Results such as this one, from Nowzad district in Helmand province, have fuelled allegations of vote-rigging. Not only were all the votes cast for Mr Karzai, but they were evenly distributed between each polling station, raising suspicions of systematic ballot-stuffing.

Nowzad has been the scene of some of the bloodiest battles in Helmand, claiming the lives of three British soldiers since 2006. In that year A Company Group, 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers fought what was then the longest defensive battle British troops had been involved in since Korea, with 107 days spent in contact.

A Western official said that the “triggers” to alert the authorities to electoral fraud were not stringent in the first place and appeared to have been easily sidestepped.

The official said that the Independent Election Commission was supposed to investigate any polling station where the ballot boxes were full and more than 90 per cent of the votes went to one candidate. Most of the boxes take about 600 ballots.

The fact that the numbers reflected here — 550, 560, 570, 570 and 500 — are so uniformly rounded, but just under the 600 mark, suggest that whoever might have engineered the fraud knew what they were doing.

The allegations that votes already sanctioned as “clean” and officially released by the commission may be seriously tainted are further undermining confidence in the elections.

The commission already has more than 2,500 complaints of fraud and intimidation on its hands. The final results, originally to be released on September 17, cannot be given until it has looked into all complaints, so a conclusive outcome could still be many weeks away.

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