Poor turnout at the Afghan polls

Nothing in my morning today amounts to anything like scientific research. But it does chime with what the scientific experts are now saying.
 
I’ve been along to a number of Kabul high schools in the past hour or two with some simple questions.
 
Ana I have received simple answers from the helpful and efficient people who run these polling stations.
 
As they cleared away the ballot boxes a pattern quickly emerged as we moved from one polling station to another in the schools.
 
The basic story emerging is that somewhere between 20 and 30 per cent of expected voters actually came along to cast their vote yesterday.

 
Now given we were in some of the safest areas of the capital city of Afghanistan this is a pretty dramatic picture and way down on the last presidential elections five years ago.
 
The poor officials looked pretty crestfallen. And in Kabul it is not simply about intimidation.
 
Take the young blokes who are part of our translating and driving team here. They are obviously intelligent, educated, modern and thoroughly westernised Kabulis. And yet none of them wanted to vote.
 
Why? Not the Taliban – they couldn’t give a monkeys about their threats (mostly empty in Kabul it must be said). No, they just feel it’s pointless.
 
Pointless because whether it’s to be Karzai, Abdullah or Bashardost – you will simply get a puppet of Nato who really run this place and Nato are, year upon year, just making things worse.
 
Well, that’s their perspective and I fully expected them to go out enthusiastically and vote. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
 
It all tallies with the picture down south where the turnout could be as low as 8 per cent in the province of Helmand. Around half the polling stations there didn’t open at all. Some districts saw no voting in the entire area.

All of this a long way from the British army-supervised propaganda trip laid on the reporters in the Helmand capital Lashkar Gah yesterday: happy smiling voters and open polling stations.
 
To put it mildly – a very partial picture indeed of what really seems to have happened across Helmand.
 
And Helmand – do not forget – the province where British soldiers fought and died in order to facilitate elections.

Two more dead announced today. Four more coffins coming back through RAF Lyneham toady.

So, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence have some explaining to do.
 
And yet…and yet…suddenly the British Ambassador here in Kabul seems to be camera shy.

He didn’t have that problem running up to and during polling day. But now there is real data and real statistics beginning to emerge and a man who being offered on a plate for interview in recent days is suddenly unaccountably unable to help.
 
As I speak the press office at the British Embassy in Kabul is going back again to relay the need to do an interview.
 
So far nothing back.