Afghanistan holds landmark elections

Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades today, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques.

Reports of violence came in from around Afghanistan as it sought to claw its way back from more than 25 years of conflict, but there were no immediate signs of a spectacular attack that officials had feared from Taliban militants who vowed to disrupt the vote.

Violence in the two days leading up to the vote left at least 22 people dead, including a French commando killed when his vehicle struck a mine. Early today, fierce fighting in an eastern Afghanistan left three militants and two policemen dead and two US troops wounded, officials said.

But today was mostly about getting out to vote.

“We are making history,” President Hamid Karzai said as he cast his ballot. “It’s the day of self-determination for the Afghan people. After 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations and misery, today Afghanistan is moving forward, making an economy, making political institutions.”

Some 12.4 million Afghans were registered to vote for the national legislature and provincial assemblies at more than 6,000 polling stations, guarded by some 100,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 30,000 foreign troops.

Officials predicted a massive turnout despite a Taliban call for a boycott, but Abdul Makin, an election organiser in Kabul, said the number appeared lower than in last October’s presidential election.

Chief electoral officer Peter Erben pointed out there were 30% more polling stations this year and more voting screens, creating “significantly higher capacity”.

“The morning started relatively slowly,” Erben said. ”But it has seriously picked up all over Afghanistan.”

Polls closed at 4pm (12.30 pm Irish Time), although those already in line would be allowed to vote, he said.

The vote was seen as the last formal step toward democracy on a path set out after a US-led force drove the Taliban from power in 2001, when they refused to hand over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks.