Explosions. Hangings. Suicide Bombers. Fear and hysteria. These are just a few words to describe the condition present during the elections that took place in Afghanistan last week. In the second democratic election in the nearly eight years since the Taliban regime was ousted from power, 13 candidates emerged vying for the presidential seat. The two candidates that surfaced as major contenders were the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai, and Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister. Two days before the presidential elections were scheduled to take place, violence and terror filled the streets in many towns in every province in the country. The Taliban wished to make a statement, and one that meant death for any Afghan citizen that chose to exercise their right to vote in this weak democracy. The Taliban unleashed suicide bombings and rocket assaults at the Presidential Palace, while the government and the Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry were discouraging members of the domestic and international media to cease reporting on the violence until after the elections, for fear of terrifying potential voters. The Taliban threatened to explode polling stations and severely “punish” those who voted in the elections. One method of punishment cited by the Taliban was to cut off the index finger with which citizens verify their identity when voting if they were found with the purple ink used by the election monitors to insure a voter’s validity. Two men were hanged after being discovered with purple ink stains on their fingers by Taliban insurgents. Two women in the southern province of Kandahar, the province known to be the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, were seized by the militants and only released after their fingers, bearing the same purple stain as the men who were hanged, were cut off. One bombing killed eight people in Kabul, the capital city, including one soldier with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as two Afghan soldiers working with the United Nations. Fifty other citizens were wounded in the bombing. Three soldiers and two civilians were killed when a Taliban militant walked up to the Afghanistan National Army checkpoint and detonated a bomb on his suicide mission. There were areas in the southern provinces where citizens were told they would be shot if they left their houses after noon on election day, and many shop owners closed their shops early for fear of attack, according to correspondents with the New York Times. According to President Karzai, there were approximately 73 attacks made by the Taliban in 15 provinces around the country. However, 94 percent of the polling stations still opened on Thursday. The goal behind this malicious violence and slaughtering of innocent people? To crumble the resolve felt by citizens of this struggling country that they now have a right, granted them by many years of war and struggle, to hold elections in their country and be able to decide their own future and the future of their children. However, despite this widespread panic, chaos, and fear, citizens understood the importance. Two voters in the Hemland Province voted despite rocket attacks in their town, and insisted that their chance to vote and have a say in their own government was more important to them then any scare tactic or threat by the Taliban, they stated in the New York Times. During the 2008 presidential election, approximately 56.8 percent of the population went to the polls and cast a ballot. However, what happened to the 43.2 percent of citizens that are of age to vote? We live in a land of “freedom.” We are given the right to vote and the right to abstain from voting. I am neither condoning nor condemning those that chose not to cast a ballot in the 2008 election, for I myself questioned whether or not it was worth it after all the political mudslinging, name calling, back biting, and propaganda present in the 2008 campaign season. But the answer to that question is almost undeniably, yes. We were given these rights because someone saw fit to die so that we could have them. Citizens of Afghanistan continue to die for the rights that so many American’s took for granted in the past presidential election. Let’s break it down even further shall we? How many of you voted in the student government elections here at GSU last year? Now, I’m not going to continue on a soap box about claiming your rights a citizen and even more as a student on Georgia Southern’s campus, but next time you make the conscious decision to not practice a right granted you as a citizen or as a student, just remember that there are people across the globe dying for the same rights you so willing and thoughtlessly cast aside. *Courtesy of The George-Anne
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