Explaining the Elections

The house looks quite ordinary, but the windowless room in the basement hums like the nerve centre of a major operation. And outside, the presence of Afghan and foreign guards suggests the building is not quite as it appears.

This is the country’s sole voter information call centre, set up to tell thousands of Afghans all they need to know about the planned September 18 parliamentary and provincial council elections.

But contact with the 20 staff manning telephones and computers in the freshly painted underground room in Kabul is strictly by phoning 180.

The ousted Taleban have vowed to disrupt the upcoming poll, and clashes between its fighters and US-led troops and Afghan soldiers or police provide daily evidence of the need for security. At least five election workers have been killed in attacks in the provinces.

Precautions surrounding IWPR’s visit to the facility included a rendezvous well away from the house, transfer into an unmarked private car manned by election staff, a drive by a circuitous route and then a careful search before being led down the steps to the basement.

When the centre opened last month, it handled nearly 500 calls a day on six telephones, said Abdul Manan Danish, the official in charge.

“Now the number of people asking questions has gone up to between 700 and 1,500 a day,” he said, attributing this rise, and the resulting need for more telephones, to the publicity given to the 180 number.

Nadia Sultani, a female worker at the centre, says the focus of questions has shifted in the time since they opened.

When people were having to register to get voting cards, most questions centred on how this should be done. Now, most callers simply want to know how to vote.

Some people who say they have collected several voting cards have asked whether they can use all of them, or at least sell them. They were told in no uncertain terms that this is not allowed.

If callers have a question which the phone staff cannot answer, they ask either of the centre’s two consultants. And if the consultants do not know, the question is passed on to the Joint Electoral Management Board, JEMB, which is organising the elections.

Asked if there were any questions that she couldn’t answer, Nadia said, “Yes, Afghan National Army soldiers have told us that they were given voter cards in one province but that they will be responsible for security in another province on election day, so how they can vote?”

“We couldn’t answer that one,” she said, adding that it had been passed on to the JEMB, which had not yet replied. Where they do get a reply, they phone the caller with an answer.

One of the great advantages of the phone line, says Danish, is that it helps illiterate people to get information about the elections that might otherwise only be available in newspapers or on posters.

There are no exact figures for the rate of illiteracy in Afghanistan but 10 years ago the United Nations Habitat programme gave a figure of 52 per cent for men and 86 per cent for women. And in 2001, the UN Development Programme gave an overall figure of 64 per cent for the population.

The information flow is a two-way matter. Danish says callers are first asked where they are phoning from and how they learned about the 180 number. Then they are invited to put their questions.

Not all questions are welcome. As the 180 number is free to call and is accessible from anywhere in the country, some people abuse it. Nadia told IWPR that some youths make unacceptable propositions when they find they are talking to a woman.

“There are some families who, after they call us, hand the phone to their children. And there are some young boys who, when they call female workers of the centre, ask them their ages, where they live, and other questions that are not acceptable,” said Nadia.

Staff at the centre were given eight days’ training before they began their jobs, and have a refresher course every Saturday. All know both of Afghanistan’s official languages – Pashto and Dari – said Danish.

“We answer 95 per cent of the questions and submit the remaining five per cent to the JEMB,” said Nadia.

When the elections are over on September 18, the centre will remain open, answering questions on the results of the poll.

Danish told IWPR he is confident that people in most areas know about the 180 number. But many in Kabul appear ignorant of both the number and the existence of the centre.

Sayed Abid, a 20-year-old Kabul resident who called the 180 number to ask what is meant by the Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament, commented that until then, “No one had told me about this number and I had no information about the elections. I will certainly use it again.”

Some enquiries, however, remain outside the information centre’s mandate. Khalil, a 19-year-old carpenter in Kabul, has a voter card and knows how to use it. But in a city with nearly 400 candidates for the parliamentary poll, he still has one deceptively simple question: who should he vote for?

Wahidullah Amani is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.