Afghan Election Prelude — The Taliban: "…They put him though a wheat thresher."
Before the umpteenth but delicious meal of biryani, rice, chicken, lentils, lamb and delicious Afghan bread (like the Indian naan or Turkish dipping bread) …
“They Put him Though a Wheat Thresher”
The American mafia (whether Italian-American, Russian-American, Chinese-American…) will knee-cap their enemies or put them in a bag with rocks and “send them to the fishes.” The people they dump into the urban rivers are generally rivals or traitors. In Afghanistan, the Taliban today have taken on the citizens as their enemies — or at least those who might vote for their rivals, the candidates running in the second democratic elections. And so it was that, according to one of Afghanistan’s preeminent female organizers, when the Taliban came across a man with a voter registration card, “they put him through a wheat thresher.”
The biggest group to suffer from this thuggery, this appalling, horrifying intimidation, are the Afghan women. The obstacles to getting them to register and vote are tremendous. One woman who has dedicated herself to helping address this challenge is Dr. Humayra Haqmal, Chairwoman of the Movement of Afghan Sisters (MAS). The MAS method is to explain to women — and perhaps more importantly, to their men — that voting is Islamic, that the prophet Mohammed said “if you get agreement from the men, you have to get it from the women too.”
But even if you convince women and men that the former should vote — that it is an Islamic right and a civic duty — it’s another issue to get them safely to the polls. Many polling stations are reportedly far from secure locations and there is concern about having the women travel so far through or to dangerous areas. Then at the stations, we have heard both from Afghan elections officials and other sources that there aren’t enough women to man the polling stations. Voting here is separated by gender. In the very religous areas, the men will not let their wives show their faces and ID cards to male election workers. So, with insufficient workers, there is the potential for insufficient polling stations. Also, given security concerns, many polling centers (with stations within them) will be closed. Afghans will not be able to afford the expense and time of getting to another polling center. This is all the more true because (oddly) elections are occuring the day before Ramadan.
Tomorrow is deployment day.
Followup to the comment on the fact that presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah dropped leaflets from a helicopter yesterday on a rally — today the two helicopter pilots were arrested for violating Kabul airspace. They reportedly had failed to coordinate their leafletting jaunt with the military or other security forces…
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[...] Read the whole post as well as her other reports from the field:Live from “Jay-Bad”Afghan Election Prelude — The Taliban: “…They put him though a wheat thresher.”Live from Kabul – Election Observation [...]