KABUL: The
voting phase of the landmark Afghan presidential election has concluded.
Voting was largely peaceful on Saturday, with only isolated attacks on
polling stations as a country racked by decades of chaos embarked on its
first ever democratic transfer of power.
A
roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded two others in the
southern city of Qalat as they were returning from a polling station,
while four voters were wounded in an explosion at a voting centre in the
southeastern province of Logar.
There were no reports of
more serious attacks so far on an election that Taliban insurgents had
vowed to derail, branding it a U.S.-backed sham.
The
United States, having spent $90 billion on aid and training for Afghan
security forces since it helped vanquish the Taliban in 2001, could
point to its success promoting democracy as a major achievement toward
leaving Afghanistan as a more stable country.
The
stronger the next president's mandate, the less vulnerable Afghanistan
could be to instability. Even if the election is less flawed this time,
it could take months - perhaps even until October - for a winner to be
declared at a time when the country desperately needs a leader to stem
rising violence as foreign troops prepare to leave.
Nearly 3,500 members of the US-led coalition force have been killed in Afghanistan since deployment over a decade ago.
KABUL SEALED OFF
About
12 million were eligible to vote in the election, and there were eight
candidates, with former foreign ministers Abdullah Abdullah and Zalmay
Rassoul, and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani the favourites.
Karzai
is barred by the constitution from running for the presidency again.
But, after 12 years in power, he is widely expected to retain influence
through politicians loyal to him.
The Taliban warned
civilians ahead of the election they would be targeted if they try to
vote, and dozens died in a spate of attacks in the preceding weeks.
A
veteran Associated Press photographer was killed and a senior
correspondent of the same news agency was wounded on Friday when a
policeman opened fire on the two women in eastern Afghanistan as they
reported on preparations for the poll.
More than 350,000
Afghan troops were deployed, guarding against attacks on polling
stations and voters. The capital, Kabul, was sealed off by rings of
roadblocks and checkpoints.
In the city of Kandahar,
cradle of the Taliban insurgency, the mood was tense. Vehicles were not
allowed to move on the roads and checkpoints were set up at every
intersection.
Hamida, a 20-year-old teacher working at a
Kandahar polling station, said more than a dozen women turned up in the
first two hours of voting and added that she expected more to come
despite the threat of an attack by the Taliban.
"We are trying not to think about it," she said, only her honey-brown eyes visible through her black niqab.
Raising
questions about the legitimacy of the vote even before it began, the
election commission announced that at least 10 percent of polling
stations were expected to be shut due to security threats, and most
foreign observers left Afghanistan in the wake of a deadly attack on a
hotel in Kabul last month.
The interior ministry said six
officials - including an intelligence agent - were detained on Saturday
for trying to rig the vote, and elsewhere several people were arrested
for trying to use fake voter cards.
RISK OF DELAY
One
of the chief risks is the length of time it may take to declare a new
president. If none of the candidates wins over 50 percent of the vote,
the two frontrunners would go into a run-off on May 28, spinning out the
process into the holy month of Ramadan when life slows to a crawl.
A
long delay would leave little time to complete a pact between Kabul and
Washington to keep up to 10,000 US troops in the country beyond 2014,
after the bulk of the American force, which currently stands at around
23,500, has pulled out.
Karzai has rejected the pact, but
the three frontrunners have pledged to sign it. Without the pact, far
weaker Afghan forces would be left on their own to fight the Taliban.
Uncertainty
over the outcome could also stall crucial foreign aid and economic
reform, foment ethnic tensions and leave a political vacuum in which the
Taliban could gain ground.
The election is a landmark
after 13 years of struggle to quell an insurgency that has killed at
least 16,000 Afghan civilians and thousands more soldiers.
Karzai's
relations with the United States became increasingly strained in recent
years as Afghan casualties mounted, and he voiced frustrated that
Washington was not putting enough pressure on Pakistan to stop the
Taliban, who base themselves in borderlands.
Although
Karzai's departure is a turning point for Afghanistan, none of his
would-be successors would bring radical change, Western diplomats say.
"The
only positive thing in this election is that it is necessary to save
the state as it is, and therefore there is a need to transfer power one
way or the other," Sarah Chayes, a South Asia expert at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace told a media briefing on the eve of
the vote.
"Whether the election will be the great transformative event that everybody expects is, I think, delusional."
Polling stations officially closed at 5:00 pm (1230 GMT), officials said, after a day without major security incidents.
But
voting was set to continue for some time as voters in line at polling
stations would be allowed to cast their ballot, a senior official with
the Independent Election Commission said.
