Protester 'shot dead' as Nato troops open fire on demonstrators in Afghanistan

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AREN'T THE AFGHANS SO LUCKY THEY HAVE DEMOCRACY NOW
by Sukant Chandan



Qur'an burning: Protester 'shot dead' as Nato troops open fire on demonstrators

Man reported to have been killed in Faizabad, northern Afghanistan, after crowds attack Nato base in protest at Florida pastor's plans

A protester against a US pastor's plans to burn copies of the Qur'an is reported to have been shot dead in northern Afghanistan after crowds attacked a Nato base.

The man was killed in Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, a provincial government spokesman said. It happened when thousands of worshippers poured onto the streets after Eid prayers had been held in nearby mosques.

The crowd was estimated at around 10,000 people. Some had hurled stones at a Nato base run by Germans, and the protester was shot when troops inside opened fire, Amin Sohail said.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul said it was aware of the protests and was investigating.

Demonstrations against the desecration of Islam's holy book prompted threats of attacks on US bases elsewhere in Afghanistan. Protests were held in Kabul and near the Pakistan border.

"If they do this, we will attack American bases and close the highway used by convoys supplying American troops," a cleric called Zahidullah told the Reuters news agency.

In London thousands of people gathered at the Ahmadiyya Muslim mosque, in Morden, to hear Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the world head of the community, denounce the US pastor.

"Religious extremism, be it Christian extremism, Muslim extremism, or any other kind is never a true reflection of the religion," he said.

"A number of churches have condemned this act. There is nothing wrong with intellectual or theological debate, but this should be conducted within the bounds of decency and tolerance. Instead, what we are seeing is hatred being spread."

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who threatened to burn copies of the Qur'an on the anniversary of 9/11, has "suspended" the event amid conflicting claims over a deal involving a planned Islamic centre near the site of the 2001 attacks on New York.

The extremist preacher first said he had cancelled the book-burning after condemnation by Barack Obama, the Pentagon, the state department in the US and outrage around the world.

Jones then said the event was only on hold, claiming he had been "lied to" over a deal to call it off in exchange for a promise to move the Islamic centre away from Ground Zero.

Speaking outside his Dove World Outreach Centre church in Gainesville, Jones said: "As of right now, we are not cancelling the event, but we are suspending it."

The confusion over whether the burning would take place has done little to quell the global outrage.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said he hoped Jones would not proceed. "The Qur'an is in the hearts and minds of all … Muslims, but the affront against the holy book is a humiliation to the people," Karzai told reporters at his palace after prayers.

"We are hopeful that he gives up this affront and should not even think about it."

The president of Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, called on the US to ensure that no burnings took place.

"I continue to urge the government and the people of the United States to ensure the prevention of such an incomprehensible, irrational and immoral act," Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said.

http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.com/20...they-have.html

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Shots fired at Afghanistan Koran protest
At least nine people have been injured in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, at a protest over aborted plans to burn the Koran in the US.



The interior ministry is investigating reports that one person was killed.

Police said they fired warning shots to disperse hundreds of protesters after they blocked a road with burning tyres and began throwing stones.

The protest comes despite a US church cancelling plans to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Police prevented the protesters from marching into central Kabul. Instead, they blocked a road and chanted: "Death to America."

The deputy head of Kabul's police force, Khalil Dastyar, said officers had fired into the air to stop the protesters from charging towards them.

He said Taliban members among the protesters opened fire at police.

Two people were killed in similar protests elsewhere in Afghanistan over the weekend.

Police officials have said Taliban members are inciting the protests to disrupt Saturday's parliamentary elections.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11312758

Italics = Ignore this bullshit

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Fraud and corruption fears in Afghanistan elections


17 September 2010 Last updated at 22:11 GMT Help
A BBC investigation has found evidence of fraud and corruption in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, which take place on Saturday.

There is evidence that candidates have tried to buy voters' polling cards, and that bribes are being offered to election officials.

Last year's Presidential vote was marred by widespread fraud.

Ian Pannell reports from Kabul.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11353711

*Video in link*

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Taliban issue boycott call on Afghan elections

The Taliban called for a boycott of Afghanistan's parliamentary election after waging a campaign of violence and intimidation that has left three candidates dead.

