Fears for Afghan elections

2004-10-06 14:54

Kabul - Violence in the run-up to Afghanistan's landmark elections had not reached feared levels just days before the vote, but hope remains hostage to the threat of major attacks on polling day.

Hundreds of people have died this year in an insurgency by remnants of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime ousted by the United States-led invasion in late 2001, and the worst could lie ahead on October 9.

Officials have warned of a possible sharp spike in attacks on the day some 10.5 million registered voters go to the polls, with major cities at risk of car-bomb blasts and polling stations under threat of armed assault.

"The enemy has the advantage of choosing the time and place of attacks and looking for weak points," said John McComber, head of security for the United Nations-backed electoral commission.

"We aim for there not to be any weak points. We know what the enemy wants to do but we still don't know what they are capable of doing," McComber said.

Sabotage the elections

A series of attacks on Tuesday showed that the Taliban were actively trying to sabotage the elections, with seven policemen killed in a remote-controlled mine blast, two militants killed by their own bomb and three electoral workers injured.

In the capital Kabul, a powerful bomb was discovered and defused near a military camp in the early hours of Tuesday, a spokesperson for the NATO-led peacekeeping force said.

And in central Uruzgan province, Afghan security forces killed seven suspected Taliban during a two-hour gunbattle after they ambushed a battalion of government troops east of the provincial capital Tirin Kot.

Nearly 60 000 Afghan police and soldiers backed by 27 000 international troops will be in position to protect the 5 000 polling stations throughout Afghanistan's rugged landscape.

Analysts, including some in the Afghan government, believe that the relatively low-level of attacks, which has seen around 12 electoral workers killed, shows the Taliban lack the ability to launch major strikes.

"The violence has not been as high as was expected so far," said Ahmad Rashid, a veteran observer of Afghanistan's conflicts.

Foreign Fighters

Spokesperson for the more than 18 000 US troops in the country say the Taliban are backed by foreign fighters aligned with Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader whose presence in Afghanistan sparked the invasion.

But critics of US foreign policy say al-Qaeda has shifted its attention to Iraq after US President George W Bush's invasion of that country.

"Taliban attacks are not something where you could say 'no, I am not afraid", said Mohammad Akram, a money-changer in Kabul, which the Taliban have threatened to target with car-bombs.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report last week that "regional warlords, who fund militias with illicit drug money, pose a bigger threat to free and fair elections than the Taliban".

- AFP