Daily Afghan Election Diary

John Sifton, HRW’s Afghanistan researcher, and Sam Zia-Zarifi, the associate director of HRW’s Asia Division, are in Afghanistan conducting research and advocacy around Afghanistan’s first direct presidential elections. They are keeping a diary while they are there and will respond to selected questions sent in by e-mail. To pose questions, please write to feedback@hrw.org.

Printer Friendly Version Related Material Special Report: Women and Elections in Afghanistan Special Focus, October 7, 2004 Photo Essay: Afghanistan on the Eve of Elections Special Focus, October 7, 2004 The Rule of the Gun: Human Rights Abuses and Political Repression in the Run-Up to Afghanistan's Presidential Election Report, September 29, 2004 Free Email Newsletter Contribute to Human Rights Watch

The election is in two days, and security here in Kabul is getting tighter. The good news is that because of the increased precautions, the traffic is light, so we are able to zip around in our taxi. The bad news is that in Kabul, the lighter the traffic, the faster the driving. To make matters worse, drivers here are not particularly careful—or altruistic. Over the last 24 hours, we have almost had five different accidents; in one incident a large truck, inexplicably, had crossed a traffic divider and was driving into oncoming traffic. This led to some quick maneuvering on the part of our driver, substantial clamor by me in the back seat, and some well-timed and dry wit by Sam as we avoided catastrophe by inches.  
 
Today we met with election observers and other monitoring staff to coordinate our activities and to maximize our information-sharing on election day. One concern that monitors voiced was that crowd control could be a problem at voting sites. As we have written in recent reports, many Afghans, especially in rural areas, do not fully understand the election process. After all, they are voting for the first time. It is now almost certain that the polling will have to be extended to an extra day, since there are not enough sites and adequate staffing for all the voters to cast their ballots in the 10 hours during which the polls are scheduled to be open. This could lead to frustration or even anger among voters, some of whom have to travel for miles to get to polling sites.  
 
There’s also a lot of misinformation and false gossip going around, which could lead to misunderstandings, more gossip, and even conspiracy theories on election day.  
 
As is, the Kabul rumor mill is pretty strange: People are saying that Afghan President Hamid Karzai took a second wife who is 18 years old; that a certain minister in the government has a catamite; and that U.S. Army doctors recently determined that 20 percent of the dust in Kabul’s air is “fecal matter.” All lies, but highly entertaining.  
 
This afternoon we met with senior officials in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to compare notes and discuss our concerns about Saturday's election. We also talked about our recommendations to NATO member states about increasing their troop contributions to ISAF, which could help ISAF expand and go a long way toward improving security here. (We are also calling on U.N. human rights monitors to be increased.)  
 
We conducted more press interviews today—National Public Radio, more television and newspapers, and Sam conducted interviews with Voice of America Persian service. Tomorrow I will be on a BBC Today radio program discussing the election with a senior official in the Afghan election board.  
 
The Internet is unreliable, so we’re going to sign off, but we’ll have more tomorrow.