Afghanistan - Toothless Taliban

Al Qaeda has criticized Afghanistan's elections, but they and the Taleban were powerless to stop them. Worse, for al Qaeda and the Taleban, they had virtualy no impact on the elections which saw hundreds of women candidates and thousands of women vote.

It is not as if a robust target environment did not exist. There were almost 6,000 candidates running for office. There were 28,157 polling stations in 6,000 locations throughout Afghanistan, manned by about 200,000 poll workers. The combined Coalition and Afghan security forces could not realistically secure each and every polling station or provide for security for each candidate and poll worker. Yet the Taliban was essentially silent during Afghanistan’s election.

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