Fear of the Taliban Discourages Afghan Voters

By DEXTER FILKINS

TARAKAI, Afghanistan — A group of Taliban fighters made their announcement in the bazaar of a nearby village a few days ago, and the word spread fast: anyone caught voting in the presidential election will have his finger — the one inked for the ballot — cut off.

So in this hamlet in southern Afghanistan, a village of adobe homes surrounded by fields of corn, the local people will stay home when much of the rest of the country goes to the polls on Thursday to choose a president.

“We can’t vote. Everybody knows it,” said Hakmatullah, a farmer who, like many Afghans, has only one name. “We are farmers, and we cannot do a thing against the Taliban.”

Across the Pashtun heartland in eastern and southern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents hold sway in many villages, people are being warned against going to the polls.

In many of those places, conditions have been so chaotic that many Afghans have been unable to register to vote. In many areas, there will not be any polling places to go to.

The possibility of large-scale nonparticipation by the country’s Pashtuns is casting a cloud over the Afghan presidential election, which, American and other Western officials here believe, needs to be seen as legitimate by ordinary Afghans for the next government to exercise real authority over the next five years.

Doubts about Pashtun participation are particularly injecting uncertainty into the campaign of the incumbent, Hamid Karzai. Five years ago, Mr. Karzai rode to an election victory on a wave of support from his fellow Pashtuns, who make up about 40 percent of Afghanistan’s population.

Polls show that Mr. Karzai is leading the other candidates. But those predictions could be overturned if a large number of Pashtuns stay away from the polls.

The threats against the local population in villages like Tarakai show a change in the Taliban’s tactics from previous years. Five years ago, the insurgents largely allowed voting to go forward. At the time, Afghan and American officials believed that the prospect of voting was so popular among ordinary Afghans that Taliban commanders decided that opposing it could set off a backlash.

But things are different now. The Taliban have surged in strength since 2005. Mr. Karzai, though he is the leading candidate, is vastly more unpopular than he was then. As a result, Taliban leaders are actively trying to disrupt the candidates’ campaigns and preparations for the vote.

“Afghans must boycott the deceitful American project and head for the trenches of holy war,” said a communiqué released by the Taliban leadership last month. “The holy warriors have to defeat this evil project, carry out operations against enemy centers, prevent people from participating in elections, and block all major and minor roads before Election Day.”

In other messages released since then, Taliban insurgents have claimed responsibility for killing campaign workers for Mr. Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, another major candidate, in provinces across the country.

In Tarakai, a village of about 50 families, some local men gathered outside their homes when a group of American Marines approached on foot. Some 10,000 Marines, sent here by President Obama, have fanned out across Helmand Province over the past six weeks and are pressing an offensive against Taliban insurgents.

The local men appeared relaxed and friendly in the presence of the Marines. But they said they were too frightened of the Taliban to go to the polls on Thursday and doubtful that the Marines could protect them. The Americans stationed here, part of the Second Battalion, Eighth Marines, have been in combat with Taliban insurgents nearly every day since arriving in the area on July 2.

“When you leave here, the Taliban will come at night and ask us why we were talking to you,” a villager named Abdul Razzaq said. “If we cooperate, they would kill us.”

Even if the villagers in Tarakai were inclined to cast ballots, they would be hard-pressed to do so. The nearest polling station will be in the town of Garmsir, the capital of the district of the same name, 12 miles up an unpaved road pockmarked with craters from homemade bombs. Afghan officials considered setting up polling places across Helmand Province, but concluded that many areas were not safe enough. In the district, which straddles the Helmand River, there will be seven voting precincts in the capital, but none elsewhere.

“It’s too insecure in those places,” said Lt. Col. Christian Cabaniss, the Second Battalion’s commander.

What is more, anarchic conditions have prevented many Afghans from registering to vote. Earlier in the year, when the government was registering voters, there were no Marines in the area and the Taliban were in control. The Afghan Independent Election Commission sent no officials to the area to sign up potential voters.

In their six weeks here, the Marines have succeeded in chasing many Taliban fighters from the area. But the Taliban, and the fears of them, linger.

One farmer said the Taliban regularly imposed a tax on the crops in the area.

Another, an elderly man with a long white beard, said the Taliban fighters were sure to deal harshly with people who talked to the Americans.

“We’re afraid you’re going to leave this place after a few months,” he told First Lt. Patrick Nevins, an officer from Chapel Hill, N.C., who led the Marine unit into Tarakai.

“I promise you,” Lieutenant Nevins said, “we will be here when the weather gets cold, and when it gets hot again.”

The Marines walked back to their base, and the Afghans back into their homes.

Fears of Fraud Cast Pall Over Afghan Election

By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — Little more than three weeks before the presidential election, problems that include insecurity and fears of fraud are raising concerns about the credibility of the race, which President Obama has called the most important event in Afghanistan this year.

