We had "no trouble at all. They have been very cooperative," O'Malley said of his nearly five-month experience registering people in the valley.
Five election workers have been murdered in other parts of Afghanistan, the latest last week in a bomb blast at a voter registration center in the southeastern Afghan province of Ghazni.
Voter turnout has been noticeably lower in the south, with most southern provinces showing turnouts of around 60 percent of estimated eligible voters and Zabul province boasting only 15 percent of eligible voters on its electoral rolls by July 22, according to UN data.
In the conservative, ethnically Pashtun south, Karzai's home region, voter numbers have also been hit by the reluctance of southern men to allow their women to register.
By contrast, in the northern provinces women have turned out in their tens of thousands to register.
Nearly 50 percent of registered voters in the Panjshir valley were female, said an official from the UN-Afghan run Joint Electoral Management Body.
"Like everybody else I came to get voter registration cards," said Najiba -- who only uses only one name -- a woman wearing the traditional all-enveloping burqa.
But her fellow villager Kamela was more explicit about her reason for coming. "My husband told me to register -- I'm going to vote for anyone he asks me to," she said.
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