Taliban call for polls boycott

Taliban rebels today urged Afghans to boycott this weekend’s legislative elections that many are hoping will marginalise the insurgents, while a candidate was shot dead and four other people were killed in bombings near polling stations, officials said.

With some 100,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 30,000 foreign troops on alert, election workers used donkeys, dilapidated trucks and helicopters to haul millions of ballot papers to more than 6,000 polling centres ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Hopes are high that the polls will end a quarter-century of civil strife and entrench a fragile democracy by demonstrating public support for an elected government. But the Taliban and other militants showed no signs of letting up in their attacks.

Purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi urged Afghans not to take part in the elections, but said Taliban insurgents would not attack civilians going to vote.

He said they would launch attacks only on areas where US-led coalition forces were deployed, and advised civilians to avoid such places.

“Our demand to the people of Afghanistan is don’t participate in this election because it is a US policy. The Taliban is against all US policies,” he said.

Information from Hakimi in the past has sometimes proven exaggerated or untrue. Afghan and US military officials say he is believed to speak for factions of the rebel group, though his exact tie to the Taliban leadership cannot be verified independently.

In the latest attack blamed on the Taliban, a roadside bomb hit a public bus near a voting centre in central Ghazni province today, killing three civilians and wounding seven others, including children, said local police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang.

Gunmen dragged election candidate Abdul Hadi from his house in southern Helmand province last night and fatally shot him, said Mohammed Wali, a spokesman for the local governor.

The killing brought to seven the number of candidates killed in the lead-up to the polls. Four elections workers have also been slain.

A roadside bomb hit a US military convoy yesterday in Ghazni, wounding two US troops and killing their Afghan interpreter, US military spokesman Lt Col Jerry O’Hara said. The two wounded soldiers were in hospitalised in stable condition, he said.

The blast occurred on a road leading to a polling centre just before a convoy of election workers was about to pass with ballot papers, said local official Ahmed Jan. Two other roadside bombs were found and defused in the area, he said.

Top Afghan and US officials say the Taliban are likely to launch attacks on election day, but they are confident violence will not disrupt the polls.

“All our police and soldiers are now in place and are ready for anything. I am absolutely sure the elections will proceed very smoothly,” Defence Minister Rahim Wardak said.

“People are very excited and they want these polls to bring peace and stability.”

Security was tight in the capital. Road checkpoints sprung up, with police pulling over vehicles ranging from hay carts to ribbon-decked wedding cars.

Armed police sat atop trucks that left a Kabul warehouse loaded with ballots bound for polling stations.

In central Bamiyan province, ballots were piled onto the backs of donkeys and horses to reach remote mountainous villages. Several soldiers walked alongside the long caravan of animals.

An official one-month campaign period came to an end at dawn today, 48 hours ahead of the start of voting.

But some vehicles advertising candidates still drove through the streets of the capital, which were lined with election posters slapped on walls and trees.