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Democracy Happened
Rich Galen Tuesday September 20, 2005
From Bamiyan, Afghanistan
Afghanistan held its second election in history on Sunday. They voted for members to the lower House and for members of their provincial councils.
I am here as part of and election observer team assembled by our friends at the International Republican Institute (IRI) for which I've traveled and about which I've written before.
The election, from a process standpoint, appears to have gone wonderfully well across the country. I can say from first-hand knowledge that it went extremely well in Bamiyan Province, because I spent election day there visiting polling sites.
You know this place, you just don't know you know it. It is here, in Bamiyan, where those giant statues of Buddha which had been carved into the side of a mountain about 1,700 years ago were attack with tanks and artillery by the Taliban and destroyed.
More about that next time.
Urging Democracy onward is not for the faint of heart. Or stomach.
This country is so rugged that many ballot boxes are being returned to the provincial counting centers by donkey.
Just getting to one's polling place is a struggle. Sunday morning we looked at a map to see which locations we would visit. One of our team said there was one polling place in the village of Bamiyan, another about eight miles away, and we could catch three more on the way back.
The roads here are so dreadful that it took about an hour to get to that first outlying site.
The reason the roads are in such dreadful shape is that they are not in such dreadful shape if you are an Afghan living in Bamiyan Province. You don't need paved roads because you don't have a car. Nor does anyone you know - assuming you don't know the cops and government officials.
The road only has to be good enough for you and/or your donkey and/or your cow to be able to get from one place to another.
When we got to the places were people were voting, it was all worthwhile. Men and women voted in separate facilities (sometimes a different room in the same building, sometimes a different building) but women DID vote. And perhaps in numbers higher than men.
Every polling place we visited was chock full of election officials, candidates' observers, Afghan observers, and people voting.
Polling places were schools, meeting houses and at least one tent.
The first site we visited was in the village of Bamiyan proper - directly in front of the holes in the mountain where the statues stood. The polls were supposed to open at six, but this, the largest of the polling places in the Province, finally got all its 13 polling stations up and running at about 6:20.
The principal reason for the holdup was the insistence of each of the polling station chairmen that the candidates' observers look in the ballot boxes to insure they were empty before the seals closing the lids were attached.
Imagine that happening in Cook County, Illinois. As we say here in Afghanistan, "Yeah, right."
The Provincial Governor - a woman appointed by President Karzai - came to vote she told the poll workers that she had misplaced her voter registration card. They said, in effect, "Too bad. If you don't have your card, you can't vote" and sent her away.
Imaging that happening in Chicago.
In the outlying areas both men and women took the whole process seriously. To comport with local customs we didn't enter any of the women's voting sites before asking, but we were never denied entry.
I took one photo of women voting (which you can see on the Secret Decoder Ring page) after (a) having asked their permission and (b) all of them arranging themselves so their faces couldn't be seen.
I can't say whether or not the people of Bamiyan Province are happy in their simple peasantry. But I can tell you they are thrilled with democracy and the freedom it is already bringing.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Three photos from Afghanistan and an excerpt from a December, 2000 column about the IRI.
--END --
Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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