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| Afghanistan |
| Bomb Destroys Afghan Election Truck, Kills Three |
| 2014-04-07 |
[AnNahar] A roadside kaboom hit a truck carrying full ballot boxes in northern Afghanistan Sunday, killing three people a day after the country voted for a successor to President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... Eight boxes of votes were destroyed in the blast, which came as the three leading candidates voiced concerns about possible fraud. Around seven million people turned out to vote, according to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), a turnout of over 50 percent despite poor weather and Taliban threats to target the election. Sayed Sarwar Hossaini, police front man for the province of Kunduz, said the truck was hit as it carried ballot boxes from polling stations to Kunduz city. "The blast killed three people, including an IEC member, a policeman and a driver. The truck and eight ballot boxes were destroyed," Hossaini said. Amir Amza Ahmadzai, the head of the IEC in Kunduz, confirmed the incident. Roadside bombs have been a key weapon for the Taliban in the bloody insurgency they have waged against Karzai's government and its Western backers since being ousted from power in 2001. In the run-up to the poll the Islamists urged their fighters to target election workers, voters and security forces to disrupt the vote, which they rejected as a foreign plot. Saturday's polling day passed off without major Death Eater attacks, though casualties were reported from small incidents around the country. Emanuele Nannini, program coordinator for International NGO Emergency which runs three hospitals in Afghanistan, said they treated an unusually high number of maimed on Saturday. "Around 30 war-related casualties were admitted into our hospitals in Kabul and Lashkar Gah," he told AFP. Preliminary results are due on April 24 and if no candidate secures more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff is planned for late May. The front-runners are former World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani and former ministers Abdullah Abdullah ... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... and Zalmai Rassoul ... former foreign minister and a very close confidant of Hamid Karzai. Before serving as foreign minister Rassoul also spent seven years laboring as a national security adviser to the president. An ethnic Pashtun born in Kabul, Rassoul was the valedictorian of his class at the illustrious Franco-American school in Kabul, Lycee Istiqal. He has an MD from the Paris Medical School in France..... . Whoever emerges victorious faces the prospect of fighting the Taliban without the help of 51,000 U.S.-led NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... combat troops, which are withdrawing this year. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 Somehow those ballot boxes will be discovered in a janitor's closet in Philadelphia, Detroit, and/or Chicago. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-04-07 21:03 |
| #1 and Karzai blames the US in 5...4...3... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2014-04-07 09:23 |