US claims to have thwarted Taliban - Insurgents aim to derail Afghan voting

US claims to have thwarted Taliban - Insurgents aim to derail Afghan voting
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad, James Lamont in Kabul and Daniel Dombey in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
Published: August 17 2009 18:53 | Last updated: August 17 2009 21:09
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/303afe12-8b55-11de-9f50-00144feabdc0.html


The US said on Monday that Taliban insurgents had failed in their plan to derail Afghanistan’s elections on Thursday with a wave of violent attacks.

Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, warned of the heightened threat, saying the Taliban had “thrown everything” at ruining the country’s fledgling democracy. But he saluted Afghanistan for taking a big step in practising politics as they should be, in spite of leaving some polling areas unprotected.

“A ferocious offensive by the Taliban [was] designed to try to kill the elections. Their goal is to prevent the elections and they have failed in that,” he said on a visit to Islamabad.

Election officials are still very worried though about terrorist attacks and the potential impact that may have on voters.

Earlier, Afghanistan’s top officials said that the International Security Assistance Forces and the Afghan army could not guarantee the safety of the election, saying the task of protecting the nation from a widespread insurgency was too great. They also said that the government had sought to secure deals with the Taliban for a ceasefire during the poll.

Their comments came after a weekend suicide bomb attack outside Nato headquarters in the centre of Kabul, the capital.

The Taliban threatened to disrupt provincial and presidential elections and urged people to boycott the polls. Although fighting has intensified in the south, many Kabul residents had been surprised by the relative calm in the capital.

President Hamid Karzai has encountered a strong campaign from Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and confidant of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the slain anti-Soviet leader. The contest may lead to a second round between the leading candidates, to be held in October.

Some political leaders in Afghanistan have criticised Mr Holbrooke for not spending enough time in the region. “This is not the Holbrooke of Bosnia,” said one Afghan politician. “He hasn’t been cracking heads together. But maybe he will do after the election.”

Meanwhile, Mr Obama told a meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Arizona on Monday that the war in Afghanistan would be neither quick nor easy. “There will be more difficult days ahead,” he said.

That warning contrasted with his commitment, restated on Monday, to pull all US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

While emphasising the central role of diplomacy in the US counterinsurgency push in Afghanistan, the president praised US troops’ move into new territories.

But he added: “It’s not enough to kill extremists and terrorists: we also need to protect the Afghan people and improve their daily lives.”