The burly nomad with a henna beard and a fierce scowl grips the pen between his thick fingers. Turgul cannot read the election material around him, but is determined to practice the first vote of his life.
The turbaned tribesman drags the pen across a scrap of paper. "Just like that," he says uncertainly, holding aloft the squiggle that will mark his choice.
PHOTO: AFP
Few elections have faced such a dizzy array of challenges as Saturday's presidential poll in Afghanistan. Taliban terrorists are threatening bombings and warlords may try to warp the result. The terrain is forbidding, the logistics maddening and, like Turgul, many voters are illiterate.
"It's been very difficult," said Amandine Roche, a UN civil education officer. "But Afghans really want this to work."
More than 10 million voters have registered, 40 percent of them women; there is an ethnically diverse field of 18 candidates; and for the first time ever, war-worn Afghans will taste democracy.
There is also anxiety. In the south and south-east, the Taliban have threatened to scuttle the poll through violence and intimidation. Afghan and coalition forces on Saturday arrested 25 Taliban suspects in a dawn raid in Kabul.
Away from the capital, the main worry is the warlords who, between them, have 45,000 gunmen in their pay. Flush with soaring drug revenues, many vow to retain influence over their fiefdoms.
"Many rural voters say the militias have told them how to vote, and they're afraid of disobeying," said Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch.
The UN, which is spending US$200 million on the election, has 115,000 election officials and has hired 5,000 satellite phones, 1,150 jeeps, four helicopters and a cargo jet. The final vote will not be tallied until the last ballot box returns from the farthest reaches of the Hindu Kush mountains by donkey, up to two weeks after polling day.
Yet Afghans display an infectious enthusiasm about the poll. Yesterday Kuchi nomads gathered outside their tents on a hillside near Kabul for a lesson in voting.
Shah Faqir, a one-eyed sheep farmer, was unable to read but could point to the photograph of his chosen candidate, Hamid Karzai, the country's interim leader. "He stopped the fighting and brought stability to this country," he said. "The others are bad guys. If they win, the gunmen will return and the country will be destroyed."
The Kuchi women have also registered to vote, but were nowhere to be seen.
Karzai is the favorite but may face a second round of voting if his nearest rival, the former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, polls strongly. Both are flag-bearers for their ethnic communities: Qanooni is a northern Tajik, Karzai a southern Pashtun but with broader appeal.
Some say an election now is too dangerous. But "most Afghans see it as a move away from the rule of the gun, and that is positive," said Grant Kippen of the US National Democratic Institute, which helps to oversee elections.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS