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Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his election opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, have broken down, a Western source close to the Afghan leadership told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Friday. According to the source, Abdullah will likely announce this weekend that he will boycott the runoff presidential election slated for November 7, a runoff that had been scheduled after intense diplomatic arm twisting by the United States.

In retrospect, United States President Barack Obama did a great favor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai by excluding him from his charmed circle of movers and shakers who would wield clout with the new administration in Washington. Obama was uncharacteristically rude to Karzai by not even conversing with him by telephone for weeks after he was sworn in, even though Afghanistan was the number one foreign policy priority of his presidency. Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Kabul to let it be known to Karzai that he was a fallen angel and unless Karzai mended his ways and did that...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 2005 – Free and fair elections in Iraq and Afghanistan represent the U.S. military's most significant accomplishment in 2005, the top U.S. enlisted servicemember said. Army Command Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey, senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began 2005 in Iraq as the senior enlisted advisor for Multinational Corps Iraq. He witnessed the Jan. 30 elections there and said the event and subsequent elections in Iraq and Afghanistan are significant on many levels. "I think elections are the key focus," Gainey said in an interview. "When you can go into...

Why still no big-font, front-page headlines screaming, “Millions Vote in Historic Middle East Election!” or “Democracy Comes At Last To Iraq” or “America’s Push for Iraqi Democracy Working”? Besides the politics of gloom — Bush at home and America abroad are always wrong — and the weariness with the violence, there has sadly been too small a constituency for trusting that Arabs should run their own affairs through consensual government. Remember the ingredients of the good old American foreign policy in the Middle East — the one that operated before the bad-new days of neoconservatism?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2005 – Just as election activities wrap up in Iraq, the people of Afghanistan are looking toward a historic event in their own country, as its National Assembly convenes Dec. 19 for the first time in more than three decades. Formation of the parliament marks the latest step in Afghanistan' path to democracy and follows the country's Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, a State Department official told the American Forces Press Service on the condition that he not be identified or quoted. Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and international military forces ensured a relatively safe and secure...

KABUL -- War-scarred Afghanistan took another step on Thursday toward forming its first parliament in more than three decades when the first provisional results from last month's landmark vote were released. But with key warlords and members of the ousted Taliban regime dominating initial counting in some areas, there was concern that the new body would become mired in the old power struggles that have broken down this destitute nation. "We have now completed the physical process of counting the ballot papers in all provinces across Afghanistan," said Peter Erben, head of the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) that organized...

KABUL, Afghanistan - A 27-year-old woman who is a defiant critic of Afghanistan's powerful warlords won one of the first seats declared Thursday in provisional results from landmark parliamentary elections, a key step in the nation's transition to democracy. The U.N.-Afghan election body reported "serious" cases of fraud, including ballot-box stuffing after election day. It excluded 299 polling stations from the vote count, but declared the Sept. 18 poll was still credible. President Hamid Karzai and NATO's chief diplomat, meanwhile, expressed confidence that a planned deployment of 6,000 NATO troops into volatile southern provinces would happen next year - a...

KABUL, Afghanistan - Powerful warlords, a former Taliban commander and women's activists were among the frontrunners as vote counting drew to a close Tuesday in Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections in more than 30 years. Preliminary results will be announced starting Wednesday or Thursday and in phases, in the event of unrest, officials said. Losing candidates are expected to bombard election authorities with complaints and accusations of cheating. Final certified results are due Oct. 22. Suspected Taliban insurgents who failed to stop 6.8 million Afghans from voting Sept. 18 resumed attacks this week. A bomb at a Afghan-Pakistan border crossing Tuesday...

Some time ago, the chief correspondent for one of our country's leading newspapers reported: "Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word 'quagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy. . . . Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? . . . Echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable." One might at first suspect that the selection comes from a recent article about Iraq. In fact, it was written about Afghanistan -- only a month after war there began and only two weeks before the...

