Fraud claims taint election

Reports of widespread and systematic fraud and intimidation continued to emerge amid delays in the counting of votes in the Afghan elections, raising the spectre of turbulence when the results are announced.

Allegations of ballot-rigging were particularly prevalent in the southern Pashtun belt. The region, which holds the key to the contest, also suffered from drastically low turnout due to Taleban violence and threats.

Afghanistan's Free and Fair Election Foundation, the country's biggest monitoring body for the polls, detailed instances of false tallying of votes, coercion of voters and multiple and under-age voting. European Union observers insisted that despite problems the polls had been generally free and fair. But the Independent, which visited polling stations on the Helmand frontline, where observers were not present because it was deemed too dangerous, witnessed blatant examples of fraud.

In Nad-e-Ali, the most populous area of Helmand, one polling station showed a tally of 44 at lunchtime, which remained the same when the polls closed at 5pm. At a second, the lunchtime figure was 30; it rose to 50. At a third station the 1pm figure of 414, which felt extraordinarily high, had jumped to 1213 three hours later despite empty streets in which shops and businesses stayed shut because of Taleban mortar and rocket attacks. Election officials were seen counting piles of ballot papers without checking the vote and then declaring that they had been cast for Hamid Karzai. The men, many of them wearing "Vote Karzai" badges and caps, appeared unabashed when challenged, declaring that there had been a sudden outpouring of public zeal to take part in the democratic process. Senior Afghan officials dismissed the polling at the station as "corrupt".

Wali Mohammed, the regional head of the NDS, the National Intelligence Service, stated that the figures were "unbelievable, simply not possible, we have nothing like that number of people staying at Nad-e-Ali at present".

Nad-e-Ali has become totemic in the run-up to the elections. A series of operations by British and Afghan Government troops have retaken land from the Taleban with the aim of bringing the population into a security envelope to take part in the polls.

Officially the district has around 50,000 registered voters. Only a fraction voted yesterday, none of them women, although some may have travelled to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gar. A failure to hire female election staff meant that it was never going to be possible for women to exercise their voting rights in this deeply conservative society.

The preliminary election results will come early this week against a backdrop of fraud claims, not just against Karzai's supporters but also against those of his closest rival, the former Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah. Backers of another candidate, Ashraf Ghani, accused Abdullah operatives of bullying people at polling stations to vote for their man. One of the other 31 contenders, a deputy speaker of Parliament's Lower House, Mirwais Yasini, said he believed both main camps practised widespread fraud. He has posted 31 complaints with the Independent Election Commission.

A very low turnout would shape public reaction to the result. Karzai needs 50 per cent of the poll for an outright victory; failure to get that would lead to an attritional second round run-off with Abdullah in October.

- INDEPENDENT