Afghanistan’s parliament will convene on January 20, more than four months after the fraud-tainted elections, the president’s spokesman said on Monday.
Waheed Omar said the 249-seat parliament will be inaugurated after the winter break. The elections were held on Sept. 18 and the results ratified by the Independent Election Commission on November 24.
The ballot was plagued by irregularities and voter intimidation. Election officials discarded 1.3 million ballots, nearly a quarter of the total, for fraud and disqualified 19 winning candidates for cheating. The attorney general’s office also launched a separate investigation into allegations of ballot manipulation.
Afghan authorities also said the final death toll from Sunday’s suicide bomb attacks against security forces in the capital and the northern city of Kunduz was 14.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which militants struck at an army recruitment centre in Kunduz and ambushed a bus carrying Afghan army personnel in Kabul.
The U.S.-led Coalition said the Afghan security forces were effective in stopping the attacks.
“The professionalism and skill the Afghan National Security Forces displayed while combating insurgent attacks yesterday was very inspiring,” said German Brig. General Josef Blotz, the Coalition spokesman.
The brunt of the fighting in Kunduz was taken up by Afghan security forces, assisted by some NATO forces. AP video showed U.S. troops also returning fire in Kunduz.
Recruitment and training for the Afghan army and police is a key component of a plan to transition responsibility for security to local forces by the end of 2014, allowing U.S.-led forces to withdraw from the country.
In the past year, the Afghan National Army grew 42 percent, from 97,000 to 138,164. The size of the police force rose from about 95,000 to 120,504, or 27 percent. But the security forces are also seen as corrupt and many units suffer high rates of attrition.
Mr. Omar also lauded the training and professionalism of the Afghan security forces, which he said was evident in Kunduz, but said more effort had to be made by the international community to better equip troops and police.
“Time and effort was placed on training Afghan National Security Forces,” Mr. Omar told reporters. “We will not agree that lots of time and effort was spent equipping” them.
Kunduz, a major agricultural and marketing centre that controls one of the main highways into neighbouring Tajikistan, virtually shut down, with shops, the bazaar and administrative offices closing as the gunbattle raged.
The city was the last major urban centre held by the Taliban in 2001, and militants began stepping up attacks there after NATO began using supply routes through former Soviet states bordering northern Afghanistan as alternatives to routes through Pakistan, where NATO convoys have come under frequent attack.
Much of the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan has been concentrated in the Taliban’s traditional southern strongholds. An internal review of President Barack Obama’s year-old war strategy unveiled on Thursday noted progress against the Taliban in the south, where the U.S. deployed an additional 30,000 American troops this year.
