Nothing in my morning today amounts to anything like scientific research. But it does chime with what the scientific experts are now saying.
I’ve been along to a number of Kabul high schools in the past hour or two with some simple questions.
Ana I have received simple answers from the helpful and efficient people who run these polling stations.
As they cleared away the ballot boxes a pattern quickly emerged as we moved from one polling station to another in the schools.
The basic story emerging is that somewhere between 20 and 30 per cent of expected voters actually came along to cast their vote yesterday.
Now given we were in some of the safest areas of the capital city of Afghanistan this is a pretty dramatic picture and way down on the last presidential elections five years ago.
The poor officials looked pretty crestfallen. And in Kabul it is not simply about intimidation.
Take the young blokes who are part of our translating and driving team here. They are obviously intelligent, educated, modern and thoroughly westernised Kabulis. And yet none of them wanted to vote.
Why? Not the Taliban – they couldn’t give a monkeys about their threats (mostly empty in Kabul it must be said). No, they just feel it’s pointless.
Pointless because whether it’s to be Karzai, Abdullah or Bashardost – you will simply get a puppet of Nato who really run this place and Nato are, year upon year, just making things worse.
Well, that’s their perspective and I fully expected them to go out enthusiastically and vote. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
It all tallies with the picture down south where the turnout could be as low as 8 per cent in the province of Helmand. Around half the polling stations there didn’t open at all. Some districts saw no voting in the entire area.
All of this a long way from the British army-supervised propaganda trip laid on the reporters in the Helmand capital Lashkar Gah yesterday: happy smiling voters and open polling stations.
To put it mildly – a very partial picture indeed of what really seems to have happened across Helmand.
And Helmand – do not forget – the province where British soldiers fought and died in order to facilitate elections.
Two more dead announced today. Four more coffins coming back through RAF Lyneham toady.
So, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence have some explaining to do.
And yet…and yet…suddenly the British Ambassador here in Kabul seems to be camera shy.
He didn’t have that problem running up to and during polling day. But now there is real data and real statistics beginning to emerge and a man who being offered on a plate for interview in recent days is suddenly unaccountably unable to help.
As I speak the press office at the British Embassy in Kabul is going back again to relay the need to do an interview.
So far nothing back.
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There were no British army-supervised propaganda trips laid on for reporters in the Helmand capital Lashkar Gah on election day. Maybe if you had been with us you might have seen some of the rockets that were fired. If you were in my convoy you might have been in the car that was blown up by an IED. That was before the votes were cast, we had to go back and get another vehicle, not British army but private security. When we did get to the polling stations, if you were with us you might have seen the boy that was killed outside one. We reported all that. But inside were brave people, voting in defiance and happy to see us.
Today I posted pictures of empty ballot boxes coming back from Sangin. Turnout here was low. Criticise the election by all means, but if you wanted to see what it was really like in Helmand, why weren’t you here?
As the US has had it’s Vietnam and the Soviets too, it is time for the UK? When will the West stop tinkering in Afghanistan and let this country get on with it’s governing. We would not be in this state of terror if Jimmy Carter had a brain back in the late 1970s early 1980s and hadn’t felt so threatened by the Soviets. The Afghans need to be left to rule. Imperialism is dead when will the British realise this? This world is no more safer than pre 9/11. We live in fear because the powers in the West chose for its citizens to live in fear! This moster was created by the US and funnily it’s come back 360 degrees
Well done Channel 4 News and in particular Alex Thompson. It’s good to get news reports which are not just exercises in propaganda, but have a concern for the truth.
Am currently in Helmand, no reporters where I was… But lots of voters! No-one expected it to be perfect, but people came out to vote, despite the taliban threats.
And back in the UK? More people vote in the final of X-Factor than in a general election…
Alex:
The reason for speculation is that Afghan Citizens were afraid of getting killed and/or hurt by the Taliban threats….
=Dennis Junior=
When you consider democracy is a western concept largely unknown in most Muslim nations and certainly new to Afghanistan, It’s amazing that the voter turnout is as high as it has been here now and as it was in Iraq. But couple this with the threats attached to voting here and amazing is an understatement.
As I have said in the past, it’s absurd to think we can secure a nation’s future against a popular homegrown movement. In the long run it will have to be the Afghans who kick out the Taliban. If they really want to, that is. But, until such time NATO seems to be playing the role of the Seven Samurai, helping defensless people defend themsleves. But, then the Magnificent Seven didn’t wind up killing the locals as colateral damage, either and squandering billions of pounds, dollars and euros on stopping flowers from being grown and keeping new oil sources safe.
[...] Taliban is trying to disrupt the second round of the Afghan elections, hence today’s attack on UN staff in Kabul. Having risked death to vote in the first round, [...]
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