With Taliban insurgents active in half the country, many Afghans remain doubtful that the Aug. 20 election will take place at all. The Taliban issued a statement last week calling for a boycott, a threat that could deter voters in much of the south, where the insurgency is strongest.

Election officials insist that the election will go ahead. But they concede that the insecurity will prevent as many as 600 polling centers, or roughly 10 percent, from opening. Western officials acknowledge that the election will be imperfect, but say they are aiming for enough credibility to satisfy both Afghans and international monitors.

Even that goal will be hard to meet. Though increasingly unpopular here and abroad, President Hamid Karzai is still the front-runner in a field of about 40 candidates, and only one, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister for Mr. Karzai, has emerged as a serious challenger. Many Afghans are convinced that foreign powers will choose the winner and fix the result.

But no matter who prevails, the multitude of problems and what is expected to be a low turnout in conflict areas are likely to reduce the next president’s mandate.

Western officials and Afghans alike worry that the election could be so flawed that many Afghans might reject the balloting and its results, with potentially dangerous consequences.

If they cannot vote because of insecurity in the south, Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group and the one most closely associated with the Taliban, could become even more alienated from the government and the foreign forces backing it, political analysts say.

They also warn of Iranian-style protests and instability if the population in the north, which largely supports a change of government, feels its vote has been manipulated.

“We are worried about voter registration fraud, and we are worried about voters who will be unable to reach polling places because of insecurity,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special envoy, said during a visit last week. “And we are worried about the accuracy of the vote count, and we are worried about the ability of women to vote.”

Philippe Morillon, the outspoken retired French general who leads the European Union election observer mission to Afghanistan, said his top priority was to prevent fraud. “It is you who will choose your president, and we are there simply to guarantee that your choice is not betrayed,” Mr. Morillon told Afghan journalists at a news briefing in Kabul.

In an effort to speed the results and reduce the opportunity for rigging, ballots will be counted at individual polling stations. Afghan officials have said there will be a preliminary result within 48 hours, followed by a two-week period for complaints and confirmation procedures.

But Western officials say it could take longer to declare a winner, anticipating challenges from around the country’s 34 provinces, where votes will also be cast for provincial councils.

“It could be like 34 Minnesota Senate races,” one Western official said, referring to the disputed race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, which took nearly eight months to resolve in Mr. Franken’s favor.

Other officials warn that public frustration with the war, corruption and lagging reconstruction and development is so high that many people may shun the polls.

In the south, election officials said they were expecting a turnout below 30 percent, said Abdul Qader Nurzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission office in Kandahar.

“The people are not that interested in the elections,” said Abdul Hadi, the election commissioner in the adjoining province of Helmand, where thousands of Marines have been deployed to regain towns from the Taliban in time for the elections.

“They voted before, and they did not see any result from that,” Mr. Hadi said. “And they don’t want to put their lives in jeopardy for one vote.” An estimated 70 percent of Afghan voters turned out for the country’s first presidential election, in October 2004.

In Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, the election will take place only in safe zones in the main towns, Mr. Hadi said. One third of districts are under Taliban control and will not be able to take part, he said. In some districts, like Kajaki, the Taliban have besieged administrative centers and will not allow civilians in to vote, he said.

In the eastern Paktika Province, which borders Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, more than 20 percent of the voting centers will have to be moved or abandoned because of security, officials said.

Afghan election officials in the capital, Kabul, insist that voters will turn out. About 4.5 million people registered for new voting cards this year, far exceeding expectations, said Azizullah Ludin, the election commission chief.

Yet irregularities are widespread. As many as 3 million duplicate voter registration cards may be circulating among the 17 million issued, according to one election observer, who asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the subject.

Twenty percent of the new cards went to under-age boys and another 20 percent were duplicates, an Afghan election observer organization, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, found in the centers it was able to monitor.

For security and cultural reasons, women’s registration has been low. Yet the number of registered women exceeded the number of registered men in some areas, indicating more irregularities. Male family members were able to obtain voting cards for women simply by providing a list of women’s names, the Afghan election monitors reported in May.

This election is unlike Afghanistan’s first presidential contest five years ago in that most balloting and monitoring is being run by Afghans, with only a small number of international advisers and observers, most prominently the 120-member mission from the European Union.

So far, the Taliban have generally refrained from specific attacks on the election process or on voters, and have even agreed to allow voting to take place in some areas.

Yet violence has increased, and in some places the Taliban are ordering communities not to take part. In a rambling statement issued Thursday through a spokesman, the Taliban leadership urged people to boycott and fighters to sabotage the process.

“We are requesting all mujahedeen to do their best to sabotage the malicious election process anywhere in Afghanistan,” it said. “They should carry out operations on enemy bases, and ban people from going to vote one day before the election.”

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.