Over 90 Percent Of Afghan Voters Registered For Elections: U.N.

KABUL, Aug 1 (AFP) - More than 90 percent of estimated eligible voters have registered to cast their ballots in Afghanistan's first presidential elections in October, the United Nations said here Sunday.
"Participation is amazing. How many places in the world do you see 90 percent of people registering to vote?" UN spokesman David Singh told a press conference.
By Thursday, 8,659,772 voters had put their names on electoral rolls, 41 percent of them women, Singh said.
Security was still a problem in parts of the country, Singh conceded, but he said the high registration figures underlined the "determination of the Afghan people" to vote despite the threat of violence from insurgents.
Some estimates put the number of eligible voters at closer to 10.5 million than the 9.8 million figure the United Nations is using to base its figures on.
Singh acknowledged the population estimates "were not set in stone" and could be out by as much as a million people but said the turnout was still encouraging.
More than 80 percent of the population had registered to vote based on an estimate of 10.5 million eligible voters -- substantially larger than a turnout of below 50 percent for elections in many Western democracies.
A regional breakdown of the percentage of voters who have turned up to register in different provinces, shows both how inaccurate the estimates of eligible voters are, and highlights regional disparities between the country's north and south.
In the Panjshir valley northeast of Kabul, 118 percent of estimated eligible voters had registered by July 22, according to the UN.
The valley is a stronghold of the Northern Alliance commanders who resisted the Taliban and allied with the US to topple the hardline regime in 2001.
In the eastern province of Nangarhar, all polling stations are already closed and 133 percent of registered voters have picked up their registration cards, according to UN figures dated July 22.
Voter registration of more than 100 percent was reported in some parts of the country as the original figures were based on a 1972 census and population estimates projected forward.
But in the country's troubled south, voter registration is much lower with only 15 percent of voters turning out to vote in insurgency-wracked Zabul province, by July 22.
Of the 540 voter registration stations in the south of the country, 354 are still open to allow more people to register.
Afghanistan has seen a rising spiral of violence ahead of elections with a surge of attacks on soft targets such as election workers, aid workers and civilians as well as government officials.
In the latest attack on election workers, two electoral workers were kidnapped at gunpoint in the impoverished western province of Ghor on Thursday, but managed to escape unharmed, Singh said.
The attack came a day after an election worker and a civilian were killed in a blast at a mosque being used as a voter registration center in the southeast province of Ghazni, which has been a hotbed of Taliban-led insurgency.
Some of the attacks on election workers are connected with an ongoing disarmament process.
By Thursday, 12,245 soldiers had laid down their guns and another 10,380 begun their reintegration into civilian society.
However, numbers fall well short of the target with only 17 militia companies having disarmed out of 80 divisions which are targetted to have laid down their arms by end-September, Singh told AFP.
Afghanistan has an estimated 40,000-60,000 soldiers in private armies, and the target is to disarm 60 percent of them before the October elections.
In Ghor three US soldiers and two Afghan soldiers were injured Thursday in a clash with a local militia resisting disarmament.
Plans to disarm militias in Ghor were under review in the wake of the incident, Singh said.