Alleged War Criminals Among Possible Afghan Lawmakers

A notorious warlord accused of war crimes, a former journalist for British radio and a young woman famed for her beauty were elected as lawmakers in last month's polls in Afghanistan, according to provisional results released Wednesday.

In the country's latest violence, meanwhile, a district government chief in southern Kandahar province was shot dead as he prayed in a mosque near his home late Tuesday, said Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid.

Election organizers have been releasing the results from the Sept. 18 legislative elections for each province as they are ready and on Wednesday they announced they had finished the count for the capital, Kabul, and were preparing for them to be certified.

"We will finish counting all the provinces by this weekend ... and will have all the results certified by the end of the month," said Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the joint UN-Afghan election organizing agency.

On Tuesday, the names of the winners in two northern provinces were published. They included a former Taliban governor who ignored international protests and oversaw the destruction of two massive 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in 2001 during the fundamentalist regime's reign.

Among the provisional winners from Kabul was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a powerful militia leader accused of war crimes by New York-based Human Rights Watch, which alleged that his fighters killed civilians, raped women and plundered at will during Afghanistan's civil war.

His aides declined a request for an interview.

Also named on the provisional winners' list was Sabrina Saqeb, whose supporters pasted campaign posters of her smiling on buildings across Kabul, on buses and on the sides of horse-drawn carts.

Many people said they voted for the unmarried 25-year-old, whose election campaign symbol was two fluffy bunny rabbits, because she was the most attractive candidate.

Another winner was Malalai Shinwari, who worked British Broadcasting Corp. radio for three years reporting on Afghanistan before quitting to take part in the elections.

"I will fight for women's rights ... and against all the warlords who have won," she told The Associated Press. "I hope all the good people in parliament will join to fight the warlords."

The state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says that at least half of the election winners are regional strongmen, raising fears of more violence, and many are suspected to have bribed or intimidated their way to power despite the presence of international election observers.

Last month's polls were the last formal step toward democracy on a path laid out after the Taliban was ousted in 2001.

But hopes for a stable representative government have been undermined by a stubborn insurgency led by Taliban-led rebels that has killed more than 1,400 people in the past half year and left much of the country off-limits to aid workers.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/051019/w101916.html