I do not know what the school board election has to do with this. I won about 45% 0f the vote and ran aginst a local resident that was a school teacher and had many contacts that I did not have.
How many of the 9 million that voteed in Iraq are friends is not known. However, our security problem come from those that hate us. Those are the people we have added to in Iraq as well as in many other countries from the Iraq War!
I could not locate the story I saw on Cnn but here is another story.
By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY Fri Sep 16, 7:43 AM ET
The presence of warlords and ex-Taliban officials on the ballot when Afghans vote Sunday is raising fears that figures from the past will sabotage efforts to build a stable democracy.
ADVERTISEMENT
"The Afghan people need a government that is functional and accountable," says Sam Zarifi, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, an activist group. "The warlords offer neither."
Millions of Afghans will choose candidates to fill 249 seats in the lower house of the National Assembly and local council seats in 34 provinces. It's a historic step toward establishing democracy in a country riven by decades of conflict. About 30,000 coalition troops are providing security for the election. This week, female candidate Hawa Nuristani was shot and injured and seven registered voters were killed, the Associated Press reported.
The Electoral Complaints Commission disqualified 21 candidates, citing ties to illegal militias. Afghan President Hamid Karzai cautioned: "Don't vote for bad people."
In a report released Thursday, Human Rights Watch said warlords are intimidating candidates and voters. It said Allam Khan Azadi, a candidate and commander near the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, for instance, threatened to cut the water supply to those who did not vote for him. "Complaints were heard in almost all regions of the country," the group said.
Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, a warlord, is seeking a National Assembly seat in the capital. After the Soviet Union was driven from
Afghanistan in 1989, Sayyaf's Ittihad militia battled rival factions in Kabul. Human Rights Watch says Sayyaf and his rivals are guilty of war crimes.
A former religious teacher at the University of Kabul, Sayyaf said this week that he took up arms to battle the Soviets. "The needs of the country transferred me from the classroom to the bunker," he said. "If the mujahedin are not worthy to enter politics, who will be?"
Mawlavi Qalumuddin was deputy administrator in the Taliban's Ministry of Vice and Virtue, which enforced rules that banned girls from attending school, women from working outside the home, men from shaving and anyone from flying a kite. He's running for the National Assembly from Logar province.
"I'm sure the people know me and my background," he says. Qalumuddin says it would be dangerous to ban warlords from the democratic process; isolated, they might turn to violence
