Security concerns and ignorance in the run-up to the election

As Afghanistan's first ever presidential election nears, many people lack essential knowledge about the electoral process, already weakened by threats from insurgents and the reduced participation of women in rural areas. Voters in villages, populated widely by illiterate people, are often not aware of how many candidates there are let alone their policies. Some people interviewed by IRIN, women in particular, thought the voter registration cards they were given were aid distribution cards. "I have taken this card to get rations from the government and NGOs," 43-year-old Amina of Nawar district in the central Afghan city of Ghazni explained, pointing to her voter registration. No public awareness session on the elections have been held for those outside the main cities. Najim Khan, a local public awareness official with the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) in Ghazni, said that the awareness teams had not been able to travel to remote areas without government forces because of security concerns, coupled with the fact that armed escorts could make election workers more vulnerable to attack. Momin Khan from the Hisarak district of eastern Logar province was another one who was hopeful of foreign aid for his card. "They will give us money, fertiliser and food for the cards," the 69-year-old man told IRIN at his farm. "I also got the card because I will not be allowed to go to civil hospitals and government offices if I don't have it, so they are really needed." Sayeda Andar, head of the women affairs department in Ghazni, worried that the promise of aid had possibly been used as a means of attracting more eligible voters to register for the elections. "And in other cases, mostly with women, the information given by election workers about what the cards are used for was misunderstood as a promise of aid and food," she told IRIN. Ghazni comes in third after Kabul and Herat in the estimated number of people registered to vote, according to the United Nations, which has organised the process. Despite that fact, Afghanistan's only district where no women have registered to vote is also in Ghazni. Halim Khan, district chief of Ajristan, says traditional rules of keeping women isolated from such events might be the main reason for a lack of women's participation in the remote district, southwest of the city. Worries about women's participation didn't exist only in Ghazni. They are also present in other provinces where conservative values continue to restrict the activities of women. Akhtar Khan, 37, a driver by occupation, from the Surkai village of Zarmat in eastern Paktia province, is one of many people there who oppose the participation of women in the elections. "Voting is men's work because women are for housework while men should do the jobs outside the home," he told IRIN. Asked why some people think that females shouldn't vote, a young woman who declined to give her name, and with her face half-covered, told IRIN: "In our families, women are more in number than men. But no one listens to women and that will be the case in the whole country. So, why should we vote?" Halima Khazan, a teacher at a girls' school in the provincial capital, Gardez, told IRIN that the women in the area would have to vote for the same candidate their husbands voted for. "I don't believe that a woman would have the courage to vote without the permission of her husband, brother or father. Here, a lady was severely beaten by her husband when he found that she had taken a voter card," Khazan said. Afghans will hold their first democratic elections on Saturday under fear of disruption and sabotage by members of the ousted Taliban who roam freely in some parts of the country. And while the voter registration process, the first phase of the elections, has finished successfully without any major incidents as many feared, security for the nationwide polls remains a top concern for the Afghan government. A joint report of the United Nations and Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) issued recently has warned of escalating violence in the south of the country ahead of the presidential ballots. "The Taliban and other anti-government elements have been increasingly targeting civilians and government officials. In the last month, they have created a climate of fear by confiscating the voter registration cards of entire villages and warning people not to participate in the upcoming elections," the report said. The document also listed several incidents of violence, including the reported beheading of 10 tribal elders from the southern Afghan province of Zabul who were seen to be supporting the government and the election process. Recently, people from Zabul told IRIN that the Taliban had threatened to cut off the fingers of those who they find have cast ballots in the 9 October presidential elections. Afghan elections officials say they plan to prevent multiple voting by inking voter's thumbs in addition to requiring voter registration cards. But this is also how the Taliban say they will identify voters and cut off their fingers. Ahmad Shakir, who was recently in the Shajoy district of Zabul, confirmed that the Taliban had threatened his relatives if they were found with the ink stain. Some registered voters may now stay away from the polls because of this new threat, Shakir warned, adding that voters feared their fingers would remain coloured for at least one week, making them vulnerable. "If we are not assured of security, why should we be identifiable to the Taliban?" asked Rahim Ullah, a resident of Arghandab district of Zabul. Violence and intimidation also existed during the voter registration process in other parts of south. Local people in the Deh Yak district of Ghazni say five men who took voter cards were beaten up by unknown armed men. Nevertheless, many people living in areas under potential threat from the Taliban remained committed to cast their votes on Saturday. "I will never withdraw from voting because of such warnings," Mohammad Noor, a schoolteacher in the Andar district of Ghazni, where two mullahs were recently killed for promoting the elections, told IRIN. "If I and other people avoid selecting our president this time - as the whole international community is present to protect the process - we will never have a democratic government, something we have struggled for for three years." Meanwhile, Afghanistan's national police are intensifying their security preparations as the presidential election approaches. The Afghan Ministry of Interior will be the leading organisation providing security on the day of elections with the deployment of 46,000 soldiers across the country, in conjunction with the Afghan national army, intelligence forces, the international peacekeeping force and the US-led Coalition forces. John McCamber, a security officer with the JEMB in Kabul, said ensuring security on election day would be more difficult than during registration as polling stations had to be protected closely, as well as electoral offices and the voters. "Each polling station will be sealed off by a security cordon," McCamber told IRIN. The job of the national army and the international peacekeepers would be to safeguard the security of the area, enabling people to cast their votes, he said.