Soon after the polls closed in Afghanistan on Thursday afternoon, the country’s military allies declared the election a success. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato’s secretary-general, lauded the Afghan people’s determination to build democracy in what Hamid Karzai, its president, once described as “a wilderness of savagery”. General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, was more modest, describing the day as having gone “reasonably well”. He said the majority of the population had the opportunity to vote – even if they did not take it.
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