Afghan Election Rests on the Backs of Donkeys

[unhappycamper]

Some election workers in Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan toil for oats. Donkeys carry ballots to areas that lack paved roads.


Afghan Election Rests on the Backs of Donkeys
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: October 25, 2009

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan — In this remote corner of northern Afghanistan, distances are measured in days. The only paved road lasts for less than a mile, and travel often takes place on the back of a donkey.

Apply those qualities to an area the size of South Carolina, add in the topography of Colorado, and you get an election official’s nightmare, which is about how Sayed Masood saw it on Sunday, as he frantically prepared for the presidential election runoff on Nov. 7.

“There is very little time,” said Mr. Masood, the top election official in Badakhshan Province. “I have to hire 130 district coordinators by tomorrow.”

Now that Afghanistan’s runoff vote seems imminent, local election officials across the country are scrambling to get 15 million ballots to thousands of villages in Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Nowhere will that be more difficult than in Badakhshan, a mitten-shaped province here in northeastern Afghanistan that is nearly entirely covered by mountains.

Aside from one short paved strip in the center of Faizabad, the provincial capital, the roads are dirt, with ruts and slants that make any car ride feel like a voyage at sea during a storm. Six districts have no roads that connect to the rest of the province, and ballots for those areas will be taken by helicopter, Mr. Masood said.


Rest of article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/world/asia/26faizabad.html?ref=world