KABUL, 22 September 2005 — The Taleban rejected Afghanistan’s elections as a US drama and vowed yesterday to intensify their war, calling into question President Hamid Karzai’s contention that the need for military force had diminished. UN vote organizers say that about half the 12 million registered Afghans voted in Sunday’s national assembly and provincial polls hailed by Kabul’s allies as a step forward for democracy.
Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said only four million had voted, less than 15 percent of a population he put at 30 million. “The Taleban are thankful to the Afghan people for rejecting the US drama,” he said, adding that the parliament would not represent Afghans and would be subordinate to the United States. “Our jihad (holy war) will continue until the withdrawal of foreign infidel troops, and our attacks will be expedited. The Taleban will become more organized and strong.”
Women made up 41 percent of the six million Afghans who voted in the elections, around the same as in last year’s presidential poll, organizers said. “We project out of total number of votes cast, 41 percent are by females and 59 percent by males,” said Sultan Baheen, spokesman of the UN-backed Joint Electoral Management Body. “The distribution by sex is practically the same as that of the registered voters,” he added.
The Taleban had vowed to derail the polls but failed despite a wave of violence in the months leading up to the vote in which more than 1,000 people died, most of them insurgents. The Taleban launched dozens of harassing attacks last weekend in which 14 people died, but poll organizers said voting took place at all but a handful of 6,200 polling centers.
Hakimi’s comments came after Karzai declared on Tuesday that a democratic Afghanistan was no longer a source of terrorism and he did not think there was a big need for military action. Karzai argued that the focus should now be on tackling militants in their bases, where they get their training, and on shutting off resources and funding.
In comments that appeared aimed at wooing support in the Taleban’s and his own ethnic Pashtun heartland, he questioned the use of US airstrikes and invasive searches by US forces. Civilian deaths in US strikes and what have been perceived as heavy-handed searches have long angered people in the conservative south where the Taleban draw most support.
Karzai has been trying without much success to coax Taleban fighters to defect and he will also have been looking ahead to building support in what is likely to be a disparate Parliament. While his comments appeared to put him at odds with the Americans, analysts said both he and the Americans saw the need for a shift in strategy, albeit with different emphasis. On Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to agree on the efficacy of airstrikes. “Obviously, airstrikes — when you don’t have a massed army on the ground or large puddles of enemies, then airstrikes are less effective than when you do have that type of a situation,” he told a Pentagon news conference.
