"If we want to go into the city or other districts, we face NATO forces or [Afghan] police. ... If we show these kinds of cards they let us go free and don't make any problems against us,"
Does this mean that they're going to vote in Afghanistan's upcoming elections? Globe and Mail
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Taliban fighters are using recently acquired voter-identification cards as makeshift passports to smooth border crossings from Pakistan and ease travel between cities in Afghanistan's southern provinces.
When produced, the voter-registration cards give the fighters the appearance of legitimacy, they say, and help them trick Afghan and international security forces into allowing them to sail through police and army checkpoints set up to limit the militants' mobility.
Interviews with several mid-level Taliban commanders and low-level fighters spread across southern Kandahar province, including the Taliban-dominated villages of Mushan and Zangabad, revealed that insurgents have no intention of using their voter registration cards to participate in the coming election. "We will not be allowed to vote ... because this government is not for us. It is only for slaves of the USA and others, and we reject this government," one fighter hiding out west of Kandahar city told a Globe researcher.
Instead, the militants interviewed explained that they applied for the cards on the advice of senior commanders in Quetta, Pakistan, who suggested the cards might help insurgents traverse southern Afghanistan's dangerous highways, which are controlled by Afghan troops in some sections and by Taliban in others.
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