopes were high that the outcome would be accepted. One of the main complaints was that ink meant to stain voters’ fingers to prevent multiple voting was easily rubbed off.

Vote counting, meanwhile, has been put on hold. Qanuni is pushing for some polling stations to be reopened. He has charged that in areas where he has wide support the stations opened late and closed early. He refused to vote Saturday in protest, said he would cast his ballot if polling stations were reopened.