Faces of controversy- Troubled election in Kunar

(c) Simon Klingert (This man humped up the dirt road to vote. He said he's about seventy years old and was undeterred by the fighting, "Life and death is in the hand of Allah...I will vote out of love for my country." He voted in the last election too. )

Ternaab Village, Kunar province-
As gunshots rang through the mountain tops of the Dewegal Valley, villagers voted under the shade of some trees next to the local mosque. Heads turned upward whenever a heavy shell or particularly loud burst echoed, but the men appeared in no hurry to leave.

By 7 a.m., Taliban insurgents flooded the radio waves, chanting insults against the Afghan Army followed by threats on the polling site and killing anyone who attempted to vote. D Company Platoon Leader, Capt. Richard Nicorvo met with the Afghan Army counterparts and a election field coordinator, who said he got his position because he passed a test.

"“We didn’t want it here,” Nicorvo said. “The enemy has known fighting positions along ridge lines.”

An hour later the shooting began. Small detachments of Afghan (ANA) soldiers responded with fire from their hilltop fighting positions. D Company fired a TOW missile and 50. Caliber rounds at a mountaintop where they spotted muzzle flashes, following a lengthy communications process to avoid firing on Afghan Army and hired security groups.

(c) Simon Klingert (Soldiers firing a TOW missile at a nearby mountain top.)

Sporadic fighting continued most of the afternoon, as Toyotas emblazoned with posters of national candidates and packed with Afghan men raced to and from the Ternaab polling site loaded with voters. No women were seen voting, although they supposedly had a separate site. Some men said they were too afraid from the fighting, but there was no way to confirm it.

By late afternoon the shooting had died down some, and we approached the polling site. The local IEC field coordinator told us cameras were not allowed; as his colleagues, wearing official vests began orally tallying the votes from a taped off area between several trees. We heard “Karzai, Karzai, Karzai,” as the ballots were put into stacks and then stuffed into secured plastic boxes.

(c) Simon Klingert (The Karzai representative holds up his inked finger.)

A man in a white beard said he was officially representing President Karzai in the province. He claimed his job was to make sure all Karzai’s votes were verified. When asked about children voting, he said they only looked young and were actually eighteen. When questioned why other candidates did not have “official verifiers,” he responded they must have been around, but because they lost so badly, they had probably left. He said he had tallied over 1,600 votes for Karzai, with 200 votes for the northern presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.

In contrast to the voting irregularities, the U.S. and the Afghan military kept up their end of the security bargain. The polls stayed open here, and in other villages. Although the Taliban promised and delivered a steady payload of fire. Not a single citizen was killed in the area.

D Company’s platoon patrolled the election sites for weeks and spent the night in their armored vehicles to provide around-the-clock presence leading to the election. Elements of the Afghan National Army's 2nd Battalion waited a few days before the election to decide where they would set up their security outposts and depended on D Company for water and ammunition re-supply. Additionally, D Company outfitted a hired security force of some 300 men who were paid approximately ten dollars each to man strategic mountain outposts.

These hired men answer to no one other than the physically imposing, legendary, Haji Jaan Daad. Jaan Daad is a former Mujahadeen whose body is riddled with the scars of some 20 years of combat and commanding mountain fighters against the Russians and other tribes, including elements of the Taliban.

(c) Simon Klingert (Haji Jaan Daad discussing his men's election contract at the U.S. base. In the background are several of the hired security men, some reportedly identified as Taliban.)

Haji Jaan Daad’s 300 or so men had just finished a security contract protecting coalition-funded roads, and the prospect of having hired guns without jobs seemed to be both a problem and a potential solution.

D Company sat down with Jaan Daad and they agreed on long-term goals of getting the volatile area of Badel, where D Company’s outpost gets attacked on an almost daily basis, under control. In other words, using Jaan Daad’s men to help provide security for the election, and if no unnecessary violence occurred, hiring them to help secure future Provincial Reconstruction contracts.

One of the last faces we saw speeding by after the votes were counted in Ternaab, was none other than Haji Jaan Daad. Perhaps he epitomizes one of the roadblocks to calling this a legitimate national election. Jaan Daad was pardoned by Pres. Karzai after being arrested by U.S. forces. Almost all the villagers in Ternaab voted for Karzai. But he’s just one of many actors, in an election too insecure, too fraught with inconsistencies.

If there are victors in these elections, they are the U.S. and Afghan Army security forces who risked their lives, and the Afghani citizens who voted with good intentions, such as the seventy-year old villager who hobbled up the hill towards Ternaab to cast his ballot. They may have been robbed by a corrupt system out to maintain the status quo.