Global Policy Forum

By Terry Pedwell

Registration of voters in Afghanistan is going so slowly that holding presidential and legislative elections by June will be "very difficult," a spokesman for the United Nations said Thursday. "It is close to impossible to meet the June date," said Manoel de Almeida e Silva. "Current security conditions do not permit (voter) registration teams to go throughout the country."

Security outside Kabul has deteriorated in recent days, highlighted by a bombing Tuesday in Kandahar that killed 16 people, mostly children. Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime initially denied responsibility for the attack but issued a statement Wednesday apologizing for killing innocent children and calling the bombing "a mistake." In a separate incident in nearby Helmand province, unidentified gunmen shot to death 12 men after stopping two cars on a roadway, said provincial officials. So far, fewer than 275,000 of an estimated 10 million voters have registered for elections that had been planned for June. Of them, just over 59,000 are women, according to UN figures released Thursday. At that rate, elections could not be held in 2004.

"The current rate of registration is far below the rate necessary to complete registration for elections this year," said de Almeida e Silva, quoting from an official UN declaration. However, he added that all necessary steps are being taken to ensure more voters are registered by summer. "The electoral teams are all reviewing . . . what can be done to expedite this process, if anything at all," he said.

In Washington, the Afghan ambassador to the United States acknowledged a "slower-than-expected registration so far," but said his country was seeking ways to accelerate the process to make up for it. "I'm not of the view at this point that elections cannot take place this spring or this summer," Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters Thursday during a conference call. He returned to the U.S. Wednesday night from Afghanistan's grand council, or loya jirga, where regional leaders ironed out the new constitution.

Security is the major issue slowing the electoral process, but there are several other factors that could prevent elections from being held until October at the earliest. "Security is indeed the main obstacle, there's no doubt about that," said de Almeida e Silva.

Another problem is electoral boundaries. "That is an institutional issue that has to be decided by the government, and it's a very important element if you're going to have legislative elections," he said.

A third big issue is the fact that there is no law on the books defining the rules for such a vote. "(The law) needs to be drafted and adopted by the government, which will then guide all of the electoral process," said the spokesman. "These are things that are less complicated than the security issue."

The UN and the Afghan interim government have repeatedly called on NATO and coalition countries to provide increased security outside of Kabul. So far, the call has been answered slowly, with German and American forces announcing the creation of a handful of provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs, for areas beyond the capital. Canada sent a team of experts to Afghanistan late last year to study the prospect of establishing one or more PRTs, but so far no decisions have been made.

The Canadian Forces currently has nearly 2,000 soldiers in Kabul as part of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. However, the federal government and the military have made it clear they can't keep that many soldiers in Afghanistan beyond August when a second rotation of troops is scheduled to return to Canada. The current group of soldiers in Kabul will wrap up their rotation by the middle of next month, when Canada takes over command of ISAF.

Also Thursday, Dr. Sharad Sapra, the UNICEF spokesman in Afghanistan, condemned the bombing in Kandahar. "The United Nations Children's Fund learned with shock and regret that the majority of those who died in Tuesday's bomb blast . . . were children," he said in a written statement. "UNICEF expresses its deepest condolences and sympathies to the families affected by this tragedy, and particularly to the families of the children killed."

The UN has declared much of southern and southeastern Afghanistan off limits to its foreign workers. But there is concern that the move will further alienate people in those regions, potentially increasing their willingness to tolerate, if not support, the presence of terrorists working at odds with the peace process. "Our movements are very, very much restricted as a result of the insecurity conditions (in those regions)," said de Almeida e Silva. "Whoever is doing these things, all they are achieving is to kill innocent people, in particular children. "The people who are doing these (attacks) are not friends of Afghanistan."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.