A harried election worker urged her back into her polling booth. “You must find it yourself,” she said firmly, then shook her head in despair. “They are so confused,” she sighed. “It’s not just one person, it’s everyone.”

Millions of Afghan voters went to the polls yesterday, defying a Taleban campaign of sabotage to cast their votes in the country’s first parliamentary election. But while grenade, rocket and gun attacks scared off voters in some parts of the country, the greatest obstacle to democracy was the complexity of the ballot paper.

Electoral experts had laboured to design a ballot that could be understood in a country where half the men and 80 per cent of women cannot read and write. But with 400 randomly ordered candidates running in Kabul province alone, the challenge proved too great.

Inside her cardboard polling booth, Fatima, 50, struggled with an eight-page ballot paper. “I can’t recognise him,” she said, scouring the page for a picture of her chosen candidate, unable to read the name.

After 30 minutes and repeated bangs on the booth by an irate official, she ticked the final box on the paper. “I don’t know if it was him but he had a turban so I just voted anyway,” she said. She had, in fact, voted for a direct rival.

She was lucky to have made it to a polling station at all. Just south of the capital, in Musayi district, women’s polling stations were almost empty as voters were kept at home by menfolk fearful for their safety after a suspected Taleban ambush on a police patrol that killed five officers. Abdul Halim, a doctor in Charso village, had wanted to bring his wife and daughter to the polling station with him, but the ambush changed his mind. “I brought their cards myself and asked the officials if I could vote for them, but they would not let me,” he said.

Election observers in many places reported a lower-than-expected turnout of women in an election that yesterday looked unlikely to meet the 70 per cent turnout of last year’s presidential poll. “In many places the number of women is just a fraction of that of the men,” said Richard Howitt, the British MEP on the EU observer mission. Overall, he said, many stations reported receiving only half the number of voters they expected.

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But Taleban sabotage attempts appeared to be in vain. No civilian casualties were reported despite a dozen attacks across the southeast and a double rocket attack on a UN compound in the capital. Monitors attributed the lower turnout to confusion over the election, or the lack of novelty after last year’s poll, rather than any fear of violence.

At 6,000 polling stations, Afghans dressed in their best clothes to vote, even if they sometimes seemed unsure of who or what they were voting for. With so many faces to chose from, and no political party affiliations to guide voters, even many of those who could read seemed bewildered.

“I don’t know any of these people so I left it up to God,” said Ismatullah Lal Zada, 65. “Last time was easy. I just voted for [President] Karzai. This time I just ticked one man and one woman.”

But others had no doubt about the importance of the day. “Nobody can say this is less important than before,” said Aqasherin Dadoland, who lost both his legs after being tortured as a political prisoner. “When we have a parliament we will be represented for the first time and then we will have a real democracy.

“Karzai is just one man. He cannot listen to all the people. In a parliament, God willing, we can all be heard.”

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