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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/world/asia/19peshawar.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

 

Pakistan - City of Peshawar - North-West Frontier Province

Many Women Stay Away From the Polls in an Uneasy Pakistani City

 

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

A woman wearing a burqa filled out her ballot on Monday at a polling station in a school in Peshawar, Pakistan. Militant groups had threatened violence against women who dared to vote.

By DAVID ROHDE

February 19, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — They arrived in small groups over the course of the day, defying religious militants who say Pakistani women should not be allowed to vote.

“We were thinking about not coming,” said Huma Shakeel, 22, a college student who was visibly relieved after casting her ballot here on Monday. “People are afraid because of bombers, suicide bombers.”

Despite the deployment of 60,000 soldiers and police officers in Pakistan’s embattled North-West Frontier Province, threats from militants appear to have prevented thousands of women from casting their ballots there on Monday, according to Pakistani election officials.

Over the past year, religious militants have made enormous headway in the province, carrying out suicide attacks and intimidating moderates.

Election monitors in six polling stations specifically for women in Peshawar, the provincial capital, said 523 of 6,431 registered women had cast their ballots as of late Monday afternoon, a turnout of roughly 8 percent. Turnout among men was estimated at 20 percent across the province, low but still more than twice the estimated women’s level.

On Sunday night, militants posted signs in towns outside Peshawar warning candidates not to bring their female supporters to ballot booths. On Monday morning, elders in the Mattani district, just south of Peshawar, closed 30 polling stations for women, according to local journalists.

In Peshawar, election officials said they believed that some families had barred women from journeying to the polls out of fear that they would be attacked.

“Some families stop the women,” said Naheed Begum, an election worker who said 72 of 1,300 women registered to vote in her polling station had actually cast ballots.

Urban voter turnout is often significantly lower than rural turnout in Pakistani elections. But election officials said they believed that a series of recent attacks — including an election rally suicide bombing that killed 47 people on Saturday — had discouraged voters, male and female, from journeying to the polls.

Overall turnout in the province appeared to be roughly half of what it was during the country’s last national elections in 2002. Over the last year, the province has suffered attacks from Pakistani and foreign militants based in the adjoining Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a lawless strip of territory along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

In interviews in Peshawar, female voters and poll workers criticized the militants. According to recent public opinion polls, religious extremists have grown increasingly unpopular in Pakistan as suicide bombings have increased.

Nasra Zahid, 37, a zoology professor who was working at a polling station, said Islam guaranteed women the right to vote. Ms. Zahid, who is religiously observant, wears a black veil that covers her face except for her eyes — an unusual sight in Pakistan, a religiously moderate country. Counting election results on Wednesday night, she said militants were grossly misinterpreting her faith.

“These are not religious students,” she said. “These are terrorists. Our religion gives completely the right to vote to women.”

In interview after interview, women said they feared that suicide bombers would attack a polling station for women. Female election workers, many of them schoolteachers, said they feared being attacked when they carried ballot boxes back to central government offices.

“On the way, it could happen,” said Usmina Begum, a high school principal and head of a polling station.

In some polling stations for women, the atmosphere was visibly tense.

Sajida Pir Muhammad, a high school teacher and election supervisor, grew angry when asked why turnout was low.

“You know everything,” she snapped. “Why are you asking?”

Most other polling stations for women were deserted.

As Ms. Zahid, the zoology professor, packed up her polling station on Monday night she said she was filled with a sense of relief and despair. Only 280 of the 2,058 women registered to vote in her district had cast ballots. She said she was frustrated by the low turnout but relieved that women had stayed home — and alive.

“In a democratic society, everyone should vote,” she said. “But in this situation, life is more important than voting.”





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