Afghan voters ready to pick a president

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s first direct ballot to choose a president opened today, bidding to take this country of tribal chieftains and medieval ways on an improbable but long-awaited engagement with Western-style democracy.

The polling stations first opened, oddly enough, in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan. This happened simply because Pakistan is half an hour ahead of Afghanistan.

Moqadasa Sidiqi, a 19-year-old woman living as a refugee in Pakistan, cast the first vote in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan as the polls opened at 7 a.m., Reuters news agency reported.

A student, Miss Sidiqi fled Kabul, the Afghan capital, with her family in 1992.

There are about 740,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Yesterday, as the voting neared, scattered violence was reported in Afghanistan, a strategic Central Asian nation of 28.5 million people.

Despite fears of widespread violence by remnants of the ousted Taliban, millions of Afghans were expected to line up today outside polling stations separately designated for men and women.

“Americans feel inspired when they see the courage shown by Afghan voters,” said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aaronson, co-leader of a bipartisan American observer delegation that met some of the 18 candidates on the presidential ballot.

“It’s an important moment for the Afghan people, but also for the U.S.”

President Hamid Karzai, the country’s interim ruler for nearly three years, is clearly the favorite to win the election.

Even though he is criticized for presiding over a corrupt administration and failing to rein in provincial warlords, there is a belief Mr. Karzai is best qualified to bring peace and economic recovery to a nation blighted by more than two decades of war and a succession of brutal regimes.

But Mr. Karzai still runs the risk of not polling a majority of the vote, necessitating a runoff next month. Much will depend though on how many of his fellow Pashtun tribespeople show up at polling stations in the south and east, where Taliban terror is at its worst.

In case polling is very low in the Pashtun provinces, the remaining national vote could get fragmented among the many candidates and result in a final round between Mr. Karzai and his closest challenger, former education minister Yunus Qanooni, if he finishes second, as expected.

But if all goes well, analysts expect Mr. Karzai to sweep the polls.

More than 100,000 Afghan and foreign security forces were on high alert yesterday, according to the Associated Press.

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