What I Saw (and didn't see) as an Afghan Election Observer Posted by Michael Cohen

In my column this week for AOLNews I write about what I saw as an election observer for the recent Afghan presidential elections: 

We arrived at the polling center in the northern Afghan province of Samengan via a road that winded its way around simple mud-brick houses, over narrow bridges of indeterminate effectiveness and on a surface so deeply pockmarked and uneven it barely qualified as a road.

I was in Afghanistan with the nongovernmental organization Democracy International, as part of an 80-person international election observer team.

All across Afghanistan, ordinary citizens headed to the polls on Saturday to cast a ballot for representatives to the country's Wolesi Jirga, or parliament, and in this tiny, rural village -- untouched by modernity -- it seemed that almost the entire community had gathered at the school/polling center to take in the proceedings. On one side were the village's male population; on the other were the women clad head to toe in full-length blue burqas. Meanwhile, children stared in wonder at our four-vehicle convoy and Kalashnikov-toting South African private security guards.

Clad in body armor and identification denoting us as international election observers, we marched to the village polling station to begin our monitoring. The polling center manager greeted us -- as did, it seemed, many of the idling men of the community -- deeply curious as to what exactly we were doing in their village. Our translator Sayed explained to the manager that we were here to observe the election process. He seemed momentarily confused but quickly ushered us inside the male voting station (our female colleagues were taken to the women's polling station).

There we witnessed an orderly and efficient electoral process. Men in traditional Afghan garb came into the small school room, showed their voting registration cards, were asked to dip their index finger in indelible ink to prevent multiple voting and were handed a folded and stamped ballot featuring the names of dozens of prospective candidates. They stepped behind a cardboard partition to mark their choice and then they took the folded ballot and slipped it into a sealed plastic box. Meanwhile agents for the various candidates stood watch, as did a local Afghan election monitor clad in a blue baseball cap. Against the windows, children pressed their faces to get a glimpse at what was happening inside. My fellow observer and I took detailed notes, and just as quickly as we had arrived we were back in our armor-plated SUVs off to the next polling center.

One could not help but be moved by the experience. Here in one of the poorest and least-developed countries in the world -- in the midst of a vicious insurgency -- millions of ordinary Afghans literally risked their lives to cast a vote.

But of course, as is so often the case in Afghanistan, things are never exactly as they seem.

You can read the whole thing here.

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