Pride and trepidation as Afghans go to the polls

KABUL (Reuters) - Pride mixed with trepidation as Afghans voted in the capital on Thursday, an oddly formal atmosphere counterbalanced by fear the Taliban would carry through with threats to disrupt the poll.

In the crowded Panjsad, or "500 Families," neighborhood of west Kabul, fathers proudly took their sons to vote in the second presidential election since the Taliban's fall in 2001.

Markets packed with vegetables and melons were open and boys flew kites in the street despite a security clampdown. Buses, many hired by candidates, ferried voters to polling stations.

A beaten-up car, packed to bursting point with smiling men and women, drove through the mainly Tajik neighborhood's streets, its driver using a loudspeaker to encourage people to go and vote freely.

"I'm very excited because this is now a kind of democracy that a women can come here and she can vote for who she wants," Ahdia, a neighborhood school teacher, told Reuters in English.

Posters of former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, a hero of the Tajik community and President Hamid Karzai's main rival, lined walls throughout the neighborhood.

Security was tight, with multiple police checkpoints on main roads and a heavy security presence outside polling stations, voters searched at least twice as they entered a neighborhood school used as a polling station.

FREELANCE FRAUDSTERS?

It didn't all go smoothly. Police hussled away two young men with bottles of bleach they said would remove the indelible ink used as an anti-fraud device to mark the fingers of voters and prevent multiple voting.

The two men drew a crowd when they began pouring small pools of bleach on the schoolhouse steps, showing voters how easy it was to scrub off the purple ink.

Police took them away before it was possible to learn if the men were aligned to a candidate or merely freelance fraudsters.

Fraud was a major concern in the lead-up to the poll.

With violence restricting turnout in the south, Karzai's traditional Pashtun power base, more unrest is possible if Abdullah's Tajik supporters think the result is not legitimate, leading analysts and think tanks have said.

Three-year-old Yousuf Ismail, dressed in his best shalwar kameez and black embroidered vest, clutched a chocolate bar and looked on quizzically as his father Saeed went through the oddly stiff formalities of voting.

Independent Electoral Commission official Mohammad Fayed took Saeed's voting card, wrote his registration number on a form and clipped off the bottom right-hand corner of the card to prevent repeat use.

He then told Saeed to dip his index finger in the ink bottle and blow on it to dry his deeply stained digit.

Little Yousuf and his father then went behind a makeshift cardboard screen, filled in the presidential and provincial council ballot papers and tucked them into two white translucent plastic boxes sealed with green security ties.

"It feels good to vote," said their friend, Najibullah.

In another building on the other side of the schoolyard, a buzz rose up from a long queue of excited women, some dressed in traditional head-to-toe burqas and others in less conservative scarves.

Some, like school teacher Ahdia, said they were determined to vote despite threats by the Taliban and concerns widespread fraud might mean their votes would count for little.

"Last time I didn't want to vote. I hope my vote will count but I'm not sure. I'm worried about these things," she said.

(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: here)