Election campaigning in Kandahar? Don't leave the house

[unhappycamper]

Election campaigning in Kandahar? Don't leave the house
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Candidates in Saturday's parliamentary election in Afghanistan's second-biggest city don't hold rallies. They don't even leave their homes or hotel rooms. In the face of Taliban assassinations, it's just too dangerous for them to venture out.

The specter of violence and fraud hangs over the election in Kandahar, as it does elsewhere in Afghanistan. Many anticipate that the Taliban will use polling day for attacks, and that the authorities will repeat the ballot-stuffing in last year's presidential election.

"I haven't been outside (my house) for the last 12 days," said Khalid Pashtoon, an English-speaking Westernized candidate who spent years living in the U.S. and is a member of the outgoing parliament. "I don't even know what's going on outside."

The U.S.-led coalition claims that security in Kandahar province has improved, the result of a major operation launched earlier this year. However, it remains a perilous place.

Thursday, the Kandahar morgue released the bodies of three policemen who'd been ambushed in nearby Arghandab district earlier in the week and the corpse of a civilian whom the Taliban had hanged over the weekend, also in Arghandab — his two companions are still missing.

[Swamp Rat]

1. k&r

[Bragi]

2. My 2010 Afghan Election desk is ready to declare a winner

Just a day before the vote, and we're ready to call it:

Karzai the Magnificent has done it again!