AFGHANISTAN: Millions of men and women faced down bloody intimidation by the Taliban and al-Qaeda to have their say, reports Kathy Sheridan in Kabul.
In the end, they defied the odds. Afghanistan faced up to the murderous threats of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and humiliated them both.
Dust storms meant the sun never broke through, making election day the coldest, dustiest and most unpleasant of the year.
But still the people came, cheerful and resolute. Not only did they defy months of threats and intimidation. On election day in the north, they braved a metre of snow; in the south the oppressive heat; in the centre, air so dust-laden that it was difficult to breathe.
In Kabul province, a line of voters confronted with aggressive and voluble threats to vote for a minor candidate, suddenly turned on the aggressors and the army had to intervene. It may well have been a turning point for a long-oppressed people.
Later, a young Afghan soldier would be killed after hitting a landmine in the Kandahar region and three police would die in Uruzgan while transporting ballot boxes to a count centre. Meanwhile, high up in some of the world's remotest regions, hundreds of donkeys laden with ballot boxes were crossing rivers and dirt tracks, their drivers equipped with GPS signals, at the start of their long and lonely trek towards trucks bound for the count centres and a new era for Afghanistan.
Earlier, in the dawn half-light, local election officials at a school in central Kabul, solemnly, nervously, pulling on their blue UN vests at 6 a.m. - "to help to choose a president for our country after 23 years of war", said a young woman teacher, Parween Dalilee - were a sight to jolt the most dead-eyed cynic.
The pay was $40 (including three days' training), good money in Afghanistan, but they would do it for nothing, exclaimed Parween and her 18-year-old colleague, Zohra. "We want to help our country", said Zohra, like so young Afghans, serious and reflective beyond her years. Her parents were at home praying for her protection from the Taliban and al-Qaeda, she admitted, but "this is not a day to give in to fear".
Across town, at the city's Aedgha Mosque, within sight of the stadium where only a few years ago the Taliban summoned Kabulis to watch summary executions of men and women, a sole woman in a burka walked swiftly up to the women's polling station at 6.50 a.m. and waited patiently while officials carefully arranged indelible pens and ink on the tables, like children on their first day at school.
Basic as they are to indulged western eyes, those pens and ink were vital tools in establishing the legitimacy of this election.
Misunderstandings over the registration process and outright fraud meant that countless numbers had received multiple registration cards. When asked about this in August, the outgoing president, Hamid Karzai, at a news conference with Donald Rumsfeld, commented airily that "people are enthusiastic and they want to have cards. It doesn't bother me. If they want to vote twice, they're welcome". Later, he back-pedalled, noting that every voter's thumb would be marked with indelible ink to prevent them voting twice.
But on Saturday, it was immediately obvious that someone in the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) had skimped on the cheapest essentials for officials. A single pen for each. And although there was no doubting their enthusiasm, some staff were so poorly trained that they confused the marker (for the ballot paper) with the indelible pen (for the fingers).
Even the ink - to load the fast-drying pens - came in tiny quantities. Worse, some of it was washable. In some areas, voters coming back for a second bite (he liked two candidates, explained one voter cheerfully) demonstrated a perfectly clean thumbnail.
Within a few hours, some polling stations had to close to allow officials to sort out the problem. But in terms of perception, the damage had been done. Minor candidates, and anyone seeking a stick with which to attack the process, were handed one, trimmed and sharpened.
Candidates - including the high-profile Yunuz Qunooni - whose men had been intimidating voter queues in Kabul province an hour earlier, were suddenly demanding a boycott of the process on the grounds of fraud.
Yesterday, games of brinkmanship were being played out at several levels. Would those candidates persist in their calls for an investigation, knowing that their own election day violations would be trumpeted? And while the Americans and others would like nothing better than to head off an investigation, can they do so without weakening the perceived legitimacy of the new president, who no-one doubts will be Karzai? The Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), which had placed 2,300 observers in all 34 provinces, was taking a cautious line, going with the headline "FEFA congratulates Afghans for having peaceful elections".
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which had 40 election experts here and noted rather more sinister breaches, such as observers being ejected from some polling stations before ballot boxes were sealed, also focused on the "millions of Afghan men and women \ turned out... in Iran and Pakistan as well as Afghanistan... We do not yet know what their choices are, but we know they should be respected".
Meanwhile, no-one is prepared to take bets on the final turn-out figure. Voters were allowed to ballot wherever they found themselves, so no polling station had a fix on expected numbers. An American observer on Saturday was estimating it at 60 to 65 per cent.
Only one thing is certain at this stage. The people of Afghanistan played their part. Some 20 miles outside Kabul, past the checkpoint where a long line of trucks have been detained until this tense day ends, up a stony, dust-track best negotiated by a tractor or four-wheel drive, past the graves of war "martyrs", grapevines and herds of goats and sheep, old and young were trudging more than four kilometres to mark their papers in the school and mosque. This lovely old village was destroyed by the Taliban, the buildings blown up, the crops burned and the people forced to flee north.
The shiny village well installed by a Danish NGO when the villagers returned three years ago has stopped working and they're back to drawing their water from the river, 10 minutes away by donkey. But, says their friendly, courteous leader, Mahommad Ullah, "we want just freedom... We want peace, not the Americans but the ISAF force in Afghanistan. Today, the people are very happy indeed".