KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan security forces will be on high alert when a voter registration drive begins Tuesday in Kandahar province, where coalition troops are battling emboldened Taliban militants bent on disrupting this year's long-awaited elections.
A Taliban spokesman repeated insurgent threats to attack sites where Afghans register to vote with the country's independent elections commission, but refused to provide any additional details.
"We will do something very soon, but we will not say what are we going to do," spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said.
The Afghan National Police will provide the first line of defence against insurgent attacks, backed up by the Afghan National Army and troops from NATO's International Security Assistance Force, election official Abdul Qahir Wasifi told a news conference Monday in Kandahar city.
"As far as the security is concerned during the registration period ... we are quite optimistic about that. Our security is mush stronger than before," Wasifi said.
A staff of 950 people will man 37 voter registration centres across the province, including 10 in Kandahar city.
Wasifi went so far as to invite the Taliban to register to cast their own ballots, saying the insurgents are welcome to field and vote for their own candidates -- an offer Ahmadi dismissed as "disgusting."
Afghanistan's militants will not take part in what they consider an American election, he said.
Voter registration, which has been underway since last October in some parts of the country, is scheduled to be completed next month ahead of a general election expected to be held in the second half of 2009.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, elected to a five-year term in 2004, is expected to seek re-election. Allegations of corruption and graft have eroded public support for Karzai's regime, and the Afghan president will almost certainly have a different relationship with U.S. president-elect Barack Obama's administration than he did with that of George W. Bush.
Earlier this month, in her written Senate testimony for her nomination as U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton called Afghanistan a "narco state" whose government was "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption."
However, a serious contender for the Afghan presidency has yet to emerge.
Former planning minister Ramazan Bashardost has been handing out campaign-style posters and displaying populist slogans on the streets of Kabul. But Bashardost lacks a wide support base and he is running his campaign on a shoestring budget.
Other rumoured candidates are former interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalai, and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani. The National Association of Afghanistan, an umbrella group of several political parties, associations and prominent Afghans, has endorsed Ghani, now the chancellor of Kabul University.
The threat of violence is enough to make some Kandaharis think twice about registering to vote.
A farmer named Muhammad Anwar from the town of Senjaray, in Zhari district, said the strong Taliban presence in the area makes registering to vote tantamount to a death wish.
"Taliban know all the people of Senjaray, and everybody feels fear. It is impossible to do registration there."
Gul Agha, 37, a shopkeeper in the dangerous Panjwaii district, where a Canadian soldier was seriously injured Monday while on a foot patrol when a makeshift bomb blew up, agreed.
"If foreigners are not safe, how could an ordinary person be safe there?" he said.
Afghans living in Kandahar city, meanwhile, seem more inclined to register than their rural counterparts.
Even though it's not 100 per cent safe to sign up to vote in the city, it's still safer than it is in the districts where Taliban maintain a stubborn foothold, said resident Abdul Satar.
"I am sure that it is a risk," he said, "but do we have an option?"
