KABUL (AFP) - After delays over fraud charges and boycott threats, the vote count in Afghanistan's presidential election finally began, five days after millions of men and women defied the Taliban to have their first say in their country's destiny.
"The counting has started in all the regional centres," election commission spokesman Sultan Baheen said Thursday.
Counting of more than 24,000 stuffed ballot boxes in eight regional centers began at 11:00 am (0630 GMT).
Wearing blue overalls, tables of women and men sat together, some of the women wearing make-up with their hair uncovered, counting the number of votes in each ballot box before the votes for each candidate will be tallied.
"I am very happy to be counting votes because this is the first time Afghanistan has had an election and now there will be big changes," said Abdul Wali, a worker waiting for ballots to arrive from Pakistan.
The count from Saturday's historic ballot was put on hold while diplomats lobbied key opposition candidates to drop calls for a boycott over charges of multiple voting and other irregularities, and an international panel was set up to probe their complaints.
The possible boycott threatened to undermine the credibility of the shattered central Asian state's first exercise in democracy after colonial rule, monarchies, a communist regime, Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban repression.
It also cast a pall over the jubilation of voters who flocked to 5,000 polling stations, braving dust-storms in the south and snow in remote Hindu Kush villages and defying threats, which never materialised, from bitter loyalists of the former hardline Taliban regime to sabotage the voting.
Thousands of stuffed ballot boxes, carried across the rugged land by helicopter, donkey and truck convoy, had been piling up in the eight counting centres since Saturday, waiting for counting to begin.
It was given the go-ahead earlier Thursday as a UN-appointed panel of three international experts set up to investigate the complaints announced it would isolate ballot boxes it wanted to investigate.
The rest of the boxes were released for counting.
"Ballot boxes that are not being held for investigations (will) return to the normal flow of the counting process," said an official from the joint Afghan-UN election commission.
The international panel extended a deadline for complaints to be lodged until 6:00 pm Thursday (1330 GMT).
By the first deadline Tuesday 43 complaints from at least four candidates had been filed.
They included US-backed incumbent President Hamid Karzai, his chief challenger Yunus Qanooni, ethnic Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqeq, and an ethnic Tajik doctor and lecturer, Ghulam Farooq Nijrabi.
The main concern was that ink used to stain voters' fingers and prevent multiple voting was found to wash off.
Other allegations were that polling stations opened late and closed early in areas dominated by opposition supporters, and that electoral staff misbehaved.
Partial results are expected within days, but a final result could take several weeks, officials have said. Karzai is widely expected to beat the 17 other candidates.
After the near-crisis over ballot irregularities, officials are desperate to avoid similar problems during the counting, which will be conducted by hand and under strict supervision and observation.
US President George W. Bush and other Western leaders hailed the election as an outstanding success. Karzai and the commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan called it a defeat for "terrorists", including the Taliban and its Al-Qaeda allies.
Afghan voters "delivered a resounding defeat to the terrorists who had sought to deny them their rightful future and that message has been heard around the world", Lieutenant General David Barno told a news conference.
The Taliban and their guests from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network were ousted by a US-led invasion late 2001 after the Taliban refused to surrender bin Laden, alleged to have masterminded the September 11 attacks.