Voter registration continues despite death of three election workers

The United Nations in Kabul announced on Thursday that voter registration work would continue despite the killing of two British and one Afghan election workers in the eastern province of Nuristan. It has also been announced that a UN-government joint team has been sent to investigate the incident, which took place on Tuesday night. "Absolutely no change has taken effect since yesterday as a result of this attack. All the plans we had for voters' registration today are in effect," Manoel de Almieda e Silva, a spokesperson of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN on Thursday. According to UNAMA, the victims worked for the Global Risk Strategies (a London-based security company), who provided logistic and security assessments to the UN-backed electoral process in Afghanistan. The incident coincides with the expansion of UN voter registration sites beyond eight regional cities, for landmark elections planned for September. Silva said the workers were travelling in a district of Nuristan where they were evaluating the feasibility of establishing voter registration sites. "The precise circumstances of the attack are not yet known," the spokesperson said, adding however that the opening of registration sites in Nuristan would be delayed until investigations into the attack were completed. The killing in Nuristan marked the fifth international (and over 25 national) staff members of local and foreign aid agencies that have been killed since last year, mostly in the southern parts of the country. Government and local authorities blame the remnants of Taliban and Al-Qaeda for these attacks. Five weeks ago a foreign aid worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed in the southern city of Kandahar, and in November a French woman, who was working for the UN, was killed in the central province of Ghazni. About 700 people have died in Afghanistan in the past nine months. The Taliban appear to be resurgent in the Pashtun provinces of the south, while followers of the Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hikmatyar have been responsible for bombings in the cities. More than 100 people were killed during March in the western city of Herat, including the son of the warlord Ishmail Khan in fighting between his forces and those loyal to the American-sponsored interim President Hamid Karzai. Twenty Afghans, including two aid workers, were killed in Taliban attacks in the past two weeks. Just two weeks prior to the Nuristan incident, four attacks took place on aid agencies in various southern provinces. Two national staff members of an Afghan NGO were killed in the southern province of Kandahar last week. The renewed bloodshed has led to fears that security will still not be adequate in time for historic presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for September - postponed from June. Just over 1.9 million out of 10.5 million eligible Afghans have been registered to vote so far. Silva said the UN was committed to assist the electoral process to make this participation possible. "We must do all we can to support and make it possible for the Afghans to meet their aspiration of registration and voting in order to choose their elected leaders." The Afghan Interior Ministry has said that, so far, it was not clear who was behind the Nuristan incident. But, according to Reuters news agency, a commander for the ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Sabir Momin, on Wednesday told the agency that Taliban members had killed Global Risk Strategies staff because they were helping "the Americans to consolidate their occupation of Afghanistan."