LATIFA ATIKAOAMANI, an election official, has just started counting ballot papers. All day, the teaching supervisor and her wards have been helping women to vote in a classroom in Sarghuna High School in central Kabul.

She tallies each vote from piles of paper sorted according to the candidates in Afghanistan’s presidential election. From behind a cordon, three young election agents watch carefully.

Ninety-two women voted in Ms Atikaoamani’s classroom. Of that number, 58 voted for Hamid Karzai, the current president, who has led Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001.

In second place came Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister, with 19 votes. Trailing the leaders were Ashraf Ghani, a finance minister and former World Bank official, and Ramazan Bashardost, an anti-corruption campaigner.

In the section of the school reserved for men’s voting, the story was much the same. In one classroom, a large pile of ballots was accumulating for Mr Karzai, beside a more modest one for Mr Abdullah. Preliminary results in the presidential election are expected on Monday.

The poll at the girls’ school falls in line with polls conducted ahead of the election. It also concurs with predictions by senior diplomats in Kabul that Mr Karzai has a good chance of winning outright in the first round, thereby avoiding a run-off.

However, a low turnout in yesterday’s election, even in central Kabul, where security was tight, is likely to undermine the legitimacy of the result. The Independent Election Commission predicted a 50 per cent turnout, but a considerably more slight vote threatens to give the losing candidates grounds to launch challenges.

It also plays into the hands of Taliban insurgents, who have urged people not to vote and who terrorised the ballot, which they claim is stage-managed by the US.

“The number of voters is particularly low. It doesn’t really compare with previous elections,” says Sayed Omar, an election observer and mathematics lecturer at King Fahd University in Saudi Arabia.

“I’m very surprised. Some say it’s because of security worries. Others say it’s because people have no interest,” Mr Omar added. “The government has done much bribery and people don’t trust the elections. [There are so few voters that] it’s like the people are dead.”

He has heard that some polling stations in the Kabul area even closed by noon.

Mr Omar will be dumbfounded if Mr Karzai wins. He cites the inability of Mr Karzai’s government to spend money on improving basic services. Similar complaints have been voiced by Mr Karzai’s political opponents, who bemoan electricity shortages, bad roads and poor standards of education.

“This area is one of the richest in the country. But look at the [broken] chairs that our daughters have to sit on. Look at the lights. This is the best school in Kabul but it’s worse than it was 40 years ago,” he says.

Not everyone agrees. Farida Nikzad, a high school graduate, said she was voting for Mr Karzai because life in Kabul was getting better.

Senior international election observers said turnout among the nearly five million registered voters varied considerably in different parts of the country.

“It’s going to be a lot of different elections – the question is how to put them all together,” said an observer with the National Democratic Institute, a US not-for-profit group. “It’s a really mixed bag in terms of normalcy, violence and low voter turnout.”

He pointed to difficulties in provinces in the southern Pashtun belt, such as Khost, Paktika and Paktiya. He added that voting in the north of the country, which has largely been spared the insurgency, had also been disrupted.

If turnout was disappointing in the capital, it was far worse in the provinces. Insurgent attacks continued unabated across the country, in spite of efforts by the government to buy temporary peace on election day.

In Kabul, rocket and bomb attacks were reported. In the Afghan capital’s District 8, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a polling station. In the ensuing gunfight, which lasted for two hours, three militants were killed, said an eye-witness.

“The Taliban deployed in small cells. It seemed that they were creating diversionary tactics,” said one security expert.

In Kandahar, the police said 28 incidents had taken place before noon. These included Taliban attacks on three checkpoints and rocket fire into Kandahar city, killing three civilians. Two roadside bombs exploded in polling stations, while 12 roadside bombs were deactivated in the city.

In District 10, a poorer yet peaceful suburb of Kabul, the turnout was a little better than expected. Fifty-two women came to the polling station staffed by Malalai Anwry, a psychology student at Kabul University, by midday. Ms Anwry said more women, who usually work at home, had come to the polling station than she had expected, but she also said Afghanistan’s turbulent history cast a long shadow over its people that was difficult to shake off with democracy. “Many people have lots of problems in the mind,” she said.

“There was 10 years of fighting and the Taliban regime was hard weather for them – for women.”

As yesterday’s vote shows, the country’s “hard weather” has yet to lift. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)