Afghanistan elections: Youth voters ‘vital’

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al-Jazeera, 4 April 2014

AAN's Martine van Bijlert is quoted on the role of the Afghan youth in the upcoming elections: 

"Young Afghans are a large group and are varied in their outlook, depending on where they come from and where they live. There is a tendency to see them as a group that is somehow intrinsically moderate and modern and more educated than their parents, but that might be a bit too optimistic. They cover a wide spectrum," says Martine van Bijlert, a founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

"With so many youths, you're getting a lot of voters who don't necessarily have the same political baggage as their parents or the same history, and this makes it more difficult to predict how they will vote and where the election will go," van Bijlert says. "They may vote very differently from their parents, or they may not. And because the youth population is fragmented, it makes it harder to predict how the vote will go."