Who is in control in Afghanistan

Detour Afghan hopes

Election off amid attacks on voters, women


BY LAURA J. WINTER
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS


KABUL, Afghanistan - The White House's hopes to turn Afghanistan into a showcase of democracy have been delayed again and may have to wait until next year - after the U.S. elections in November.The dire assessment came after United Nations officials put off Afghanistan's September elections last week for a president and parliament. The elections originally were scheduled for June.

The reasons for the latest delay are numerous and daunting: terror attacks in much of the country, struggling efforts on election education, lagging voter registration, lack of money, feuding militias.

"It's impossible this year. The security situation is very bad .... It's bad in Jalalabad, Paktia, Kandahar, all the Pashtun areas."

The official said the Taliban and Al Qaeda have teamed up to intimidate voters from going to the polls.

"On the day of the elections, nobody is going to the polls. No one wants to get killed," the UN official said.

Money is clearly a problem. While the budget for the elections calls for $101 million, only $18.8 million has been donated and is in the bank.

Afghans appear willing to vote, but the bureaucracy is slow. Almost 5.5 million Afghans have registered to vote, according to Manoel de Almeida e Silva, the UN spokesman in Kabul, but that's 5 million short of the target of 10.5 million.

Frequent violence has been even more intimidating. Two female Afghan UN election workers were killed recently, and 12 more women were injured just outside of the eastern city of Jalalabad in a bomb blast. The explosive, placed inside their UN minivan, detonated as the group was traveling to a rural district to register women to vote.

Al Qaeda recently warned a Pashtun tribe known as the Kuchis not to register to vote.

The threat came in a letter delivered to one of their camps in Kabul Province.

The letter, given to the Daily News by a UN election worker, charges that the elections are "one of the countless plans made by the Jews, the Maoists and the Christians against the Islamic World. The aims of these plans are to destroy Islam through drinking of wine, women and blindly following those people."

Mariam, an Afghan UN election worker in Kabul, said she is afraid, but her fear is not so much for herself but for her two children who would be left behind without parents if something were to happen to her. Nevertheless, she does not want to leave her job.

"It is the first election in Afghanistan. And the people of Afghanistan are going toward democracy, toward elections," Mariam said.

Her UN supervisor, Amandine Roche, called election workers like Mariam "doves."

"I can see my people come back, they are completely scared. They are threatened. But they believe in what they do, so they still have the faith," Roche said.


Who is in control the US, NATO. Afghan Govt, The Warlords or Al Qaeda and the Taliban?