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Afghan election commission orders recounts
By HEIDI VOGT and RAHIM FAIEZ,Associated Press Writers -
Monday, September 27
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KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan election officials ordered recounts Sunday of voting at locations in seven provinces after last week's parliamentary elections _ the latest sign that fraud charges could hurt the credibility of the ballot.
The increasingly messy-looking election risks becoming another black mark against an Afghan government that has demonstrated little commitment to fighting corruption despite stern demands for reform from international allies after last year's fraud-ridden presidential poll. Corruption is widely seen as turning Afghans against the government and boosting support for the Taliban.
Investigations into corruption within the government tend to bump up against senior officials, and last month, President Hamid Karzai moved to reduce the influence of international advisers in anti-graft task forces _ widely seen as reducing their clout.
Still, Western allies were hoping last week's vote would show progress toward reform and democracy in Karzai's administration _ and also allow Afghan security forces to show that they were capable of defending voters against insurgents.
However, according to Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the NATO military coalition, there were some 396 insurgent attacks on Sept. 18 _ a third more than during the presidential elections of 2009. Smith attributed the rise to the extra scrutiny by security forces rather than a failure to act against insurgents. The barrage included rocket attacks, bombings and Taliban closures of polling stations. At least 30 people died, and the violence was widely seen as hurting voter turnout. About 4.3 million ballots were cast, down from 6 million in the presidential vote a year ago.
But perhaps more worrying for the credibility of the election are the mounting allegations of misconduct and fraud that have been submitted by election observers and many of the 2,500 candidates vying for 249 seats in the national parliament. The charges range from ballot-box stuffing, to people voting multiple times or using obviously fake cards, to children voting.
A government anti-fraud elections watchdog said Sunday that is has received more than 3,500 complaints of cheating or misconduct _ about 57 percent of them serious enough that they could affect the outcome of a vote.
The election commission has been releasing results very slowly, partly because they say they want to be as careful as possible in their work. They are avoiding tallying results were there are suspicions of fraud. So far, only seven provinces of the country's 34 provinces have posted even partial results and, eight days after the vote, no province has yet to announce results in full.
Commission chairman Fazel Ahmad Manawi said they have already ordered recounts at several polling stations in seven provinces because the commission considered the provisional results _ yet to be posted _ "suspicious." The provinces range from relatively peaceful Badakhshan province in the north to volatile Khost and Logar in the east. He said the list of recounts was likely to grow.
But some candidates say the cheating that their observers saw was so egregious that they can't imagine a proper result emerging from the ballots that were submitted.
"The night before there was stuffing of the boxes. Then the night after they were stuffing the boxes," said Khaled Pashtoun, an incumbent candidate in southern Kandahar province _ the birthplace of the Taliban and the focus of a current military surge to root out the insurgency.
Pashtoun said that while voting in Kandahar city was relatively because of the large presence security forces, abuses were rife in rural areas.
In some places police who were meant to be guarding polling stations instead ordered people to vote for a specific candidate, or simply closed down polling stations in areas that didn't support their favored candidate, Pashtoun said, citing reports from observers he sent out on election day.
The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, the main independent Afghan observer group, has also been intensely critical.
"Electoral violations and irregularities were once again widely registered," the group said in a statement. The group said that they observed ballot-box stuffing in 280 voting sites in 28 provinces.
Determining whether fraud took place rests with the Electoral Complaints Commission, which has just a few weeks to investigate and rule on the deluge of complaints. Final results are expected in late October, after the ECC rulings.
The commission comprises three Afghans and two foreigners. One member, South African judge Johann Kriegler said the number of complaints was not likely to become a barrier to meeting the deadline, but working with inexperienced provincial staff would make the job more difficult.
However, he said: "We've got to finish on time. That's what the law requires and that's what the political reality requires," he said.
Meanwhile Sunday, insurgent attacks continued in the volatile country, with two NATO troops were killed in a bomb blast in the south. Further details were not immediately available.
Also, a British aid worker and three of her Afghan colleagues were kidnapped in northeastern Kunar province early Sunday. The U.S. Embassy said she was working on projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Police chased after the kidnappers and fought a brief gunbattle with them close to the site of the ambush before the men escaped, Kunar police chief Khalilullah Zaiyi said. It was not immediately clear who the kidnappers were.
Britain's Foreign Office in London said it is investigating reports that a U.K. citizen has disappeared in Afghanistan, but declined to provide further details.
The coalition also said it killed at least five insurgents during a clearing operation in Kandahar, the Taliban heartland in the south that remains particularly volatile.
The multi-day operation was intended to impede the Taliban's ability to move freely in the area and to disrupt its attempts to stage attacks. According to a NATO statement Sunday, the militants fought back with rocket-propelled grenades, machine-gun and small-arms fire. It said no Afghan or coalition troops were killed.
NATO also said Sunday that two Afghan civilians riding a motorcycle were killed Saturday after failing to stop while approaching a security perimeter in Helmand province in the south.
It said the motorcycle driver briefly stopped but then ignored warnings and accelerated toward the security forces.
___
Associated Press Writer Eric Talmadge contributed to this report.
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