The Dartmouth Beacon

Delivering greater gender equality is a high ambition for all Americans here. The huge social cost of its absence is far too obvious for any of us to ignore. Many women are expected to vote in the upcoming presidential election. I heard a story today that one of the most effective ways to get the village elders to allow their women to vote is to send in a big burly Marine, fully decked out in combat gear, and have him explain that his wife votes and he thinks it's a good thing. The elders, looking at the Marine and recognizing that he is man enough to single-handedly level their entire valley, conclude—not out of intimidation but respect—that women's suffrage may not be so bad, and so they have their women register.

Just before we headed out, I asked my Public Affairs colleague what he was hearing from early reports. "People lined up since 3 a.m. to vote and ballot boxes getting full in places already." Tears welled up in my eyes as I yelled, "Praise God," and he yelled back, "Damn straight." I was ready to go.

It is hard to describe what Polling Center 211 was when it was not a polling center, which it had obviously never been before. Maybe it was a flea market or maybe just a shack, but it consisted of open stalls with plastic sheeting overhead and within the enclosure were two voting stations, each with two voting booths (a wrought iron structure with cloth hung on it to obscure the voter).

And then the majesty of the event hit me. The election officials stood up when they saw my observer badge, and they welcomed me into their midst with a pride in their work and a keen knowledge what they were creating. It was as if they were Guipettos introducing a work of their hands that had suddenly come to life. The voters—old men wearing dirty turbans with white beards and young men whose faces had never met a razor, dozens of them in traditional kamise partouk Afghan outfits and policemen wearing hats like Charles de Gaulle, even my interpreter Zabi, who voted for the first time ever—were all reverent in their disposition, as if they were partaking in the truly Divine. And they were.

At Polling Center 217 at a high school in a congested area that obviously gave our security people the heebee jeebees based on how close they clutched their M4s, my heart leapt when one of the bodyguards exclaimed, "Damn, look at all those blues coming down here," and I saw a veritable parade of ladies in their uniform blue burqas coming in all directions, with all of themselves, even their feet, obscured they looked like a convergence of blue Lady Pacmen. All these women were voting in massive numbers. "I never thought I would see this," one lady told my female observer companion.
At Polling Center 212, they completely ran out of ballots after 1200 voters and were sending voters to another station 10 blocks away. They used a stick to cram the final ballots into the 32 quart sealed Rubbermaid bin that constituted the ballot box.

The Taliban blew up a bridge in the north part of the country and people still forded the stream on foot to vote. People were threatened everywhere, and yet they came to claim their independence and right to choose their future.

My last experience of yesterday's observation was watching Mohammed Nader, a very conscientious poll supervisor, close up his polling center. He shut the Rubbermaid bins and seal their openings. He handled his job like it was brain surgery. When he finished, he turned to me and, through Zabi, my interpreter, asked, "How did we do?" I did not immediately understand what he meant, so he clarified, "How did we do our election." I looked Mohammed in the eyes and with all the certainty I could express, I said, "You did very well. Very well, my friend." He and his nation had done very well indeed.

Looking back on what I have read in Ghost Wars of the nightmare experience of war and depredation that Afghanistan has experienced for the last 30 years, and the people who were killed just for registering to vote, and the rocket attack that was my closest—albeit petty—encounter with this painful reality, I believe that Mohammed and millions of his country-men and -women alike did take a big bite out of a Banquet of Salvation yesterday. I was immensely grateful as a foreigner in their midst to see the look on their faces as they tasted the sweet savor of liberty and self-determination.