In the first Presidential debate George W. Bush boasted that, "more than 10 million people are registered to vote in Afghanistan," to explain away another dismal outpost of his war on terror. Of course, it's not exactly true. Although there have been 10 million voter registrations in Afghanistan, apparently a great many people have registered two, three, or more times! No one really knows how many voters are registered. And, what is worse, the number of ballots distributed for the October 9th election greatly exceeds the number of eligible voters raising concerns that the ballot box stuffing has already begun.
Then there are the election campaigns themselves. Hamid Karzai, the U.S. appointed dictator ... uh, make that "Interim President" ... of Afghanistan who is running for election uses U.S. helicopters to fly from stop to stop on his campaign surrounded by U.S. forces as body guards while other candidates have to dash around in borrowed cars and trucks while dodging bullets.
Meanwhile the rural provinces are beginning to look something like Florida 2000. Elders of the Tarik tribe have ruled that any man who does not vote for U.S. appointed Interim President Karzai will not be buried by his family and can forget about marrying off his female relatives, too. In a southeastern province residents were given an equally stark warning this week in preparation for the elections: Vote for Hamid Karzai or get your house burnt down.
And to think, the U.S. has spent some $200 million preparing Afghanistan for this election.
A Kabul resident probably summed it up best, "There is no difference between the forces of the Taliban and the Mujahidin and all the others who carry guns. Only the faces and the clothes have changed."
PakTribune (Pakistan) - Afghan election set to be fiasco
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