"We call on our Muslim nation to boycott this process and thus foil all foreign processes and drive away the invaders from your country by sticking to jihad and Islamic resistance," it said in an emailed statement.

More than 2,500 candidates are contesting Saturday's election for the 249 seats in the lower house of parliament in the second poll of its kind since the Taliban were ousted from power in a 2001 US-led invasion.

The insurgents have been fighting the Kabul government for almost nine years, have spread their footprint across most of the country and are widely perceived as having momentum in their favour.

Styling themselves as "the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," as during their 1996-2001 rule, the Taliban said they were "striving to foil these colonialst plans of the invaders including this deceptive process with the help of Allah and your Muslim countrymen".

Implying threats against the election process, the statement said the Taliban have drawn up "certain measures... to frustrate this American process and will implement them on the day when the illegitimate process is conducted".
The militants issued threats last month saying anyone associated with the vote was a target.

In dozens of attacks, they have since killed three candidates, and in the worst incident so far shot dead five campaign workers in Herat.

Voting is set to take place at more than 5,000 polling centres across Afghanistan, though more than 1,000 will not open because security cannot be guaranteed, according to the Independent Election Commission.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...elections.html

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Security tight as Afghan polls open
Explosion hits capital, Kabul, hours before voters begin to head to polling stations to elect a new parliament.



Security forces in Afghanistan are on high alert as voters begin to head to the polls to elect a new parliament amid the threat of violence.

Afghan and Nato officials said an explosion rocked the centre of the capital, Kabul, on Saturday, just hours before polling stations opened at 7am local time (2:30 GMT).

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from outside a polling station in Kabul, said there were no immediate reports of any injuries from the explosion.

"There was a rocket that hit the capital city, that landed near the main building of state TV, right opposite the main headquarters of the Nato force here in Kabul," he said.

"We understand there have been a number of violent incidents overnight across Afghanistan. We're trying to compile the statistics; it's still a little early to get some indication of the death toll.

"But the Taliban [have said] they will do everything they can to stop this poll."

A Nato spokeswoman said that the rocket attack appeared to be targeting the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) headquarters.

"It was a rocket of unknown calibre, it landed in the vicinity of Isaf HQ," Lieutenant Commander Katie Kendrick, a Nato spokeswoman, told the AFP news agency. "No damage or casualties were reported."

Six rockets were also fired on the outskirts of the city of Jalalabad, about 130km southeast of Kabul, a police spokesman for Nangahar province.

"Five rockets landed in the farming area on the outskirts of the city, with no casualties. One rocket hit a house in the same area and again there were no casualties," Abdul Ghafor said.

'Taliban intimidation'

Police said the pre-dawn blast in Kabul appeared to be a warning from fighters trying to scare people from going to the polls for an election in which widespread claims of fraud, and Taliban intimidation have already thrown the process into doubt.

On the eve of the poll, Taliban figters kidnapped at least one candidate and were blamed for snatching another 18 election workers.

Nato troops have pledged to support Afghan security forces to ensure the polls take place in as normal fashion as possible, and have already taken action against kidnappers, rescuing three kidnapped Afghans in Ghazni province.

Despite the Taliban threats, Hamid Karzai, the president, on Friday called on all Afghans, including members of the Taliban, to vote in Saturday’s election.

"We hope that our people in every corner of our country, in every city of our country and every province will go to polling stations and vote for their favourite candidate and through the vote lead our country to further stability," he said.

Karzai and Faizal Ahmad Manawi, the head of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC), were among the first to cast their ballot when polls opened in Kabul.

But a high turn-out is unlikely, with many Afghans mistrustful of politicians after last year's presidential elections were marred by serious allegations of fraud.

"Democracy, what's that?" Darya Khan, a 40-year-old driver, said. "I'm not going to vote, the people who get elected are just in it for themselves. They are not working to benefit the country, they are not thinking about the poor."

Others were more hopeful."I'm happy and ready to take part in [the] election, to choose our own future," Abdul Qahir, a 31-year-old construction company owner, said after being searched at a checkpoint. "It's important to vote. We need to elect good people, not warlords."

Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations' top diplomat in Afghanistan, has said a turnout of between 5 million and 7 million out of Afghanistan's roughly 11.4 million registered voters would be considered a success.

