Afghan ballots carry mullahs, jihadis, women

A mullah, a feminist, a jihadi, and a communist: It sounds like the start of an Afghan joke, but instead, it is the makings of Afghanistan's first-ever elected parliament.

These are some of the 5,700 candidates running for seats in parliament and provincial assemblies around Afghanistan. Their diversity is both an endorsement of democracy, and a challenge to its very existence.

When Afghans line up to vote on Sunday, choosing 249 men and women from these thousands, they will be selecting from candidates who hold conflicting views over concepts as fundamental as the very definition of democracy itself.

"This is a project of decades and generations, not months and years," says Kit Spence, a senior analyst at the National Democratic Institute in Washington. "The good thing is that people are buying in to the concept in a strong way."

Kabul and most towns are papered over with campaign posters, a sign that the Afghans are taking this election seriously. It is the presence of so many faces - of men and women - that serves as a striking reminder of how much has changed since the days of the Taliban, when depictions of the human face were forbidden.

Yet this campaign has also seen spates of violence, reminders that Afghanistan is still emerging from 23 years of occupation and civil war. Six candidates and four election workers have been killed thus far, and scores continue to receive death threats. In Uruzgan Province, Taliban fighters killed seven people for carrying voting cards, according to Gov. Jan Mohammad Khan.

Safiya Sadiqi, an energetic liberal candidate from the conservative province of Nangrahar, was attacked with Kalashnikovs, grenades, and rockets last week. None of her campaign workers were hurt, but some villagers were injured. She now travels less openly and with government gunmen.

Yet her moderate Islamic, antiwarlord message remains as strident as before.

"Those people who rob you, who kill your children, if they give you food, will you give him your vote?" she says to a small group in the town of Torkham, mocking a nearby rally of a warlord where some 5,000 people have gathered with the promise of free food. "If you elect him ... the winner will be the one who killed your rights."

Perhaps her bravest words, and the ones that stick in the craw of many ethnic Pashtuns here, are when Mrs. Sadiqi - an official from the Ministry of Rural Development - talks of the cruelty of many Afghan traditions toward women.

She describes seeing a pregnant woman being driven to the hospital. According to tradition, the male relatives sat in front, and the pregnant woman was forced to sit, obviously under great pain, in the trunk. "I asked the men, how can they do this? This is not right. Show me where in the Koran it says you should do this."

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