Friday, August 21, 2009 KABUL: Vote counting in Afghanistan's second-ever direct presidential election is under way after polls closed on Thursday, officials have said.A runoff, if required, would be held within two weeks after the official results are announced.Despite candidates' calls for Afghans to defy the Taliban's warnings of violence and come out to vote in the presidential and provincial-council elections, the effort appears to have been only partially successful.However, Taliban attacks and threats deterred many in the southern and southeastern Pashtun-populated regions from going to polling stations. The development could undermine incumbent President Hamid Karzai's bid for another five-year term, at least in the first round, due to his dependence on the votes of fellow Pashtuns in those regions. Twenty-six civilians and security-force personnel were killed as a result of election-day attacks, according to Afghan security officials, who also claimed to have prevented dozens of attacks, including potential suicide bombings of polling stations.Most of the attacks that were recorded concentrated in the capital Kabul and the insurgency-plagued southern Pashtun regions as voting began.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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