{"id":584,"date":"2009-08-23T05:27:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-23T05:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/2009\/08\/23\/a-first-hand-account-from-voting-in-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2024-02-15T23:24:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T23:24:25","slug":"a-first-hand-account-from-voting-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/2009\/08\/23\/a-first-hand-account-from-voting-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"A first hand account from voting in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you all know, I worked in Afghanistan for six months in 2007<\/a>, and I befriended a co-worker there, “Friba”, who I have maintained contact with. I asked her if her family voted in Thursdays elections and what the experience was like. She wrote back:<\/p>\n

We all voted but for different persons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, democracy! Sounds like my<\/span> family!<\/p>\n

I won’t say who they voted for, except to say none voted for Karzai, the current president, and that should tell you something.<\/p>\n

She also said: <\/p>\n

I went early in the morning but in all streets we were the only women. My father and my older brother escorted the women of my family. I can tell you that in this election the attendance of people were not so much as the first election, especially the women.<\/p>\n

For selecting presidential candidate it was easy for me, but for provincial candidates, it took me lots of time.<\/p>\n

After voting, one journalist from Azadi Radio interviewed me. His questions were why I came to vote and whether I was scared after voting that I would go back home and the Taliban would cut off my fingers.<\/p>\n

I told him since I am a woman it is my right to vote. It is our Islamic, legal and half of the population right to vote. I won’t be scared by anybody and I won’t let anybody to cut off my finger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that’s the part where I started crying.<\/p>\n

Never, ever take voting for granted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you all know, I worked in Afghanistan for six months in 2007, and I befriended a co-worker there, “Friba”, who I have maintained contact with. I asked her if her family voted in Thursdays elections and what the experience was like. She wrote back: We all voted but for different persons. Ah, democracy! Sounds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}