Something remarkable happened in Afghanistan this month. The war-torn country held its first parliamentary election in 35 years and 12.5 million people, men and women, were registered to vote. Terrorists mounted a desperate attempt over the preceding months to stop the election, but to no avail. Despite killing 1,000 people, including seven candidates and six poll workers, several of them women, the harbingers of destruction failed to intimidate the Afghan people. And thanks to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces, violence was at a minimum the day of the election. As Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal put it, "After all their boasting,...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – The people of Afghanistan woke up this morning to a brighter future, after successfully voting in their new leadership in a day marked by limited violence near only a handful of voting stations. Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and international military forces ensured more than 12.5 million registered voters had an opportunity to participate in the National Assembly Elections in a relatively safe and secure environment. Jahwedolah, an ANP patrolman said, “It’s a historical day that we have today…it will be good for our future and we will have a good future.” “The election...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2005 – The successful parliamentary elections in Afghanistan Sept. 18 have proven wrong all critics of U.S. efforts in that country, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a Pentagon news briefing today. Critics of the war in Afghanistan were not just wrong, they were harmful because they made the cause seem hopeless, Rumsfeld said. The millions of Afghan citizens who turned out to vote proved them wrong, and terrorists weren't able to affect the elections, he said. "Terrorists have done everything in their power to try to intimidate the millions of Afghan voters and the literally thousands...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Airpower was in full effect as aircraft and crews supported Afghanistan’s National Assembly elections Sept. 18 by deterring attacks on the ground. U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II and EC-130H Compass Call aircraft and U.S. Navy EA-6B Prowlers here have stepped up efforts to provide safe and secure conditions as the elections bring Afghanistan one step closer to democracy. Airpower will be a major factor to the success of the elections and the follow-on political process, said Lt. Col. Dave Evans, Operation Enduring Freedom air component coordination element plans officer who is deployed from...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Some filed into schools to cast their ballots amid lessons still scrawled on blackboards. Others stepped over piles of shoes to vote in mosques. In remote areas, tents served as polling stations. Across Afghanistan, millions of people lined up at polling stations in defiance of a Taliban boycott call and militant attacks to vote for a new parliament Sunday. It was the last formal step in starting a democracy aimed at ending decades of rule by the gun. “Today is a magnificent day for Afghanistan,” said Ali Safar, 62, standing in line to vote in Kabul. “We...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2005 – For the third straight day, Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and coalition forces stymied enemy efforts to disrupt elections, as Afghan voters filled the more than 6,100 polling stations in every province today, military officials in the Afghan capital of Kabul reported. Afghan National Police, ANA and coalition forces detained three suspected enemy fighters in Wardak and Ghanzi provinces; discovered and destroyed at least six improvised explosive devices in Khost, Kunar and Paktika provinces; fought off direct enemy attacks in Khost, Nangarhar and Paktika provinces; and discovered a weapons cache near the forward operating...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2005 – The people of Afghanistan successfully voted in new leaders Sept. 18. Limited violence was reported near only a handful of voting stations, military officials said. Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and international military forces ensured more than 12.5 million registered voters had an opportunity to participate in the National Assembly elections in a relatively safe and secure environment. "It's a historical day that we have today. ... It will be good for our future, and we will have a good future," Jahwedolah, an Afghan police patrolman, said. The election results will not be known...

Al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahiri has dismissed the legitimacy of Afghanistan's parliamentary elections in a new tape broadcast by Aljazeera. In the tape, Al-Zawahiri played down US accomplishments in Afghanistan, saying it had just managed to move Taliban's government from Kabul to the mountains and countryside. The tape aired by Aljazeera was produced by al-Sahab Productions which usually distributes al-Qaida's videos. The taped interview of al-Zawahiri had appparently been conducted to commemorate the fourth anniversary of September 11 attacks on Washington and New York. "What did they do, they drove Taliban's government out of Kabul, but it has been active...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Some filed into schools to cast their ballots amid lessons still scrawled on blackboards. Others stepped over piles of shoes to vote in mosques. In remote areas, tents served as polling stations. Across Afghanistan, millions lined up at polling stations in defiance of a Taliban boycott call and militant attacks to vote for a new parliament Sunday. It was the last formal step in starting a democracy aimed at ending decades of rule by the gun. “Today is a magnificent day for Afghanistan,” said Ali Safar, 62, standing in line to vote in Kabul. “We want dignity,...

DEAR readers, the orderly way the parliamentary and provincial assembly elections were held in Afghanistan yesterday is reassurance that the system of democracy has come to stay in the landlocked nation, despite the many threats it faced. The good news from Afghanistan is also that the warlords and others who tried to thwart the election process have failed miserably. All what they could do was to close down a few polling stations for a few hours, or kill some candidates in the run-up to the polls, or take the lives of a few people in stray cases of violence. That...

President Congratulates Afghan People and Government on Successful Parliamentary Elections I congratulate the Afghan people and Afghan Government for today's successful parliamentary elections, which are a major step forward in Afghanistan's development as a democratic state governed by the rule of law. Braving deadly attacks and threats of violence, Afghans voted in large numbers for representatives to their new National Assembly and Provincial Councils. We commend the tremendous progress that the Afghan people havemade in recent years, and we pledge the full support of the United States as Afghanistan acts to meet the new challenges ahead. # # #...

