| |
Violence to Keep Afghan Polls Closed 09/08 08:01
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan election officials said Wednesday that
scores of additional polling stations will be closed during the Sept. 18
parliamentary vote because of the deteriorating security situation in the
country.
The state electoral commission said 81 of the 458 polling stations planned
in Nangarhar province will be shut during the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections
"due to deteriorating security conditions." The tense eastern province
bordering Pakistan is a center of the Taliban insurgency, with many militants
entering the country from safe havens across the border.
Election officials had earlier announced that more than 900 other polling
stations would remain shut nationwide because of security concerns and that
5,897 voting sites would be opened throughout Afghanistan. During last year's
fraud-marred presidential vote, 6,167 voting centers nominally operated.
The government and its foreign partners hope the elections will help
consolidate the country's shaky democracy and political stability, allowing the
withdrawal of the roughly 140,000 NATO-led foreign troops in the country. But
many Afghans and international observers fear the vote could turn bloody after
the Taliban vowed Sunday to attack polling places and warned Afghans not to
participate in what it called a sham vote.
The fears over election security come amid pledges by Florida-based Dove
World Outreach Center --- a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses
an anti-Islam philosophy --- to burn copies of the Quran to mark the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks in the United States that provoked the Afghan war.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, has warned that
the burning of the Quran could endanger U.S. troops in the country and
Americans worldwide.
"If this happens, I think the first and most important reaction will be that
wherever Americans are seen, they will be killed," Mohammad Mukhtar, a cleric
and an election candidate for the Afghan parliament, said in Kabul. "No matter
where they will be in the world they will be killed."
Muslims consider the Quran to be the word of God and insist utmost respect
be accorded to it and any printed material containing its verses or the name of
Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to
the Quran is considered deeply offensive.
In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan
sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging that interrogators at the U.S.
detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and
flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted
the story.
Also Wednesday, NATO reported the death of one of its service members
"following an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan." It did not provide
details of the attack or the nationality of the victim.
The presence of coalition forces and allegations of Pakistani support for
the Taliban featured prominently in speeches at a Kabul rally to commemorate
the ninth anniversary of the death of legendary anti-Soviet guerrilla leader
Ahmad Shah Massoud. The ethnic Tajik commander was murdered by two al-Qaida
members posing as journalists two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in
the United States.
"We thank the international community, but only Afghans, acting together
here on the ground, can solve their own problems," said Massoud's brother,
former Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud.
Massoud also accused Pakistan of continuing to support the Taliban
insurgency and called for international pressure on Pakistan to hand over
Taliban leaders believed to be sheltering in the country's lawless northwest
regions.
"The Taliban are puppets, they have no power to threaten Afghans, they are
fighting for the interests of Pakistan," Massoud said.
"The government says talk to the Taliban, but it would be better to talk
with their Pakistani bosses," he said.
Ahmad Shah Massoud remains a revered figure among ethnic Tajiks living
mainly in the north, but widely despised by Pashtuns in the south that form the
core of the Taliban insurgency.
(CZ)
|
|
