Hours before the presidential candidates could begin their election campaign the insurgents targeted two election campaigners in Herat province, creating a wave of terror among those with similar activities. The victims belonged to the campaigning team of presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. Presidential and provincial council candidates and the people working for them are at the target of insurgents. Same is the case with employees of Independent Election Commission (IEC).

Actually, the Taliban have begun their anti-election campaign months ago. In September, they murdered Kunduz provincial head of IEC, the highest-ranking IEC official to be killed ever since the ouster of Taliban government in 2001. Such attacks might occur more frequently as Afghanistan moves towards the spring elections. Meanwhile, the life of voters is also not safe in major parts of the country. This is alarming and it seems as Afghanistan will have to travel a bloody path to the elections.

By such killings the insurgents have established the fact that they would put optimal efforts to disrupt the forthcoming elections by launching attacks on IEC personnel, voters and polling stations. In 2009 presidential and provincial council elections, the Taliban had chopped off fingers of voters and launched a number of terror attacks in various parts of the country.

At the current juncture, such killings will help Taliban achieve two objectives. Firstly, their purpose will be preventing people from taking part in the election process. Secondly, they would try to reach an environment favorable to them by the time when most of NATO troops from will withdraw from Afghanistan.

In their efforts to reach their objectives, the militants would never spare life of innocent people including women and children. The greatest challenge for Afghanistan in holding an election where all the people of Afghanistan can participate is the security situation. The solution lies in launching extensive and far-reaching military operations against those responsible for the situation but not in freeing their insurgents from prisons to give them a hand in deteriorating the security condition even further.

Taliban’s objective is to hinder any process that is in the benefit of the people of Afghanistan including the elections. The Taliban insurgents would try to prevent the next elections from being held. Nonetheless, they must not be allowed to succeed in the heinous intentions. Cancellation or postponement of the election would cause the greatest harm to the future of this country.