Afghanistan’s first parliamentary and provincial poll in thirty years passed without major incident on Sunday, with a high degree of voter participation, election officials report. "The election was held in a peaceful manner…there was also a high level of political awareness and participation amongst the Afghan people," Bimillah Bismal, chairman of the Afghan-UN Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) said as polling booths closed across the country. Despite the huge challenge of providing security and voting materials to thousands of isolated communities, according to the JEMB, of the 6,200 polling centres established across Afghanistan, only 16 were not operational on voting...

KABUL -- Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques. Violence in the hours before voting began and during the day killed 15 people, including a French commando in the U.S.-led coalition that is helping Afghans build a democracy after a quarter-century of conflict. But there were no signs of a spectacular attack threatened by Taliban militants to disrupt the vote. Sunday's vote was considered the last formal step toward democracy on a path set out after...

“I am very confident [that] on the 19th of September, the day after the elections here, we are all going to wake up and realize that the heroes of Afghanistan were the people that went out and cast their vote for their own future.” The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commenting on Afghanistan’s 18 September parliamentary elections. This post will serve as a comprehensive roundup for the elections in Afghanistan. It will include links to news article, analysis from international organizations, and commentary from bloggers. Of course, don’t forget to check out the Afghanistan archive,...

Updated: 1:48 p.m. ET Sept. 18, 2005 KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques. Violence in the hours before voting began and during the day killed 15 people, including a French commando in the U.S.-led coalition that is helping Afghans build a democracy after a quarter-century of conflict. But there were no signs of a spectacular attack threatened by Taliban militants to disrupt the vote. Sunday’s vote was considered the last formal step...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques. --- snip ---- With nearly three-quarters of the populace illiterate, voting was slow as people spent as much as 10 minutes wading through ballots up to seven pages long to find pictures of candidates or symbols that represent them. Each voter dipped a finger in indelible purple ink to prevent repeat voting.

MILLIONS of Afghan voters ignored threatened violence as they streamed to the polls yesterday, but as voting closed there was rising official anxiety over a marked fall-away in voter interest since last year's presidential poll. About 40 attacks were reported during the day, including a missile strike on a United Nations compound in Kabul, but the Taliban and other anti-Kabul forces failed to deliver the "spectacular event" they had promised would disrupt the poll. Voters delivered on official predictions that millions would turn out, but diplomatic, UN and other observers were perplexed by a lessening of public interest after saturation...

KABUL, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Afghans head to the polls on Sunday for parliamentary elections nearly four years after the Taliban were ousted, with turnout expected to be high despite a wave of militant violence and threats of more. Eleven people were killed in guerrilla clashes on the eve of the elections for a national assembly and councils in all 34 provinces, but U.N. organisers said they were confident voting could be held across the country. Enthusiasm among Afghans to vote in their first free legislative elections in more than 30 years is high. "I am excited," said 19-year-old high...

Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan — Officials urged Afghans on Saturday to defy Taliban insurgents and powerful warlords by turning out in force for Sunday's landmark parliamentary elections despite a wave of rebel attacks that killed 12 more people. Security forces reported thwarting an attempt to blow up a big dam in the south and three other bomb plots, underlining the threat to a ballot aimed at bolstering Afghanistan's fragile democracy and marginalizing insurgents after decades of bloodshed. Top U.N. envoy Jean Arnault said militants failed to disrupt poll preparations with a surge of fighting that has killed more than 1,200...

KABUL, Afghanistan — When the people of Afghanistan cast their ballots tomorrow to elect a lower house of parliament and councils for each of their nation’s 34 provinces, their safety and security will be ensured through the coordinated efforts of the Afghan National Police, Afghan National Army, as well as Coalition forces. “The ANP will provide the first line of security throughout the country for the elections,” said U.S. Army Maj. Michael Adelberg of the Office of Security Cooperation–Afghanistan’s Directorate of Police Sector Reform. “They are providing security at each of the 6,100-plus polling stations for several days around the...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - Suspected Taliban rebels ambushed a police patrol in southern Afghanistan on the eve of landmark legislative elections, sparking a fierce battle that left seven insurgents dead, officials said Saturday. The guerrillas ambushed the police as they patrolled the main highway linking the capital Kabul with the southern city of Kandahar late Friday, said Gulam Rasool, a government chief in Sharisafar district. An insurgent rocket slammed into a police car, setting it on fire, but all the officers inside managed to escape, he said. "The Taliban are intent on disrupting the election," Rasool said. "But we are...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2005 – More than 12 million Afghans are registered to vote in the country's general assembly elections slated for Sept. 18, a senior U.S. military officer told Pentagon reporters today. Speaking from Bagram, Afghanistan, during a video teleconferenced briefing, Army Brig. Gen. James G. Champion, deputy commander of Combined Joint Task Force 76, told journalists he predicts a "very successful" election. CJTF 76 is responsible for combat and reconstruction operations in southeastern Afghanistan. The Afghan people are "tired of this war," Champion said, and will demonstrate their displeasure with the anti-democratic insurgency "by voting on Sunday." Afghans...

