By Viola Gienger Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) — Newly trained Afghan police and army soldiers will aim to show progress toward self-sufficiency as they take the lead in providing security for tomorrow’s presidential and provincial elections. With about 6,500 polling places to protect, the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army will be the most visible security presence, said Australian Brigadier General Damian Cantwell, chief of the election task force for the NATO- led coalition force in Afghanistan. Foreign troops will keep their distance, monitoring from the air and providing backup on the ground as needed, he said. “I think it is a critical step in the development of both the Afghan Security Forces but also the country as a whole for the people to see and develop trust and confidence in their own security agencies,†Cantwell told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday via video link from Kabul. The Afghan forces will try to protect an estimated 15 million registered voters across a country almost the size of Texas. Taliban militants who sheltered al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. have stepped up their campaign of violence leading up to the election. A suicide bomber detonated an explosive in a vehicle on a busy street in Kabul yesterday. It killed one member of the international force as well as seven Afghan civilians and two United Nations employees, said Canadian Brigadier General Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for the force. More than 50 Afghans and two civilian employees of the International Security Assistance Force were injured. Disrupt, Discredit The insurgents clearly intend “to disrupt and discredit the process wherever possible,†Cantwell said. “For that very reason, I think it’s critical that the Afghan security forces are seen by their people as a credible response.†The number of militant attacks in Afghanistan has risen from an average of 32 a day in the past 10 days to 48 a day in the past three to four days, Tremblay said during the joint briefing with Cantwell. That number is low in comparison to the number of polling locations nationwide, he said. Statistically, “they’re not going to be able to attack even 1 percent of the entire polling sites in this country,†Tremblay said. At least 13 politics-related killings and at least 10 abductions of Electoral Commission officials, candidates and campaign workers occurred between April 25 and Aug. 1, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch. “The overall security situation is considerably worse than during the last elections†in 2004 and 2005, the group said in a statement this week. ‘Agile Posture’ Even with an increase in foreign forces in Afghanistan this year to quell a growing insurgency, the 63,000 U.S. troops and 40,500 others will hang back out of sight in a “low-profile but agile posture,†Cantwell said. Afghan police will provide the most close-in security at each polling site, with the Afghan army securing nearby neighborhoods and roads. The international forces will serve as the third and fourth tiers of security. The international force is counting on the security plan, multiple checkpoints approaching the polls and scenario rehearsals to mitigate the inexperience of the 92,000 Afghan troops and 80,000 police officers trained thus far. “We recognize that, as security agencies, they have some way to develop and mature,†Cantwell said. Among the weaknesses he cited was the lack of a “long-range planning culture.†“They are very aggressive once on the ground to ensure they’re doing the very best mission they can,†he said. Election security should be sufficient to provide “reasonable access†for 85 percent to 90 percent of registered voters, Cantwell said. Long Haul President Barack Obama , who earlier this year authorized 17,000 more combat troops and 4,000 additional trainers to augment Afghan security personnel, has tried to prepare Americans for a long haul in Afghanistan. “This will not be quick,†he told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Phoenix yesterday. “This will not be easy.†Security for the election is “as good as one can expect in a country where you still have an active insurgency,†said Mark Schneider , senior vice president for the International Crisis Group , a Brussels-based nonprofit policy organization. The Afghan security forces are “much stronger†than they were during the last presidential election in 2004, he said. Their training period is short, just eight weeks for the police, for example. “The level of competence is pretty low,†Schneider said. Use of Donkeys Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission , which registered 4.7 million new voters this year, illustrates the security challenges in its own plans, which call for more donkeys than cars to ferry supplies such as voter screens and tables and chairs to polling stations. The commission will use 3,039 cars, three helicopters and 3,171 donkeys, according to a July 29 statement outlining preparations. Security has declined in western Afghanistan since 2005, according to World Vision , an international aid group that works in three provinces. With the biggest U.S. and coalition military efforts concentrated in the country’s volatile east and south, development assistance has followed to those areas, and the west receives relatively little security or aid by comparison, said Christine Beasley, World Vision’s country program manager. The fear among Afghans in provinces such as Herat and Badghis and Ghor has spilled over to the election season. “What we’re seeing in our areas is lots of concern about the safety of voting,†said Beasley, who returned from Afghanistan in late June. World Vision, which lost four Afghan staff in two attacks in 2006, evacuated its foreign workers last week until after the election. To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net .
