Friday, March 29, 2024

Afghans return to the polls

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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Despite a Taliban threat to stay away, Afghans lined up today to vote in a presidential runoff between two candidates who both promise to improve ties with the West and combat corruption as they confront a powerful Taliban insurgency and preside over the withdrawal of most foreign troops by the end of the year.
Whoever wins faces major challenges in trying to bolster Afghanistan’s security forces against a relentless insurgency and improving the nation’s economy and infrastructure at a time when international aid for Afghanistan is drying up. But many said just holding the country’s first peaceful transfer of authority was a major success.
The presidential hopefuls –former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-World Bank official and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai – differ more in personality in policy. Both have promised to sign a long-delayed security pact with the United States.
That would allow nearly 10 000 American troops to remain in the country for two more years to conduct counterterrorism operations and continue training and advising the ill-prepared Afghan army and police.
“I voted today for my future, because it is still not clear – the country is at war and corruption is everywhere and security is terrible. I want the next president to bring security above all and jobs,” said 20-year-old Marya Nazami, who voted for Ahmadzai.
The Taliban intensified attacks ahead of the vote and warned people to stay away from the polls, but the Islamic militants failed to disrupt the first round on April 5 and security forces launched a massive operation.
Troops frisked voters before allowing them into polling stations and erected checkpoints around the capital of Kabul to search cars for explosives or other weapons. Trucks also were banned from the city.
Still, the militants made their presence known. A series of rockets slammed into areas in the eastern Khost province, near the Pakistani border, killing six civilians and wounding eight, according to provincial government spokesman Mubarez Mohammad Zadran. Elsewhere in the east, a mortar shell killed two other civilians and wounded three in Logar province. Several other explosions were reported in Kabul and elsewhere, but those caused no casualties.
President Hamid Karzai, who has grown increasingly alienated from his one-time U.S. allies during his two terms in office, has refused to sign the pact.
Many voters said they were eager to get the bilateral security agreement signed after watching Islamic extremists seize large sections of Iraq nearly three years after U.S. troops withdrew from that country. Iraq’s Shiite-led government had discussed with the Americans the possibility of a residual U.S. force but the two sides were unable to reach an agreement.
 

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