KABUL--About 15 percent of planned polling stations for this month's Afghan parliamentary election will not open because of poor security, officials said on Tuesday, with fears of attacks rising in insurgency strongholds in the east.
The Sept. 18 parliamentary election is seen as a litmus test for stability in Afghanistan ahead of a war strategy review to be conducted by the White House in December. It is also a credibility test for Afghan President Hamid Karzai after a fraud-marred presidential poll last year which the Taliban also tried to disrupt.
The Taliban have vowed to disrupt this election as well, and have urged Afghan voters to boycott the vote. The hardline Islamists have threatened to attack foreign forces first and then Afghan targets.
Independent Election Commission officials said another 81 polling centres would be shuttered in eastern Nangarhar province, near the porous border with Pakistan. Last month the IEC said around 940 of nearly 6,900 polling centres would not open because of poor security. Most of those centres were in the south and east, but also in the north.
The new closures in Nangarhar take the total to over 1,000 with the vote still 11 days away. The high number of closures risks disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters.
IEC officials said more polling centres would be closed if they were thought to be unsafe. "We want security from our troops, and if we see security fears on polling day, we would obviously close more centres," IEC chairman Fazel Ahmad Mawnawi told reporters in Kabul.
"We are concerned in this regard but we don't have any other choice," he said. Decisions would be made soon on whether to open another 140 centres considered to be at risk, he said.
The IEC has said voters in areas where polling centres have closed could cast their ballot at other, safer centres, although many may have to risk travelling through insurgent-held areas. Security is a major concern ahead of of the vote, with four candidates killed already, according to the United Nations and government officials. Some of those attacks have been blamed on the Taliban.
About 2,500 candidates are vying for 249 seats in the wolesi jirga, or lower house of parliament, in Afghanistan's second parliamentary vote since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001.