Afghanistan postpones elections until September

KABUL -- Afghanistan's election commission announced Sunday that it is postponing scheduled parliamentary elections from May until September, bowing to logistical concerns, worries about potential voting fraud and the likelihood that the U.S. troop "surge" will lead to intensified fighting in parts of the country.

As the troop buildup continues, five more U.S. service members were killed in the past 24 hours in the volatile south of Afghanistan, the focus of the surge and where the Taliban insurgency is most entrenched.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force reported that three Americans were killed Sunday by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and that two more Americans died on Saturday, also from roadside bombs.

Their deaths bring to 26 the number of U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan this month, according to the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks U.S. and coalition fatalities. U.S. military commanders said they expect casualties to continue to grow as the fighting escalates.

By comparison, in January 2009, 15 U.S. personnel were killed in Afghanistan, according to iCasualties.org.

There are about 110,000 foreign troops, mostly American, in Afghanistan, and the additional 30,000 ordered here by President Obama in December have just begun to arrive.

The expectation of more intense combat over the spring and summer months was one factor in postponing the elections until the fall, Afghan and foreign analysts said.

"Security is a major challenge. For candidates, especially in the south, it is a major issue," said Haroun Mir, director of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies. "September is almost the end of summer, most of the military operations will be over, and most of the districts in the south will be secure enough to hold elections."

Some in the international community, as well as visiting U.S. lawmakers, had questioned the wisdom of holding the elections in May. They said it would have proven a distraction for American and NATO troops tasked with providing security for the balloting at the same time they are trying to retake areas from the Taliban.

But security was just one reason foreign diplomats, and many Afghan critics, were arguing for a delay. The other was fear of another tainted election.

There was evidence of widespread fraud in last year's presidential and provincial-level elections, raising questions about the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai's reelection.

The United Nations is supposed to fund this year's parliamentary elections, but it was withholding releasing the funds until reforms were enacted to prevent a repeat of last year's electoral fiasco.