(The companion photo essay and videoclips to this story can be found here .)

 I could hear Kabul, the cacophony of car horns, traffic cops yelling through bull horns, screeches, engines.

But I could not see Kabul.  I could not feel Kabul.

I was sitting in the courtyard of the Serena Hotel under a pine tree.  The padded outdoor chair was comfortable.  The view of the rose bushes and manicured lawn was delightful.

Inside, the hotel was truly five-star quality.  Quite possibly one of the finest hotels I have ever been in and the best I have ever stayed the night in.

The food was safe for even the most delicate westerners.  The linens were clean.  The thick terry cloth robe and slippers were perfect.

I was in a bubble.  A bubble many westerners find themselves in.  They live in compounds or FOBs or fine hotels.  They move about the city behind tinted bullet proof glass.

They are floating above Kabul, not in Kabul.  I was at the Serena to bring a little Kabul and Afghanistan into the bubble and film some of the goings on inside the bubble.

The preferred vehicle to float above Kabul in is the armored Land Cruiser .

The parking lots of the major hotels--Serena, Safi, Intercontinental--are filled with them and former British Paratroopers, SAS, US Rangers and Special Forces who ride shotgun in them.

US Soldiers can spend a lot of time in the bubble--in MRAPS.  In Iraq, it took a deliberate effort from some officers to get their troops out of the bubble and out on their feet where they could gather intel, interact with the people and actually provide security to the population.

Lt. Colonel Scott Cunningham of the 1-221 Cav. made an astute point to me a few weeks ago about the bubble.

Green trucks with guys in the back manning PKM machine guns wearing baclavas raced into the parking lot of the Herat airport.

That is never a good sign. 

They were special officers of the Directorate of National Security.  Something was up.

Dr. Christine Fair   and I were on our way out of Herat taking the evening Pamir Airways flight.  Dr. Fair and I are working with the same client organization and it made more logistical and security sense to have us as passengers on the same flight out of Herat.

Of course like many things in Afghanistan, it was not immediately apparant what a passenger should do.

I went in first to recon while Christine stayed behind with the drivers and British gunslingers.  Even in an airport like Herat there is security.  I stepped through the metal detector and then was throughly patted down by a guy who seemed to really enjoy giving men a hand search.

Once inside it smelled like Afghanistan.

If the four pillars of Herat mark the historic gateway to Afghanistan...the Herat airport marks a clogged up escape valve.

The four pillars of Herat that mark the historical gateway to Afghanistan.

There are actually three or four elections today, depending on the region and province.  Some places went smooth.  Others...well.

Here's a link to Mullah Todd's tracker .  Todd is in Jalalabad.

In a day or two all the international election monitoring groups will issue statements and preliminary reports.

International groups ranging from the EU, NDI, IRI, DI and others were out in force today.  Most them have expansive networks of Afghans reporting what happened throughout the country.

Any irregularities are being documented and will be reported.

I spent the day filming in Kabul.  I heard one rocket--a small one--impact near where I was drinking a Coke Light (Diet Coke) and taking some notes.

Traffic light, turnout was low, apathy was high in Kabul.

Here are some photos from the last polling place I visited and got to watch some of the counting.

Outside of polling place in central Kabul

Elections workers all wore official vests

Kabul is quiet for now.

The streets which are normally teaming are not empty, but the buzz of the city is muted.

The normal background noise, usually pumped up to 11, is only at 2 or 3.

People are getting out to vote in the city.

In Afghanistan repeat voters are prevented by the dipping a finger in ink and a triangle punch on the voting ID card.

The fear is corrupt/incompetent poll workers not punching cards or ensuring the ink dip is used.

Then with a enough corrupt workers in an area, and enough motivated partisans the times a person could vote are only limited by hours in the day.

Afghanistan is not known for its civic integrity in, well, anything.

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Kabul--The streets were empty today, which is disconcerting for two reasons.  The first is that the Kabul streets are always congested.  But today a person could actually move around the city at decent speed in vehicle--something I have never experienced.  I barely recognized the city without the traffic jams.

The second is from my personal history.  The two times I was in Iraq and the streets were empty bad things happened.

I will be tasked with visiting and filming polling sites Thursday.  There are a lot of people who don't want to go to what are considered target sites.  So I will go instead.  It is what I do.

A few bombs will go off tomorrow for the benefit of the international news media.  They will be deadly.  Innocent people exercising their civic rights to vote will be killed.  Many more will be maimed.

There is not tactical advantage for the Taliban in blowing up a polling site.  The people killed by the Taliban are likely to be normal Muslim Afghans.

But the Taliban's agenda requires headlines and gross ratings points to fuel their dream--the departure of International Forces and their return to power.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a US military officer about the situation here.  I told him a fact he already knows--the Taliban and other groups cannot expel the International Coalition.  The Taliban cannot even topple the pathetic Karzai regime.

Then I told him who could expel NATO and the International Coalition--me.  The news media.  The politicians of the Coalition nations.  The voters.

The goal of the bombs on election day are not to disrupt the elections--they are to earn gross ratings points that Afghanistan is too far gone to repair, that it is not worth it.  The elections just guarantee plenty of media coverage and extra gross ratings points. 

The polling places open in a few hours.

I'll file reports as I can.

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Money is the life blood of politics--even in Afghanistan.

In the public polling by IRI , Karzai has 44%, Abdullah Abdullah 26%, Ramzan Bashardost 10% and Ashraf Ghani 6%.

The rest of the candidates, 41 in all were too low to even note.

Being below 50% is always a bad place for an incumbent--especially in Afghanistan where you have to have 50% plus one vote to win and avoid the runoff.

In my experience in campaigns, undecideds often break against the incumbent.  The only time they do not is if the incumbent can run a negative campaign against the challenger(s).

In the money Abdullah Abdullah raised 38,510,000 Afghanis in the most recent reporting period I could find. This is about $770,000 US Dollars.

Ashraf Ghani raised $259,248 US and Bashardost raised $92.

Karzai reported no contributions.  But did report expenditures of $107,000.  During a previous reporting period, Karzai reported $2,000,000 USD in contributions.  The source of the funds was a loan from Ghazanfar Bank.

Abdullah has raised a total of $1,137,000 US, Ghani raised $415,200, Bashardost $25,000.

As the race heads down to the wire, it is between Abdullah Abdullah and Karzai.

The Afghan Independent Election Commission will release the unofficial results on September 3rd and final certified results of the Presidential election on September 17th.  If there is no winner, then the top two go into a runoff.

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This is the most foreign experience I have ever had, domestic air travel within Afghanistan.

Alexander the Great may have marched his army to Herat , but flying to Herat with Pamir Airways on a Boeing 737-200.

But before that, I had to navigate the domestic terminal of Kabul International Airport.

The staff of the International Terminal are used to westerners.  The Domestic Terminal...not so much.

I just followed the flow of people through the initial hand search of baggage and frisking to the check in counter.  No swiping of the credit card here--although you can book your flight with Pamir online and it does work.

Then security screening with X-ray and metal detector at which point it is unclear where one should go.