"The purpose of this handbook is to lay out some principles that could function as guideposts for journalists in Afghanistan as they seek to grapple with the evolving complexities of democracy in action. It seeks to provide concrete suggestions on how global best practices in political reporting and election coverage could be adapted for the Afghanistan context. Interactions between the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) have arrived at several conclusions about current media awareness of the democratic electoral process. Journalists find they have little access to the inner workings of the electoral process. They think that political leaders do not want to face journalists who ask difficult questions. The referee of the electoral process, the Independent Election Commission established under the constitution of Afghanistan, also is in need of media oversight, as are the election observers deployed by international agencies. Journalists are keen to join debate about the most appropriate pattern of electoral democracy for Afghanistan, in terms of assessing the presidential and the parliamentary system, and all the variants on these basic models. Journalists want an agreed charter of rights regarding their powers of scrutiny over the electoral process, so that they can report irregularities that ordinary people and public authorities can then seek to correct. Journalists want to understand better the principles of neutral and non-partisan reporting. In the specific situation of past and present conflict in Afghanistan, journalists want to understand how they can expand the limits of “safe reporting”, particularly in relation to the influence and coercive power wielded by erstwhile “warlords." (Introduction, page 3)