Afghanistan election

‘As is frequently pointed out, the Greeks invented the words “catastrophe” and “crisis”.’

Kabul was the emptiest of cities this morning. The only way to move around – given the universal ban on private vehicles that has successfully staved off the predictable attack by the Taliban – was on foot. The traffic that usually blocks the city vanished. We found ourselves learning that routes between places we normally…

The West first bends President Karzai’s arm to concede to a second round of voting. Few people see how the fraud or insurgent-led violence of the first round won’t worsen this time. Then the challenger drops out. Why would he stay in? He won’t win, and prefers a principled withdrawal to an unruly defeat. So…

Channel 4 News reporter Lindsey Hilsum examines the shrinking number of options available to the US in Afghanistan.

Our team have been blogging all last week from Afghanistan on the elections, but they’re not the only ones commenting. Soldiers who know the front line only too well have been posting their comments on our blogs, including Lt Col Brown on Nick Paton Walsh’s reports from his embed at Camp Keating. Read, digest and feel…

Nothing in my morning today amounts to anything like scientific research. But it does chime with what the scientific experts are now saying.   I’ve been along to a number of Kabul high schools in the past hour or two with some simple questions.   Ana I have received simple answers from the helpful and…

It was a simple and unoriginal idea. Stick your finger in the indelible ink, then see how easily it washes off.   Across Afghanistan, the plan was to prevent repeat voting by putting this ink on the right index finger of each person brave enough to vote.   There were drawbacks; the Taliban had threatened…

For the past week the Channel 4 News team has been on the frontline of the Afghan elections. The team has been with soldiers in Helmand to the hospital wards of Kandahar and into the halls of political power – it’s been a week of insight and analysis. The pictures displayed were taken from our…

Alex Thomson on the main rivals to Hamid Karzai in the Afghan elections: Ramazan Bashardost, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.

Nima Elbagir guest blogs from Kandahar hospital, Afghanistan. When the Obama administrations’ then nominee for the top job in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal faced the Senate Armed Services committee in early June his message was unequivocal – civilian casualties were the major operational issue. “This is a critical point. It may be the critical point.…

Journalists and soldiers have very different ways of looking at the world. Journalists question everything; soldiers accept the task assigned by politicians. Journalists stand back to see how what’s happening fits into the big picture; soldiers set a limited goal and make it happen. Journalists are sceptics; soldiers have to believe in the rightness of…

We made two good decisions yesterday. First, when we walked into the stadium (the one where the Taliban used to stone people to death) for Abdullah Abdullah’s rally, we took a look at the rickety wooden stage they’d built for the camera crews to stand on, and decided to set up our tripod on the…

We asked if they have a nickname for it: COP Keating, an American outpost trapped in the middle of a hostile valley in Nuristan province. They didn’t, they replied – didn’t need to. The word Keating (the surname of a first lieutenant who died near here) told them what it was about. Then Captain Porter…

Channel 4 News cameraman Stuart Webb comes under fire as he video-blogs from the “incredibly dangerous” Camp Keating US Army base in Afghanistan.