Nearly two months before sched-uled elections, the Afghan electoral commission announced yesterday that it will close all registration sites across the country by today. The decision was announced by Aykut Tavsel, a spokesman for the Joint Electoral Management Body.
The agency, which started reg-istering Afghans last December, has registered nearly 10 million of the 10.5 million eligible to vote.
"The number might reach the total estimated 10.5 million before it [registration] is officially closed" today, Tavsel said, adding that forty-one percent of registrants are women.
He also said some people had requested continued registration in regions where security concerns had been an issue.
David Avery, the agency's operations chief, said in a statement that the voter registration had been successful.
"Our goal was to allow all of the Afghan people the possibility of registering to vote and [to] take part in the election," Avery said. "We are pretty happy. We think it's been a success."
POPULAR SUPPORT
The south-central region of Afghanistan is still a hot spot, with almost daily Taliban attacks on coalition forces. Avery said the attacks were a concern to the registration agency.
"When we started this operation we expected that there would be three provinces which would pose a difficulty, and may in fact not be accessible, that was Zabul, Paktika and Uruzgon," Avery said.
"In fact we registered people in all of those (provinces), and we have made it to almost every district in the country, and there were many that we thought would not be possible," he said.
The ousted members of the former Taliban regime who have vowed to interrupt the election process have so far killed 13 election workers and injured dozens of others. They have also killed at least 16 men who were carrying voting cards.
Last week, the agency published the final list of candidates, which showed that 17 candi-dates, including one woman, are due to run against President Hamid Karzai.
Karzai has governed since the fall of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001 and remains the favorite in the election race.
Those opposing him will include female pediatrician Masuda Jalal and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who hopes to garner the votes of Uzbek Afghans.
Presidential and parliamentary elections were originally to take place in June but were postponed due to logistical and security concerns. A new parliament will be now be chosen in April 2005.
FACTIONAL CLASHES
Meanwhile, eight militiamen, including two commanders, were killed yesterday when fighting erupted between two rival warlords over control of a district in western Afghanistan, the leader of one of the factions said.
Faction commander Amanullah Khan said his forces had clashed with those loyal to Western Herat province Governor Ismail Khan in Shindand district.
They eventually drove out the governor's men, he said. "Fighting started at two in the morning and went on until four."
"Eight people were killed, including Herat garrison commander Saifullah and General Zakim Khan of the border brigade, who supported Ismail Khan," he said.
He said his forces had taken control of Shindand and pushed Ismail Khan's fighters into a neighboring district.
Shindand, some 660km west of Kabul, has been controlled both by forces loyal to Ismail Khan, an ethnic Tajik, and Amanullah Khan, a Pashtun. The factions have clashed often in the past two years.
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