Taliban militants shot dead seven Afghan civilians after finding a registration document for the weekend's milestone elections in their car, a provincial governor told AFP. Tuesday's attack in the central province of Uruzgan is the latest in a wave of violence ahead of Sunday's parliamentary and provincial council polls which has left more than 1,000 people dead this year. Governor Jan Mohammad Khan told AFP the rebels stopped a vehicle carrying seven people in Gizab district. "They searched everybody and found an official document, a car registration for election day, on one of them. Then the Taliban killed the seven...

Apparent Karzai Victory in Afghanistan a Big Win for Democracy By Donna MilesAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2004 -- Although the Joint Election Management Body won't officially certify results of the Afghan elections for a few more days, interim President Hamid Karzai appears to be the clear winner, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan said Oct. 27. But the biggest winners, Zalmay Khalilzad said at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, "are those who believe in the vision of a moderate and democratic Afghanistan, one that will be an enduring partner in the war against extremism...

Officials Say Karzai Is Clear Winner Tue Oct 26, 2:20 PM ET World - AP Asia By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer KABUL, Afghanistan - More than two weeks after Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s first presidential election, vote counting wrapped up Tuesday and interim leader Hamid Karzai emerged with a resounding victory. AP Photo AFP Slideshow: Afghanistan Officials: Karzai Is Clear Afghan Vote Winner (AP Video) With his inauguration to a five-year term a month away, the U.S.-backed Karzai already is under pressure to ditch his coalition with powerful warlords and tackle a booming narcotics industry that has become...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Counties across Alabama struggled to deal with a backlog of thousands of last-minute voter registrations as the state's longtime head of voter registration quit Wednesday less than two weeks before Election Day. Secretary of State Nancy Worley's office also was attempting to sort out a record-keeping discrepancy that left uncertain the actual number of registered voters in the state — thought to be around 2.54 million. The seeming disarray led some would-be voters to wonder whether their vote would get counted on Nov. 2. "It looks like it's crooked," said Robert Wells, who moved to suburban...

Preliminary figures in the Afghan presidential election indicate interim leader Hamid Karzai has won the simple majority needed to avoid a run-off. With 94.4% of votes counted, Mr Karzai has 55.3%, 39 points ahead of main rival Yunus Qanuni. Mr Qanuni's spokesman on Sunday conceded Mr Karzai was the winner. However, the election organisers will not announce an official result until all ballots are counted and a UN probe of voting irregularities is completed. No announcement The BBC's Andrew North in Kabul says workers in Mr Karzai's office believe they now have the necessary majority after two weeks of counting...

KABUL (Reuters) - Hamid Karzai's main rival for the Afghan presidency, Yunus Qanuni, has conceded defeat with less than six percent of the vote count remaining. A spokesman said on Sunday Qanuni would accept Karzai's victory despite irregularities in the October 9 election -- Afghanistan's first ever direct presidential ballot. "We will accept the result because we do not want to drag the country into crisis," Sayed Hamid Noori told Reuters. "We accept in the interests of the nation, because we don't want to face another crisis," the spokesman replied, when asked if Qanuni was conceding. With 94.6 percent of...

KABUL (Reuters) - A Taliban suicide fighter killed himself and wounded at least seven others, including three members of a NATO (news - web sites)-led peacekeeping force, in a grenade attack on a busy shopping street in central Kabul on Saturday. The attack in the Afghan capital came as election workers entered the closing stages of a marathon count from a landmark presidential poll on Oct. 9, with incumbent Hamid Karzai polling 54.6 percent of the votes tallied so far. Kabul police chief General Baba Jan said the attacker had six hand grenades strapped to his body, but three failed...

Senator John Kerry, who portrays himself as some sort of "International Dale Carnegie" failed to recognize this historic achievement by the Afghan people. It's a pattern with Kerry. Prior to his snub of the Afghan elections, he belittled Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi minutes after Allawi addressed a joint session of Congress, thanking Americans for liberating his people from a brutal tyrant.

