98. Election Day in Afghanistan

I am not quite sure how much I actually slept last night as I was filled with so much anticipation and conflicting emotions about today.  After months of watching hardcore campaigning filled with debates, rallies, town halls, billboards, television and radio ads and endless hours of discussions with friends and colleagues about the pros and cons of the presidential candidates, Election Day finally arrived.  My very first activity today was a message I sent at 5 AM to my very good friend, Farid, who is the head of the Elections Programming for one of Afghanistan’s most popular television channels telling him to be safe and wishing him good luck.  In response, I got a message back from him telling me to go back to sleep.

As a security precaution, SMS services were disabled last night and my phone had no credit so I only had my TV and my sporadic internet which I am “borrowing” from my neighbor to monitor the events of today and to communicate with the outside world.  For days, the Police have blocked my street to incoming and outgoing traffic so getting out was not an option.  Besides I didn’t have a voter registration card and more importantly, in order to get her blessing to come back to Kabul before the elections I had promised my mother that I would not do anything silly like go out and VOTE.  The last few days we had all been warned that there might be unrest on Election Day and that all hell will break loose and civil war might erupt.  Almost every expat I know has left the country.  All the restaurants have closed down and every security person I know warned me not to go out.  I thought it all a bit too much but nevertheless I was feeling the butterflies in my stomach from the nervousness and anxiousness that had crept inside me since last night. 

At 7 AM, I turned on the TV and watched the footage of the lines already forming outside all the polling stations.  By 8 AM, most of the presidential candidates and President Karzai had already voted.  All the TV stations had invited guests to appear on their election shows and the level of excitement and anticipation as well as their abundant optimism and pleasure in the turn out already was contagious.  The feeling in the air that today was a very historic day for Afghanistan was overwhelming.  I turned on my computer and was amazed that aside from a few tweets from Arsenio Hall and Bill Maher whom I follow avidly on Twitter, every other tweet was about the Afghan Elections.  Everyone was out with a camera and the number of powerful images filling the social media sites of Afghans standing in line to vote, posing with their dyed fingers and holding up their voter registration cards was tremendous.  I couldn’t keep up with all the posts.  I was retweeting and sharing posts and photos as fast as my fingers could work.  I don’t know if anyone was really expecting such a great turnout.  But the most awesome parts of today were seeing the women and the elderly and the disabled out in line standing under pouring rain to get their votes in.  I made a comment to a friend of mine that whoever wins this election will owe a great debt to the women of Afghanistan as today was one of the very rare occasions when they showed their power and their potential for being a force in this nation. 

One of my favorite moments of today was watching a very old woman – probably in her 80’s or 90’s – being interviewed by a journalist outside of a polling station in Mazar.  She was so frail I could barely make out what she was saying.  But when the journalist asked her why she had come out to vote, she replied that her days are almost over but she wanted to vote so that her grandchildren and the rest of the youth of this nation could have a better life than she did. The journalist got teary eyed and for the first time of many more times today I cried. 

The rest of the day was filled with images of lines of Afghans of all ethnicities, religions, age, gender, rank and economic status waiting to exercise their right to vote for their next president.  It was so exhilarating to see that for once Afghans got the concept of queuing and everyone was orderly and everything was running smoothly.  There were a couple of announcements online regarding some sporadic rocket attacks in some of the provinces but for the most part nothing serious enough to interfere with the voting process.  The praise for the Afghan security forces was unending and eventually I stopped expecting to hear a boom. 

I think aside from the turnout, one of the biggest successes of today, in my humble opinion, is how the Afghan media covered this day.  They were all over the country providing live footage of Afghans standing in line to vote, interviewing officials and voters and trying to capture the emotions, the excitement and the hope that was in the air.  The coverage was professional, unbiased and comprehensive.  The use of social media to complement the radio and TV coverage was very uplifting to see.  I always complain that Afghans use the internet to just chat and go on Facebook but today they showed the world the real Afghanistan and introduced themselves to be just as peace loving and freedom loving as any other democratic nation in the world.  Instead of images of attacks, there were images of people waiting patiently in lines to cast their vote.  Instead of images of the Taliban, there were images of ordinary people dressed in traditional and western clothes smiling and chatting.  Instead of images of dead bodies, there were images of people who were living this historic day.      

The day was not without some setbacks…as I mentioned already rockets did hit, fighting in some areas was reported, polling stations opened late and ran out of ballots early in the day.  There is already complaints and criticism being discussed on social media and television and attacks are being hurled at one another from all sides.  But as for me, I have chosen to deal with them all tomorrow.  Today, I want to just celebrate the success of today.  I want to rejoice in being a part of this historic day.  I want to congratulate everyone for taking part in this democratic process and exercising their right to choose who should lead them.  So as I end this day, I am happy.  Instead of hearing the sounds of bombs and gunfire, I will sleep peacefully with the sound of rain in my ears and with the hope that has filled me once again for the future of my beloved Afghanistan.