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Afghanistan
Karzai counts on tribal vote to win Kandahar
2009-08-16
Much inside Buzkashi here ...
At the Mirwais hospital in Kandahar, the wards are filled with the collateral of insurgency. In one room, a father stands over the bed of a little girl whose torso is swathed in bandages, her broken leg pinned together with metal rods. The girl's face is covered with shrapnel wounds. Another man, lying listlessly on a filthy bed, says he was injured by an American bomb aimed at one of the heroin processing centres in his rural village. Suddenly, the handheld radio of Red Cross worker Benjamin Nyakira crackles with the voice of a colleague. The entire hospital has run out of stocks of blood that are keeping alive the victims of homemade Taliban bombs and hi-tech Nato ordinance.

"Blood is a big problem for us," explains Nyakira.

Mirwais hospital is desperately trying to stock up on drugs, fluids and other medical necessities, as well as blood. Call them election supplies. On Thursday, Afghanistan goes to the polls to elect a president for only the second time in its history and the Taliban have threatened to cut the throats of those who turn out to vote in the Pashtun south. The insurgency against American and British troops in Helmand has been gaining momentum for months. And in Kabul and in Kandahar, Taliban bombings have scarred the campaign trail. As Muhammad Ehsan, the deputy chairman of Kandahar's provincial council, puts it: "This is not a very good time to have an election."
Posted by:Steve White

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