Fake voter cards



Tens of thousands of Afghan security forces have been deployed across the country and police have set up extra checkpoints across the capital, Kabul, to scan for suicide bombers.

With more than 2,500 candidates standing for election, including 400 women, competition between candidates is fierce and poll-rigging has emerged as a very real possibility.

Al Jazeera has uncovered "industrial-scale" production of fake voter registration cards in a number of provinces across the country, prompting fears of a repeat of the mass fraud and vote-rigging that plagued last year's presidential polls.

"A tape ... arrived at our [Kabul] office from one of our teams down south, and they filmed hundreds more of these [fake] registration cards," our correspondent, James Bays, reported.

"This is not isolated to one or two incidents. It seems that these fake cards are being produced at an almost industrial scale."

Steffan de Mistura, the top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that he's not concerned about the circulation of the fake voter cards. He has been visiting some polling stations in Kabul this morning.

"I looked at the ink, the polling paper, and the way the staff was working," he said.

"It looked quite professional, but of course, the name of the game is the provinces and the districts. That's where we have to see how effective the whole process is. We believe it's improved, but the test will be later on."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/as...398578923.html

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Another rigged election in Afghanistan

By Tom Peters
18 September 2010

Today’s elections in Afghanistan for the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament, are a travesty of democracy. The poll further discredits the puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai, who was re-elected last year on the basis of widespread fraud.

The election takes place under the shadow of the Obama administration’s military “surge,” which has increased the number of foreign troops in the country to more than 140,000. Civilian and military deaths are at record levels, as coalition forces push into Taliban-controlled areas.

As a result of the escalating violence and the extent of Taliban influence, voting will not take place at all in many areas of the southern and eastern provinces, such as Helmand and Kandahar. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has said that around 1,019, or 15 percent, of an initially planned 6,835 polling centres will not open due to a lack of security, effectively disenfranchising millions of people. The Taliban has opposed the election and vowed to attack polling booths, and foreign and Afghan forces, to disrupt the election. Fearing attacks, the United Nations Mission to Afghanistan has withdrawn 300, or close to one third, of its permanent international staff.

Voting at other polling stations will be subject to manipulation. The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), which is responsible for most of the monitoring, says its representatives will only be present at 65 percent of polling stations. According to the Guardian, nearly all foreign monitoring organisations “have scaled back their efforts to monitor voting compared with their presence during the August 2009 presidential election”.

In an indication of the ballot stuffing being prepared, the IEC revealed this week that 3,000 fake voter registration cards had been seized in Ghazni. Foreign observers told Britain’s Daily Telegraph that supporters of the Karzai regime had offered Afghan election officials up to $500,000 to falsify returns. One observer, Stephen Carter, told the paper that the “electoral process … is more about the market place for ballot rigging and how effective one can be at organising fraud”.

The US government and its allies have attempted to cover up the blatantly anti-democratic character of the election. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month described it as “an important milestone on [Afghanistan’s] road to becoming a full and rightful member of the community of democratic nations”. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared that the election would be “more transparent and reliable” than last year’s presidential poll. Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy to Afghanistan, said the ballot “will not be perfect but based on preparations by the Afghan government I feel assured this election will be better than last year's election”.

Such assertions are farcical. The Karzai regime’s “preparations” have included disqualifying dozens of political opponents through a “vetting committee” ostensibly set up to remove candidates with links to illegal armed groups. A commissioner from the Electoral Complaints Commission, an Afghan government body with UN backing, told the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN): “We know the list [of disqualified candidates] is full of innocent people and not of warlords”. The AAN quoted an IEC official who said vetting had been “hijacked by various ministries and state officials”.

Despite the limited powers of the Wolesi Jirga assembly, Karzai is taking steps, with tacit US backing, to ensure that it does not threaten his hold on power. The approved list of 2,513 candidates includes many figures with whom Karzai has collaborated since the fall of the Taliban. Prominent among them is Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, leader of the Ittehad-e Islami faction, who has been tipped to become the next speaker of the house. Sayyaf’s forces massacred hundreds of civilians in Kabul, the capital, during the brutal factional fighting between different mujahideen groups in the early 1990s.

