Green trucks with guys in the back manning PKM machine guns wearing baclavas raced into the parking lot of the Herat airport.

That is never a good sign. 

They were special officers of the Directorate of National Security.  Something was up.

Dr. Christine Fair   and I were on our way out of Herat taking the evening Pamir Airways flight.  Dr. Fair and I are working with the same client organization and it made more logistical and security sense to have us as passengers on the same flight out of Herat.

Of course like many things in Afghanistan, it was not immediately apparant what a passenger should do.

I went in first to recon while Christine stayed behind with the drivers and British gunslingers.  Even in an airport like Herat there is security.  I stepped through the metal detector and then was throughly patted down by a guy who seemed to really enjoy giving men a hand search.

Once inside it smelled like Afghanistan.

If the four pillars of Herat mark the historic gateway to Afghanistan...the Herat airport marks a clogged up escape valve.

The four pillars of Herat that mark the historical gateway to Afghanistan.

There are actually three or four elections today, depending on the region and province.  Some places went smooth.  Others...well.

Here's a link to Mullah Todd's tracker .  Todd is in Jalalabad.

In a day or two all the international election monitoring groups will issue statements and preliminary reports.

International groups ranging from the EU, NDI, IRI, DI and others were out in force today.  Most them have expansive networks of Afghans reporting what happened throughout the country.

Any irregularities are being documented and will be reported.

I spent the day filming in Kabul.  I heard one rocket--a small one--impact near where I was drinking a Coke Light (Diet Coke) and taking some notes.

Traffic light, turnout was low, apathy was high in Kabul.

Here are some photos from the last polling place I visited and got to watch some of the counting.

Outside of polling place in central Kabul

Elections workers all wore official vests

Kabul is quiet for now.

The streets which are normally teaming are not empty, but the buzz of the city is muted.

The normal background noise, usually pumped up to 11, is only at 2 or 3.

People are getting out to vote in the city.

In Afghanistan repeat voters are prevented by the dipping a finger in ink and a triangle punch on the voting ID card.

The fear is corrupt/incompetent poll workers not punching cards or ensuring the ink dip is used.

Then with a enough corrupt workers in an area, and enough motivated partisans the times a person could vote are only limited by hours in the day.

Afghanistan is not known for its civic integrity in, well, anything.

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Kabul--The streets were empty today, which is disconcerting for two reasons.  The first is that the Kabul streets are always congested.  But today a person could actually move around the city at decent speed in vehicle--something I have never experienced.  I barely recognized the city without the traffic jams.

The second is from my personal history.  The two times I was in Iraq and the streets were empty bad things happened.

I will be tasked with visiting and filming polling sites Thursday.  There are a lot of people who don't want to go to what are considered target sites.  So I will go instead.  It is what I do.

A few bombs will go off tomorrow for the benefit of the international news media.  They will be deadly.  Innocent people exercising their civic rights to vote will be killed.  Many more will be maimed.

There is not tactical advantage for the Taliban in blowing up a polling site.  The people killed by the Taliban are likely to be normal Muslim Afghans.

But the Taliban's agenda requires headlines and gross ratings points to fuel their dream--the departure of International Forces and their return to power.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a US military officer about the situation here.  I told him a fact he already knows--the Taliban and other groups cannot expel the International Coalition.  The Taliban cannot even topple the pathetic Karzai regime.

Then I told him who could expel NATO and the International Coalition--me.  The news media.  The politicians of the Coalition nations.  The voters.

The goal of the bombs on election day are not to disrupt the elections--they are to earn gross ratings points that Afghanistan is too far gone to repair, that it is not worth it.  The elections just guarantee plenty of media coverage and extra gross ratings points. 

The polling places open in a few hours.

I'll file reports as I can.

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Money is the life blood of politics--even in Afghanistan.

In the public polling by IRI , Karzai has 44%, Abdullah Abdullah 26%, Ramzan Bashardost 10% and Ashraf Ghani 6%.

The rest of the candidates, 41 in all were too low to even note.

Being below 50% is always a bad place for an incumbent--especially in Afghanistan where you have to have 50% plus one vote to win and avoid the runoff.

In my experience in campaigns, undecideds often break against the incumbent.  The only time they do not is if the incumbent can run a negative campaign against the challenger(s).

In the money Abdullah Abdullah raised 38,510,000 Afghanis in the most recent reporting period I could find. This is about $770,000 US Dollars.

