Pictured: The man who had his nose and ears cut off by the Taliban for daring to vote
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:52 PM on 31st August 2009
The shock of the attack has left Mohammad reeling
Lal Mohammad was determined to stand against Taliban threats and exercise his right to vote in Afghanistan's presidential election.
But he now regrets his defiance.
These horrifying pictures show a fearful Mohammad recovering after he was ambushed by Taliban fighters as he walked to a polling station last week.
The 40-year-old farmer was beaten and mutilated. The Taliban cut off his ears and part of his nose in the shocking attack.
The Taliban vowed to disrupt the August 20 vote, threatening reprisals against voters and staging scores of rocket attacks and several bombings across the country on election day.
The threats and violence failed to stop the election from taking place, but they do seem to have hurt turnout in some areas, especially the Taliban heartland in the south.
Mohammad was in pain and in tears as he gave the gruesome account of his ordeal.
Mohammad spoke to reporters while in an immense amount of pain from his injuries
Then they took out a knife.
'I saw one reaching my nose with a knife. I asked him to stop, but it was useless,' Mohammad said.
'I regret very much getting the card and going to vote.'
Election officials have reported scattered incidents in which militants cut off voters' fingers stained with indelible ink.
The ink was meant to prevent multiple voting but it also helped the militants pick out people who had cast their ballots.
A Taliban spokesman denied before the election that an order had been given to mutilate voters.
Polls show that incumbent President Hamid Karzai is in the lead - barely
Mohammad described how he lay bleeding and unconscious for several hours, coming to only after a man from his village spotted him and put him on the back of a donkey.
But with no proper health care facility in remote Dai Kundi province, Mohammad travelled for three days over mountain tracks and dirt roads by donkey and car to reach the capital.
After answering some questions, Mohammad, apparently exhausted, slumped back onto his hospital bed.
Like two thirds of Afghans, Mohammad does not read or write.
He said he did not even know who was running for office when he went to vote but had been excited by the prospect of casting a ballot to help choose a president.
A doctor said Mohammad needed plastic surgery and weeks for his treatment and recovery.
Mohammad said he hoped the government would look after his family until he got better.
But Afghanistan remains in political limbo until the final results of the presidential election are tallied.
The results are expected to be announced today, with incumbent President Hamid Karzai currently in the lead.
Mounting accusations that the election was a failure has raised fundamental questions about the coalition strategy to rebuild Afghanistan.
The independent Electoral Complaints Commission says that of more than 2,100 allegations of wrongdoing during voting and vote-counting, 618 have been deemed serious enough to affect the election's outcome, if proven.
Whatever the outcome, the government must be ready to implement a strong infrastructure, because the Taliban - despite the violence - is winning support to their cause, a top counter-insurgency expert said today.
The Taliban were already running courts, hospitals and even an ombudsman in parallel to the government, making a real difference to local people, said David Kilcullen, a senior adviser to U.S. commander General Stanley McChrystal.
'A government that is losing to a counter-insurgency isn't being outfought, it is being out-governed. And that's what's happening in Afghanistan,' Kilcullen told Australia's National Press Club.
Though Karzai remains ahead, his lead is not enough to avoid a second round against his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
A man organises ballot boxes in Kabul after the election
Kilcullen, an Australian military officer and adviser to past U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said Karzai's government was failing to maintain a rapport with local people, who were now turning to the Taliban for court judgements, education and even fair taxation assessment.
A network of 15 Sharia courts in the Taliban-dominated south spent relatively little time on hardline Islamic issues, as Westerners usually believed, but instead focused 95 per cent of effort on civil issues, like land and inheritance disputes.
Local people would laugh at the idea that they could go to the police if a bike or goat was stolen, Kilcullen said, while the Taliban had even set up an ombudsman's office near the southern militant stronghold of Kandahar to hear complaints.
'It's a direct challenge to the international security forces,' he said.
'If the Taliban do something that offends you, you go to the ombudsman and you complain, and they hear the case. Sometimes they fire or even execute Taliban commanders for breaking the code of conduct.'
Kilcullen said hard fighting in Afghanistan would likely last another two years, after which insurgents would hopefully believe it was better to negotiate than continue combat with international and government forces.
That would be followed by a three-year transition to effective Afghan government and five-year overwatch period involving international forces as back-up, he said.
A Taliban leader who threatened to kill Prince Harry has been assassinated, it was revealed today.
Mullah Abdul Karim was killed by Australian forces in the Oruzgan region of southern Afghanistan earlier this month.
Last year Karim described Prince Harry as an "important chicken'.
The Prince had previously been serving in Helmand Province but withdrawn after news of his secret deployment leaked out.
Chief of Joint Operations, Australian Forces, Lieutenant General Mark Evans confirmed that Karim had been killed, along with a number of other insurgents.
He said: 'Mullah Karim was killed during an operation directed against the insurgent network of improvised explosive device operators in Oruzgan Province.
'Mullah Karim was a tactical-level insurgent commander active in the Khaz Oruzgan area and known to be directly responsible for numerous attacks against Australian and Afghan forces.
'He was also heavily involved in insurgent recruitment in the area and was responsible for the frequent harassment of, and threats against, the local population during the lead-up to the elections.'
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- Cathie, Glasgow, 31/8/2009 17:54
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