Warlords and militia leaders dominate most provinces that are not under the control of the Taliban or other anti-occupation groups. In June, dozens of people protested in Mazar-i-Sharif against the inclusion of Haji Mohammad Rahim and Gul Mohammad Pahlavan on the list of candidates for the northern provinces of Sar-e Pol and Faryab. Rahim is a former commander of Jamiat-e Islami, another faction involved in the murderous struggle over Kabul after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Pahlavan was a leading commander in the Jombesh militia, controlled by former Northern Alliance commander General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum’s forces were responsible for massacring hundreds of Taliban prisoners in Mazar-i-Sharif in 2001.

Politicians who oppose Karzai and his US backers have been marginalised and threatened. Malalai Joya, who was expelled from the Wolesi Jirga in 2007 after denouncing its occupants as “warlords and drug lords,” is not standing for re-election. In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, she said: “A majority of the seats in parliament will belong to photocopies of Sayyaf”.
Comments from ordinary Afghans reveal deep hostility to the entire political establishment and the US-led occupation. In Kandahar, which is under siege by US forces and where voting will most likely not take place outside the city, resident Shah Mohammad told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR): “Security is deteriorating … civilians are being killed by foreign bombardments, people are getting poorer day after day, and no development work has been implemented. But our members of parliament are just lining their pockets. Their mouths are taped shut with dollar bills, and they cannot articulate the people’s views.”

Jamil, a resident of Nangarhar, told the IWPR that he would not vote for any of the candidates, saying they had done nothing but enrich themselves. Describing social conditions in the province, he said “there is no electricity … and people are unemployed and suffer under the unauthorised searches conducted by foreign troops”.

Two clashes this week highlight the popular hatred of the Karzai administration and the US-led occupation—and the violence used by the regime to suppress protests. In Kabul on Wednesday, at the Kandahar Bridge, police were ordered to advance toward a group of demonstrators who were throwing stones and shouting “Death to America”, “Death to Karzai” and “Death to the slaves of the Americans”. Two demonstrators were shot in the chest by police, according to Dr Kabir Amiri, director of Kabul’s network of hospitals.

On Thursday, several hundred people protested and pelted Australian troops with rocks in response to reports that copies of the Koran were being burnt at an Australian forward operating base just north of Tarin Kowt. A coalition soldier shot dead a protester who allegedly held a rifle. Australia’s defence ministry immediately claimed that the killing was in accordance with its rules of engagement.

While Washington is determined to press ahead with the election, there are some concerns in ruling circles that the result will make it harder to justify the nine-year war, which is overwhelmingly opposed by the US population. On September 5 the New York Times called for the event to be postponed on the grounds that the possibility of fraud could further alienate “cynical and disenchanted Afghans” from the corrupt Karzai regime.

Karzai’s government is in deep crisis. While he has sought to hold peace talks with the Taliban, and other opposition groups such as the Hezb-e Islami, these offers have so far been rejected. For now, the US is backing Karzai’s appeals for negotiations with insurgents. Some of Karzai’s former allies, however, are expressing open hostility toward Karzai and any such negotiations. Hazara warlord Mohammad Mohaqeq, who supported Karzai’s 2009 re-election campaign, told the Wall Street Journal this month that he felt “betrayed by the president” and accused Karzai of pursuing “the Talibanisation of Afghanistan”.

Uzbek warlord Mawlawi Khabir, a leading figure in the Jombesh party, denounced what he called Karzai’s “clear ethnic agenda … to convince the Taliban and other fellow Pashtuns that he is on their side”.

Final election results will not be released until October 30. Whatever the outcome, the election further exposes the lie that the US-led invasion was intended to bring democracy to Afghanistan. From the outset, the aim of the occupation was to transform the country into a base of operations for the US to pursue its ambitions for domination in the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/se...afgh-s18.shtml

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Fraud shadow over Afghan vote count
"Serious concerns" expressed about quality of Saturday's elections given the insecurity and numerous complaints of fraud



Fears of fraud are growing as election officials in Afghanistan continue to tally votes following a crucial parliamentary poll.

About 3.6 million votes have been counted so far in the exercise that began on Sunday, but the votes represent only a small fraction of the 11.4 million Afghans eligible to cast their votes.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from the capital, Kabul, said there were "all sorts of allegations of fraud coming from across the country".

"We've people who have been able to wash the 'indelible' ink off their fingers; we have voter registration cards - fake ones - which were definitely used, we are told, in some areas and we have been told of some polling stations where one candidate allowed only his supporters to go inside," he said.

