U.S.: Afghan Vote Splits Taliban

Hamid Karzai's victory in Afghanistan's first presidential election could be sealed within days, a top election adviser said Wednesday — unless investigators uncover major fraud.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is facing "serious disagreements" with his commanders because of the rebel group's failure to disrupt the election.

Spokesman Maj. Scott Nelson said the information was based on intelligence reports from Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, but conceded that he did not know where the leader of the hardline Islamic militia was hiding.

Nelson claimed that there was "significant demoralization" among the Taliban and frustration over Omar's "lack of effectiveness" after Afghanistan's first democratic vote on Oct. 9 passed off largely peacefully.

"There's been serious disagreements between Mullah Omar and some of his lower commanders on the strategy for the follow-up after the election," Nelson told a news conference in the Afghan capital.

Meanwhile, the top American commander in Afghanistan said Tuesday he has no evidence Osama bin Laden is in day-to-day control of al Qaeda but suggested the long-absent terrorist leader is alive.

With 41.2 percent of the votes from the Oct. 9 election counted, Karzai, the U.S.-backed interim leader, has won 61.4 percent support and racked up a 44-point lead over his nearest challenger.

The deputy chairman of the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral body said it would only announce a result when the last vote is counted and probes into alleged irregularities are complete — a point likely to be reached before the end of this month.

The election was a milestone in Afghanistan's modern history. Although the country is still dogged by militants, factional fighting and a burgeoning drugs trade, Afghans turned out in force to vote, seeing it as a chance for peace after a quarter-century of conflict.

Karzai's campaign team believes their man is already certain to triumph, and gain the simple majority required to avoid a second round of voting.

The camp of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, currently in third place, also says the race is over. But two other leading challengers are threatening not to recognize the result after accusing the U.S.-backed incumbent of cheating.

Karzai, stopgap president since the Taliban's ouster by U.S.-led forces in late 2001, is sweeping southern and eastern regions dominated by his fellow Pashtun tribesmen.

He has styled himself as a unifying figure in a country riven by ethnic mistrust, but has achieved mixed results in the north and center where ethnic Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek candidates have scored better.

A panel of three foreign experts was called in after accusations of fraud on polling day, especially after problems with ink used to mark voters' fingers to stop them casting more than one ballot. It's not yet clear when their investigation will be completed.

U.N. spokesman U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said that the panel had visited two vote counting centers in Kabul and Gardez in eastern Afghanistan, and had also spoken to candidates and Afghan and international election observers.

He said the panel's investigation could be complete and made public after "one more week or so, perhaps."

In addition, the election board has received 285 formal complaints submitted via ballot box, some 45 percent of them about ink. Other complaints concerned polling station personnel, underage voters and multiple voting. De Almeida e Silva said the board has so far dismissed — or at least started to address — 180 of those complaints.

Omar has been at large since the ouster of the Taliban regime by U.S.-led forces in late 2001. Pressed on whether the rebel leader was in Afghanistan or Pakistan, Nelson said, "I don't know exactly where he's located at."

But he said, "We still see indications the man (Omar) is involved in planning Taliban operations in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan."

The U.S. military, which has 18,000 forces hunting al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, claimed in August there was a fissure developing in the Taliban movement and that it was starting to collapse.

That hasn't been independently confirmed. At the time, a purported Taliban spokesman said the breakaway faction was called Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Muslim Army, and was an insignificant group numbering 10-15 people.

Nelson said that in the 48 hours before the Oct. 9 polling day, coalition and Afghan forces thwarted planned attacks on the polls and arrested 22 suspects, including Taliban commanders and sub-commanders. It also killed 22 militants, he said.

Nearly 1,000 people, many of them militants, have died in violence this year, among them five killed in a bomb attack Monday on an election worker's vehicle in southeastern Paktika province. A Taliban suspect has been arrested in the attack.

Early in 2004, Lt. Gen. David Barno and his staff predicted bin Laden would be captured by the end of the year. No longer.

"I retired my crystal ball, and I don't make predictions anymore in terms of when we're potentially going to get any of the figures out there that we pursue every day in Afghanistan," he said in his visit to the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Barno talked mostly of a lack of evidence about bin Laden's whereabouts, health and current role in the al Qaeda network. He remains, however, a critical target, Barno said.

Still, "I don't see any indications that he is in day-to-day command and control, as it were, of the al Qaeda organization or the other terrorist groups that work with him, certainly in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area," Barno said.

Barno suggested that bin Laden's death would be difficult to conceal from intelligence services, even if he died in a secret place, because his associates would talk about it. Recent communications from al Qaeda's top echelon have come from bin Laden's chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, as videotaped messages.