A victory for Afghanistan!

Terry Glavin has the best roundup on the elections, and things went better than expected...we can count this as a victory...

The spinning on Afghanistan's elections and their meaning will be fast and crazy over the next few days. As things have turned out, voting day wasn't anywhere near as calamitous as we'd been warned to expect.

Here's the United Nations' Kai Eide:

"First of all, let me remind you all of what our thinking was and about all the questions I got from you a couple of days ago. Those questions were: With all these security incidents and with this security situation will it be possible to hold elections in Afghanistan? Now, we see that elections have taken place across Afghanistan and I believe that, that is in itself an important achievement.

"There have also been a lot of discussions over the number of poll centres that the election commission will be able to open. Now we know that around 6,200 polling centres were open. The figures are not precise yet. But that is what we believe is the approximate number. That number is equal to the number that was open in 2005. And I must also say that, too, is an achievement."

But, read Terry's entire piece...