AP Photo Karzai Rival Refuses to Concede Election (AP) - Hamid Karzai's closest rival in Afghanistan's landmark election insisted Sunday he has a chance for victory, saying Karzai's commanding lead was based on early results and the election could turn on an investigation of fraud allegations. Former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni told the Associated Press that he was preparing to be in the political opposition as the country moves toward Western-style democracy -- though he added that whether he recognizes the results depends on the honesty of the probe into fraud complaints. More...

A new website has been setup for tracking the results of the Afghanistan presidential election. Afghanistan Election Results is being run by the U.N. and for once I have to give them some credit. It's very detailed and they've done a great job with it. As of today with 4.2% of the vote counted Hamid Karzai is way ahead with 71% of the voters having cast their ballots for him. A car bomb killed two U.S. Soldiers today in Southern Afghanistan and another attack killed at least three children and a policeman in an eastern province. The U.S. military on...

With the Cheney Campaign, CBS News’ Josh Gross: The Vice President’s lesbian daughter was again the center of attention in the campaign for the presidency. Every few weeks, her sexual orientation is brought up by one of the candidates, usually in reference to President Bush’s proposal for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Continues...================================================================== The Afghan and Australian elections -- and How Kerry's Gay flap means he's toast Recall how the media last week predicted the elections were bound to be wracked by violence, voter intimidation and wholesale fraud, and complained that polling staff were too lightly trained, easily bribed,...

Over the last week, something enormously important has happened — something deserving of much more than the routine news-cycle coverage. To put it bluntly, the presidential election in Afghanistan is a seminal event, and those who don't understand how or why are sleepwalking through history. Next to September 11 — which began the sequence of events that made this election possible — the vote in Afghanistan is the most far-reaching occurrence of the young 21st century, holding profound implications for future generations. Mercifully, the one person who understands the ramifications as well as if not better than anyone is the...

Afghan Election 'Remarkable Event,' Ambassador Says By Jim GaramoneAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2004 – The Afghan presidential election held Oct. 9 was "a remarkable event," U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said at the Pentagon today. Following a meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the ambassador told the press that Afghanistan is the front line of freedom and "the Afghans took advantage of the opportunity provided to them by the coalition to move towards building a democratic society." The election was relatively violence-free. U.N. officials estimate that about 80 percent of the 10 million Afghans...

The head of US forces in Afghanistan yesterday hailed Saturday's peaceful election as a "resounding defeat" for terrorists and militants who had vowed to disrupt the country's first presidential vote. General David Barno, head of the US-led coalition that is fighting an insurgency led by Taliban sympathisers and hunting for remnants of al- Qaeda, said the election was a turning point for Afghanistan that spelled the "end of more than two decades of the rule of the gun". "The fact that (the Taliban) had essentially no impact on the . . . election should tell us that their capabilities are...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The war against radical Islamic jihadists will be long and fought on many fronts. The Bush administration is employing military, diplomatic, law enforcement and legal efforts to bring the terrorists to justice, and progress is being made -- so much so, that the next phase of the war began last weekend. It wasn't a military operation by soldiers and Marines in Iraq; nor was it a new offensive by John Ashcroft or Tom Ridge here at home.  The next phase of the war against radical Islamic jihadists was launched by approximately 8 million Afghanis who went to...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

ASADABAD FIREBASE, Afghanistan — With the first Afghan presidential election complete, the effort to extend the power of the central government may have reached the tipping point. Now the challenge is to help the Afghans build a society worth fighting for, said Capt. William Boyd, engineer with a Provincial Reconstruction Team. Sending 20,000 U.S. soldiers to rid “every nook and cave” of Taliban, militants and renegade warlords is impractical, Boyd said. But the U.S. military can defeat the bad guys by empowering the Afghans, he said. Winning may hinge on the kind of power that comes not from the barrel...

Ballot counting has started and the first results put President Hamid Karzai in the lead after 7513 votes were counted in the northern province of Kunduz. So far, over 22,OOO polling stations nationwide have sent ballot boxes by donkey, jeep and helicopter to be counted and 9,917 stations have had their ballot boxes opened and ballots checked, sorted and prepared for counting.

Transporting Ballots Local Afghans and United Nations consultants unload ballots of the first presidential election from a U.S. Army Aviation 14th Aviation Regiment Chinook Helicopter at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, Oct. 11, 2004. U.S. Army photo by 1st Lt. Patricia Sinnett lllllllllllllll United Nations consultants and local nationals assist in the movement of Afghan ballots at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, Oct. 11, 2004. U.S. Army photo by 1st Lt. Patricia Sinnettlllllllllllllll An AH-64 from B Company, 2-211th Aviation Regiment refuels at Asadabad Landing Zone during a mission to pick up ballots from the recent Afghan presidential elections at remote...