KAILAK, Afghanistan, 19 September 2005 — Many of the burqa-clad women and bearded men queuing at polling stations in this northern Afghan village yesterday had no idea who most of the candidates were. But they were happy to be voting anyway.

“I will vote for a Muslim,” said farmer Ghayab Nazar. Asked which one, given that Afghans are almost exclusively Muslim, he replied: “I will see the photos and will vote for someone I like.”

The scene was being repeated across Afghanistan, where after a slow start in many places voters flocked to cast their ballots in the first parliamentary elections here in 30 years despite confusion about the process. Afghans have been enthusiastic about the campaign, prompting expectations of a high turnout, and gaudy posters of candidates have been pasted two or three deep on walls throughout Kabul and other cities.

But the posters and a pre-election information campaign appear to have done little to help people identify the 5,800 candidates standing for Parliament and provincial councils.

The ballot papers, seven pages long and the size of a newspaper, have not helped either. They feature tiny pictures of candidates and bizarre symbols to identify them, including camels, ice creams and tires.

“I can’t read so I chose two people, a man and a woman. I just looked at the pictures and picked them out,” said Zahira, who is illiterate, blind in one eye and thinks she is aged about 50.

“I don’t know much about modern things but I am happy to have voted,” she said after casting her ballot in the western city of Herat, oblivious to the names of her chosen candidates.

Voters in often dimly lit polling stations also have to plow through separate voting forms — blue for parliamentary candidates and yellow for the provincial councils.

A female voter in Kailak said: “I will look at the photos of the candidate and will chose a woman, any woman in the list. I want to vote for a woman because I am a woman.”

In Kabul, Mohammed Baseer, 27, spent almost 20 minutes inside the polling booth, finally emerging with the yellow paper in his hand and complaining that he could not find the name of prominent politician Yunus Qanooni, standing for Parliament.

An electoral official gently pointed him toward the blue paper. Shopkeeper Saleh Ahmed, 43, also had no idea who he was going to vote for. Asked if he knew any of the candidates on the ballot paper, he said: “I might know, but first I need to see their pictures.” Even some of those there to help needed help.

In the southern city of Kandahar, where the Taleban rose to take power in the 1990s, election worker Nafisa asked her boss how to cast her ballot.

He told her to choose whichever candidate she wanted but after voting, the 50-year-old admitted she did not know any of the candidates. “I was just trained to sit behind a desk,” she said.