Ashraf Ghani raised $259,248 US and Bashardost raised $92.

Karzai reported no contributions.  But did report expenditures of $107,000.  During a previous reporting period, Karzai reported $2,000,000 USD in contributions.  The source of the funds was a loan from Ghazanfar Bank.

Abdullah has raised a total of $1,137,000 US, Ghani raised $415,200, Bashardost $25,000.

As the race heads down to the wire, it is between Abdullah Abdullah and Karzai.

The Afghan Independent Election Commission will release the unofficial results on September 3rd and final certified results of the Presidential election on September 17th.  If there is no winner, then the top two go into a runoff.

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This is the most foreign experience I have ever had, domestic air travel within Afghanistan.

Alexander the Great may have marched his army to Herat , but flying to Herat with Pamir Airways on a Boeing 737-200.

But before that, I had to navigate the domestic terminal of Kabul International Airport.

The staff of the International Terminal are used to westerners.  The Domestic Terminal...not so much.

I just followed the flow of people through the initial hand search of baggage and frisking to the check in counter.  No swiping of the credit card here--although you can book your flight with Pamir online and it does work.

Then security screening with X-ray and metal detector at which point it is unclear where one should go.

One of the most peculiar aspects of embedding with coalition forces is how often one find themselves hitch hiking or trying to hop on a helicopter.

Over the years, I developed a technique that helps by embracing my inner highway hitch hiker.

My hitch hiking destination card.

The American hitch hiker carries a sign with a name of a city.  The embedded hitch hiker hangs out at the helicopter landing zone and slowly walks up to the pilot or crew chief and asks if he can jump in.

I started using the sign a few years ago in Iraq.  It works well.

It worked to get me a ride from Mehtar Lam back for FOB Fenty.  In fact the pilot and crew chief got a kick out of the sign.  Especially when I give them the thumb.

Just north of the delta of the Alishang and Alengar river valleys, in the middle of a dozen square miles of green rice paddies, are the home villages of the Katal Kheil sub-tribe.

We drove in MRAPs out of Mehtar Lam on the asphalt highway for a few kilometers, the winding twisty roads of the city giving way to the rural farm villages, then nothing but a ribbon of asphalt cutting through the irrigated fields.  Beyond the rice paddies and irrigated corn fields, the jagged rocky brown of Amber Ghar mountain rose for 2,112 meters at its peak.

The mission was what the military calls a KLE or Key Leader Engagement.  Only military could give such a sterile, functional name to sitting down with the power brokers of a tribe and laying the foundation of a working relationship.

And relationship is the key.

Counter insurgency is not about how many bad guys were killed, it is about how many powerbrokers are on your side--especially the ones who are willing to marginalize if not out right eliminate the bad guys.

The true mission was to find the powerbrokers, the Maliks, talk with them, and begin to build that relationship.  This involves sitting down on the carpet under a tree and drinking tea.

But first you have to hike to the village.

The soldiers and I exited the MRAPs and followed a narrow road too small for even a humvee for three kilometers in the 106 degree heat and humidity from the flooded rice paddies.

Irrigation canals flowed slow, meandering along the road and under the road. 

The boys of Katal show off by doing flips into the irrigation canal.

Deep inside the rice paddies, we reached the heart of the village of Katel.

Kids were everywhere, young men loitered, only a few young girls ventured out, there were no women in sight.

And the dance began.

Sixteen kilometers up the Alishang river valley from Mehtar Lam is the village of Watangatu.

Like all the villages in the Alishang valley, Watangatu is a farming village where the local Ghilzai Pashtuns grow corn and rice in the fertile fields irrigated from the rapid flowing river.

Rice paddies irrigated by the Alishang river.  Taken from the side door of a Blackhawk helicopter

But Watangatu has a distinction that sets it apart from its neighbors in the valley, it is a common ambush site which is why I was there along with the Governor of Lagham province, the Chief of Police and the Commander of the local Afghan National Army Battalion.

One could call it a Shura or a Jirga, but Americans would understand it as a town hall meeting.

Pashtun men from Watangatu react to a quip the Governor of Lagham province

The Afghan government with the support of USAID and the local military Provisional Reconstruction Team is building a paved road up the valley, but the sniping and violence is slowing construction.

Rather than go in with a heavy hand and use an infantry battalion like a sledge hammer to try and swat a few flys, the US Army Battalion in charge of Lagham province and the PRT decided to use the traditional Afghan approach--a Shura.