Today, Afghans are voting for a new President and new regional councils. For the past months, the Taliban have been issuing non-stop threats that they will turn the election into a failure by inundating Afghan citizens with violence.
Well, they failed. And it looks like they failed in a major way.
Afghans Vote in Strong Numbers Despite Dangers
By ROD NORDLAND and AZAM AHMEDAPRIL 5, 2014
KABUL, Afghanistan — Braving cold, rain and threats of Taliban attacks, Afghans gathered in long lines at polling places Saturday to cast their ballots to choose the successor to President Hamid Karzai.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
That this election looks to be turning out much better than the Afghan election in 2009 can, in large parts, be attributed to the manner in which the Obama Administration, the United Nations, and the more than 50 partner countries in the ISAF coalition, attempted to address the Bush Administration's huge failure of neglect in Afghanistan.
From the same article:
“Whenever there has been a new king or president, it has been accompanied by death and violence,” said Abdul Wakil Amiri, an attorney who turned out early to vote at a Kabul mosque. “For the first time, we are experiencing democracy.”
To provide security for the voting, the Afghan government mobilized its entire military and police forces, some 350,000 in all, backed up by 53,000 NATO coalition troops – although the Americans and their allies planned to not get directly involved except in case of an extreme emergency.
snip
A series of high-profile attacks on foreigners, including the murder of an Associated Press photographer and the wounding of her colleague, created an impression of greater violence, but were also indications that the insurgents did not have as much capacity to strike forcefully during this campaign. They did not manage a single major attack on any campaign event, for instance, and two attacks on the Independent Election Commission had little direct effect on the voting.
When Obama took over from Bush, the Bush Administration's Iraq Fiasco-driven neglect of the Afghan War had left Afghanistan in a sorry state, with the Taliban and other reactionary, extremist insurgent groups making a big comeback. One of the first major moves the Obama Administration made there was to make training and building up the Afghan National Security Forces a major priority and the main long-term goal of the international military effort there. And today we see the result: Afghans are increasingly capable of handling their security issues themselves.
The election in Afghanistan won't be perfect, especially by western standards, but it looks like it might just be a considerable step forward for the Afghan People and it also looks like we might be leaving a fairly stable, progressing Afghanistan behind as we continue to withdraw from the country.
And that can only be a good thing.