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Afghans elect women's rights worker

KABUL, Afghanistan - A 27-year-old women's rights worker who dared to denounce powerful warlords is among the first winners in the election for Afghanistan's National Assembly, according to unofficial results announced Thursday.

The joint U.N.-Afghan election body declared provisional winners from national and provincial assembly seats in two of the country's 34 provinces and said most of the other results from the Sept. 18 poll would be released in the coming week. Final, certified results are expected later this month.

Officials also said they were excluding 299 polling stations - about 1 percent of stations nationwide - from the vote count because of fraud, including stuffing ballot boxes.

Peter Erben, the chief electoral officer, said there was no clear evidence implicating any candidates. He said there was "no sign of systemic or countrywide fraud," and he was confident the country's first parliamentary election in more than 30 years would "reflect the will of the voters of Afghanistan."

But he acknowledged "serious cases" of fraud in some areas, and that "further steps are needed in coming years to address the problems, especially reducing the level of localized fraud and intimidation."

Results were announced for the western provinces of Nimroz and Farah. Among the winners for the five parliamentary seats for Farah was Malalai Joya, a women's rights worker who rose to prominence for daring to denounce powerful warlords at a post-Taliban constitutional convention two years ago.

She finished second in Farah behind Mohammed Naeem Farahi, a 60-year-old former Interior Ministry official and representative of Afghan refugees in London during the Soviet occupation. The other winners in the province were a 40-year-old businessman, a high school teacher and a respected local elder.

Even though about one-quarter of the National Assembly seats are reserved for women, Joya won a seat outright. Only 36 percent of the voters in Farah province are women, indicating that Joya even won support from men.

Currently, the top-ranking election candidates in most provinces are warlords or leaders of mujahedeen factions, many active in the anti-Soviet resistance of the 1980s and the ruinous 1992-96 civil war that followed.

KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO will increase its force in Afghanistan to as many as 15,000 soldiers and will take on counterinsurgency operations as it expands into southern Afghanistan over coming months, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Thursday.

Information from the Chicago Tribune and New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified October 7, 2005, 01:51:07]