The Independent Electoral Commission said the total number of votes cast was about four million.

It said three of its staff had been killed in the north of the country, but added that the process of transferring preliminary results and ballot boxes from polling stations to provincial centres was going well.

Fake voter cards flooded into Afghanistan in the run-up to the balloting, but election officials had said that poll workers were trained to spot them.

Afghan election observers said on Sunday they had serious concerns about the legitimacy of Saturday's vote.

The Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (Fefa) said there were "serious concerns about the quality of elections", given the insecurity and numerous complaints of fraud.

'Significantly fraudulent'

Fefa deployed about 7,000 people around the country, making it the largest observer of the parliamentary vote.

Many international observer groups scaled back their operations from last year because of security concerns.

Peter Galbraith, the former UN deputy special representative for Afghanistan, who was sacked for having complained about fraud in last year's presidential vote, said the elections were "significantly fraudulent".

"This is hardly the voice of the Afghan people," he told Al Jazeera.

"Very few Afghans voted. The estimates are in the range of three million. A year ago, there were six million votes even removing the one and a half million that were fake Karzai [Afghan president] votes."

Galbraith's comments came as General David Petraeus, commander of Nato and US forces in Afghanistan, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, both congratulated Afghans for their courage in participating in the elections.

"I am interested in the optimistic statements that have been made both by General Petraeus and the UN because a year ago, they were exactly the same kind of optimistic statements even though it was clear that there had been massive fraud," Galbraith said.

The vote count followed a day of violence as the Taliban launched a wave of attacks aimed at disrupting the poll.

The British defence ministry announced on Sunday that two British soldiers had been killed in an explosion, but it said the deaths were unrelated to violence in the country's election day.

"The soldiers were killed in an explosion yesterday, September 18th, during a vehicle patrol in the Lashkar Gah District of Helmand province," the ministry said in the statement.

Separately, Afghanistan's interior ministry said Taliban fighters carried out 33 bomb attacks on election day, killing 11 civilians and three police officers.

Afghan officials said the security situation did have an impact on the polls, prompting many Afghans to stay away from polling stations.

The vote was the second parliamentary election to be held in Afghanistan since the Taliban was toppled by the US-led invasion in 2001.

Our correspondent said that releasing the results would be a "long a process".

"There's an election complaints commission that's in place [but] some are very critical of that because the rules ... were changed; the structure was changed," Bays said.

"It now has got a majority of Afghans ... and they were appointed by Hamid Karzai and some opposition politicians say that's not as good as the system that existed one year ago for the presidential elections."

Karzai, who won fraud-marred elections a year ago, described Saturday's vote as a step towards a brighter future.

"We hope nobody will be deterred by security incidents, although there will undoubtedly be some," he said, as he cast his ballot. "This will take Afghanistan several steps forward into a brighter future."

More than 2,500 candidates were contested 249 seats in the lower house of parliament, or Wolesi Jirga. Among them were 406 women contesting 68 seats reserved for them under legislation designed to better their rights.

The Election Complaints Commission said it had received complaints of delayed opening, intimidation, ineligible voters, misuse of registration cards, proxy voting, poor ink quality and shortages of ballot papers.

Afghans reported being able to rub the ink off their fingers with little effort, despite officials saying that it was the best quality indelible ink available.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/as...945477722.html

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Two British soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Two British soldiers, one from The Queen's Royal Lancers and one from the Royal Engineers have been killed in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said today.

The pair died in an explosion yesterday, during a vehicle patrol in the Lashkar Gah District of Helmand Province.

They were serving as part of Combined Force Lashkar Gah. Next of kin have been informed.

A spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel James Carr-Smith, said: "It is with great sadness I must inform you that a soldier from the Queen's Royal Lancers and a soldier from the Royal Engineers were killed this afternoon west of Lashkar Gah.

"They were attached to the 1st Battalion Scots Guards Battlegroup. The soldiers were part of a ground domination patrol when they were struck by an explosion.

"They will be greatly missed and their sacrifice will not be forgotten. We will remember them."

The number of British losses since the conflict in Afghanistan began in 2001 now stands at 337.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...n-2083569.html

[Reznov]

There just peacekeepers!