The polling stations closed last night in what was hailed as Afghanistan's first free parliamentary elections since 1969. Overseeing the security of the elections in the capital was the special Kabul Multi-National Brigade (KMNB VIII), composed of units from 24 countries, together with the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Kabul City Police (KCP). KMNB VIII patrols of Kabul's streets started at daybreak, with the police and Afghan army supervising the polling stations. Three days before the vote a large number of 107-mm rockets were found along with some surface-to-air missiles and other explosives in a joint Italo-French operation on the outskirts of Kabul, on the road to Bagram. A few hours before the vote, Kabul's chief of police and four officers were killed in the city center. Yesterday morning the Counting Center, where ballot boxed are due to be opened and counted was hit by two rocket attacks, which both failed to cause significant damage. According to initial estimates by the multi-national Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), turnout was as high as 55%. For the transportation of ballot boxes a variety of vehicles are being used, from four-wheel drive trucks to a fleet of 1,250 donkeys, 300 horses and 20 camels, allowing even the most remote villages to be reached. The KMNB operation will continue until the counting of the votes ends on October 9, with a declaration of results due on October 22. (AGI, Sept. 19)

A military jury at Fort Bliss, TX, spared an Army reservist prison time but reduced his rank Aug. 18 for abuse of a detainee who later died at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Prosecutors had asked that Pfc. Willie V. Brand, 27, be sent to a military prison for 10 years with a dishonorable discharge for the December 2002 beating. Instead, the panel reduced his rank to private, the lowest pay grade in the Army, and set him free.

The campaign officially opened for Afghanistan's first post-Taliban parliamentary race Aug. 17, even as violence continues to plague the country. Authorities are still not ruling out the possibility of an attack against a helicopter that crashed near Herat Aug. 17, killing 17 Spanish soldiers on board, although bad weather could have been the cause. (RFE/RL, Aug. 17) But Taliban rebels were almost certainly behind the bombing of a bus carrying police trainees that day in Kandahar, killing one and injuring at least 11. Eyewitnesses said the bomb was in a cart placed near a speed bump on a road in the city centre and was detonated as the bus passed by. (BBC, Aug. 17)

A Taliban spokesman called Hakimi said guerillas destroyed a US military vehicle Aug. 9 in Ghazni Province. "The Americans suffered loss of life in the attack," Hakimi said. US military sources acknowledged that a vehicle was destroyed by an improvised explosive device in Ghani, injuring two servicemen. Meanwhile in northern Faryab Province, leaflets have been distributed warning female candidates against running in the September parliamentary elections, the Mazar-i-Sharif daily Sahar reported.

Bad news for Nuristan, the remote and isolated region of Afghanistan's central mountains, known until just over a century ago as Kafiristan (land of the infidels) because of the survival of the ancient Indo-European nature religion there. The region straddles the border with Pakistan, and on the Pakistani side the name Kafiristan, and the ancient "pagan" religion, still survive. Its isolation has kept it out of the war which has wracked Afghanistan for the last generation—but perhaps not for long. The anti-terrorist Jamestown Foundation website claims that the recent US anti-Taliban offensive (which resulted in the loss of a Chinook helicopter and several US soldiers), dubbed Operation Red Wing, has forced Osama bin Laden to take refuge in Nuristan:

Claims of civilians wiped out in US air raids, journalists detained by security forces, GIs missing in combat. My, things just look better and better in Afghanistan. Thanks to Lebanon's Daily Star for this report which, while compiled from wire services, is more comprehensive and realistic than most of what we're getting in the US press.

US helicopters and hundreds of troops are searching for soldiers who went missing in Afghanistan just before a helicopter coming to their aid was shot down in Kunar province June 28, killing the 16 on board, all Navy Seals and Army Special Forces. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi boasted that insurgents killed seven US "spies" before the Chinook was downed, and that one survivor of the crash is being held. "He was trying to escape up the mountain when our mujahedeen caught him," he said.

A suicide bomber crashed his car into a US military patrol just outside Kandahar June 13, killing himself and wounding four US soldiers, one seriously. The US ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, condemned such attacks as "cowardly acts of desperation, committed by criminals who move in shadows and hide in holes" and vowed to catch those responsible. (IHT, June 14)