Hazara Nation

AlertNet Voter registration in parts of Afghanistan's violence-ridden south will not take place until Afghan security forces can protect registration offices from insurgent attacks, a senior electoral official said on Thursday. Voter registration in south Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces started on Monday, but civilians in four districts of Helmand province will not be able to register their vote for the upcoming presidential elections because of inadequate security.

"There are four districts in Helmand ... where we are not able to start voter registration because the government has no physical presence there," said Daoud Ali Najafi, chief electoral officer at the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

Washington is planning to send up to 20,000 extra troops to southern Afghanistan this year to help secure the elections and strengthen some 18,000 mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops, who have struggled to contain the Taliban insurgency. Najafi said the IEC were pressing the Ministry of Defence to get Afghan security forces to the districts -- Sangin, Kajaki, Garmsir and Baghran -- in Helmand, where mainly British troops are deployed. The IEC says it has completed three phases of voter registration so far, covering north, central and east Afghanistan, but even in those regions, their teams could not reach three districts because of poor security. Almost all fighting in Afghanistan takes place in the south and east, which are populated mainly by Pashtuns, the traditionally dominant ethnic group.

Many Pashtuns are angry at their perceived exclusion from power and alleged abuses by foreign troops. Najafi dismissed as rumours the suggestion that north Afghanistan, which is populated mainly by ethnic Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, would have a disproportionate share of votes in the presidential elections, compared with the mainly Pashtun south. Access to funding and insecurity were the main obstacles preventing the IEC from gaining access to remote areas.

Donors pledged $47 million to prepare for the presidential elections, a date for which has not been fixed but is likely to be in September, at a meeting on Monday, Najafi said, adding he did not know when the IEC would receive the money. "We cannot announce the date of elections, they depend on security and financial problems and we don't have the solutions for those yet," Najafi told a news conference. So far 3,606 people have registered to vote in Helmand since Monday, and the IEC hopes the process of registering voters in the provinces of Nimroz, Uruzgan and Kandahar will take about one month.