Over 900 Afghan polls shut down

The Afghan government has decided not to open more than 900 polling stations during next month's parliamentary election, citing security concerns. The closures will affect nearly 15 per cent of the country's 6,835 polling stations, and could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters. Many of the affected locations are in southern and eastern Afghanistan, according to the country's election commission, which announced the decision at a press conference on Wednesday. "The main problem for these elections is security," Fazel Ahmed Manawi, the chairman of the commission, said. "The backbone of any election is security; without it there cannot [be] proper voting." The list of closures was reviewed over the weekend by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and General David Petraeus, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. More than 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, Afghanistan's lower house of parliament, on September 18.