LAL MOHAMMAD, a 40- year old Afghan farmer, was one of the millions of people who defied Taliban threats against elections and set out to cast his ballot in the presidential election in August. But he soon regretted his defiance.
Fighters ambushed Mohammad as he was walking towards a polling station and cut off part of his nose and ears.
The Taliban vowed to disrupt the August 20 vote, threatening reprisals against voters and staging scores of rocket attacks and several bombings across the country on Election Day. The threats and violence failed to stop the elections from taking place, but they do seem to have hurt turnout in some areas, especially the Taliban heartland in the south.
Mohammad, speaking haltingly at a hospital in the Afghan capital, Kabul, described how militants stopped and searched him while he was on his way to a polling booth. They beat him with the butt of an assault rifle after they found his voting card.
Then they took out a knife.
“I saw one reaching my nose with a knife. I asked him to stop, but it was useless,” Mohammad said. “I regret very much getting the card and going to vote.” Election officials have reported scattered incidents in which militants cut off voters’ fingers stained with indelible ink. The ink was meant to prevent multiple voting but it also helped the militants pick out people who had cast their ballots.
A Taliban spokesman denied before the election that an order had been given to mutilate voters.
Mohammad described how he lay bleeding and unconscious for several hours, coming to his senses only after a man from his village spotted him and put him on the back of a donkey.
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2:48 AM
Moderate Islamist here
