KABUL, 19 September 2005 — Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades yesterday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taleban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques.
Violence killed at least 10 people around Afghanistan, trying to claw its way back from more than a quarter century of conflict. Another two dozen died in the previous two days, including a French commando when his vehicle struck a mine, but there was no spectacular attack that officials had feared from Taleban militants who had vowed to disrupt the vote.
It appeared that tight security helped, with none of the fatalities at polling places.
Yesterday was mostly about getting out to vote. “We are making history,” President Hamid Karzai said as he cast his ballot. “It’s the day of self-determination for the Afghan people. After 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations and misery, today Afghanistan is moving forward, making an economy, making political institutions.”
Some 12.4 million Afghans were registered to vote for the national legislature and provincial assemblies at more than 6,000 polling stations, guarded by about 100,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 30,000 foreign troops. Although top election organizers said they had no official turnout figures yet, some officials in the field as well as independent election monitors said there appeared to be fewer people voting this time compared to last October’s presidential elections when around 8 million voted.
People clutching voter identification cards filed into schools with lessons still scrawled on blackboards, or stepped over piles of shoes to cast ballots in mosques. Tents served as polling stations in remote areas.
About 2,760 candidates are competing for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, Parliament’s lower house, and more than 3,015 candidates are running for 420 seats in 34 provincial councils. Women are assured 68 seats in the lower house, while 10 seats are reserved for Kuchi nomads. In the provincial councils, a quarter of all seats have been set aside for women.
At a Kuchi nomad voting center east of Kabul, an Associated Press Television News cameraman saw women handing their ballots to men to fill out as electoral officials looked without intervening. Human Rights Watch said children appeared to vote at one polling station northeast of Kabul.
A handful of polling centers closed temporarily because of gunfire and others opened late or not at all due to security fears.
