Candidates Claim Victory in Afghan Presidential Contest

The vote-tallying began immediately after the polls closed last week. By early evening, election workers were dismantling cardboard voting booths and counting ballots by candlelight.

The second-ever presidential election in Afghanistan has been a closely watched indicator of the government's strength—in particular, its ability to keep Afghans safe as they carry out one of their chief charges as citizens. In Washington, the Pentagon braced for stepped-up violence. A series of attacks in the days leading up to the vote made it difficult to speculate on how robust turnout would be, but one point was clear: The insurgency has infected large swaths of the country. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen over the weekend called conditions there serious and deteriorating. The insurgency is "getting better," he added, not to mention "more sophisticated."

[See photos of the election in Afghanistan.]

As a result, the Taliban was able to issue not only chilling, but credible, threats to would-be voters. These included promises to cut off the fingers of anyone caught with the now iconic ink stain indicating they had cast ballots. Early reports indicated that two unlucky voters suffered this fate. There were also competing rumors that Afghan security forces had made deals with Taliban commanders to suppress violence in areas loyal to incumbent Hamid Karzai. A Taliban spokesman denied any such arrangement, but U.S. military officials said that Taliban policy varied by town. "All politics is local," says one Pentagon official monitoring the election results. U.S. forces kept a low profile on voting day, with troops ordered not to take part in any combat operations.

The Afghan government asked the news media to refrain from being too involved in the election—namely, not to report on voting-day violence. U.S. outlets, as well as many in the young and robust Afghan press corps, ignored these requests.

The threat of violence kept many voters home. And the resulting low turnout in parts of the east and the south, a stronghold for Karzai, could portend a runoff between the top two candidates, Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, both of whom were declaring victory in the immediate aftermath of the election. Such a prospect meets with mixed response among U.S. officials. Though Karzai is ultimately expected to win, a runoff might send a message that he needs to be more effective delivering government services and protection, according to U.S. military officials. The downside to this, they say, includes the possibility of a "power vacuum" in the month between Sept. 17, when official election results are due, and the mid-October runoff that would be required if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote.

Speaking to reporters on a tour of several polling stations throughout Kabul, Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke noted that threat of violence had not stopped Afghans from coming out to vote. But the test, he warned, lies elsewhere. "If the will of the electorate is going to be thwarted, it will happen in the counting."

Even before the polls closed, some of the leading candidates complained of voter fraud. Among the charges: that the supposedly indelible ink to mark voters washed off too easily in the south. Abdullah's campaign had filed more than 100 accusations of ballot stuffing in areas where, staffers said, boxes overflowed despite relatively low turnout. According to some estimates in the Afghan press, as many as 3 million illegal ballots were in circulation on the eve of the election.

Back in Washington, where an ABC News/Washington Post poll indicated that 51 percent of Americans do not believe that the Afghan war "is worth fighting," there is growing awareness that with the 2010 campaign season heating up, U.S. voters could affect the future of the war-torn country, too.

• See photos of the Afghan election.
• Read Deadly Violence Ahead of Afghanistan's Election.
• See a gallery of political cartoons.