Afghan Presidential Election 2009. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan
Presidential candidate Ramazan Bashardost talking to media outside a polling center. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan
Afghan Presidential Election 2009. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan
This is Habibia High School at Karta-e-3, Kabul. The line is made many meters away from where the votes were being polled. A television crew made the line to show their audience that turnout was good. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan.
Photos: Afghan Presidential Election: August 20, 2009. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan
Photos: Afghan Presidential Election: August 20, 2009. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan
Photos: Afghan Presidential Election: August 20, 2009. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan
Photos: Afghan Presidential Election: August 20, 2009. Photo by Abdulhadi Hairan
It was Afghanistan’s 90th Independence Day today, the first that no one celebrated due to the complicated nature of the country’s second-ever landmark election, just hours away now. The Taliban-launched terror campaign forced the people to stay at homes and the security forces to take stricter measures for protection and safety. Even the Nato-led international peacekeeping force halted its offensive operations to protect voters around polling centers.
Reports from different parts of the country say the election process is under attack everywhere in many shapes: attacks on polling centers, attacks on candidates, and threats to the voters. As a last attempt to change the situation in their favor, the Taliban claimed to have sent 20 suicide bombers and attackers to Kabul while the government asked media organizations to limit their reporting of violent acts of terror. It is true that the media coverage of terror acts encourages the perpetrators of violence and promotes their ambitions.
Finally, the election day arrived but amid two kinds of fear for the voters: there are voters who will be forced away from polling by the Taliban and their allies (bad fear), yet the voters who will manage to poll will still have fears about the fairness and transparency of the process (good fear). The former is related to the Afghan situation (and was experienced during Pakistan’s last election) while the latter is customary in the regional brand democracies, often based and practiced on dictatorial tendencies, conspiracy and rigging as well as different sorts of lies falsely justified by religious and political pretexts.
Though this is the second presidential election in the country’s short democratic history, it is a real test for all the parties involved in the situation: the international community; the Afghan government; the Afghan people; and the insurgents.
For the international community and the United States President Barack Obama, the success, or failure, of a new important strategy for the region depends on the capabilities of a new elected administration in Afghanistan.
For the Afghan government, the test is important in many aspects: For example, how it maintains the election process, how it reacts to the people’s decision, and how it copes with or manages the situation after the polling is done and the result is out.
For the Afghan people, it is really an experiment and a historic experience. It is they who will decide and choose the new leader, and the world is impatient to see how they will bear it if the result was not what they have been expecting (many fear for an Iran-like situation).
And for the insurgents, this is the opportunity to show how much their strength and presence can affect or change the situation. In their case, it will shape the approach about them after the election in terms of negotiations with them or operations against them. In this context, we can say that this election is not just an event, but a series of important events full of suspense.
Tomorrow I will visit many polling centers and will what I saw will be posted here along with photos.
Child labor is one of the troubling core problems of the South Asian countries, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan, where a cold-blooded insurgency has paralyzed the already weak system. The insurgents, who fight in the name of religion, have undoubtedly proved their strength in waging wars, but they have, unfortunately, never worked for or talked about problems like child labor and violence against women.
In the first photo, taken in Peshawar in March 2009, two school-age children work hard to earn bread for their families. In the same time, social and political developments and changes have brought a new hope to some of the war-hit people. In the second photo, two children joyfully browse the contents of their laptop computers distributed to them by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, in Isteqlal High School, Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (Photos by Abdulhadi Hairan)
From twitter