After two false starts because of security concerns, official campaigning for the Afghan presidential elections began last week. Candidates have started making speeches, distributing posters and advertising on radio ahead of the polls, which will take place on October 9.
Who are the candidates?
Voters will choose between 18 candidates for a five-year term of office. If none of those candidates wins a simple majority, a run-off election in November will determine a final winner. Some of the strongest candidates are:
Hamid Karzai. The current president, appointed in 2002 by the Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly), stands the best chance of being elected. He speaks several Afghan languages and comes from the country’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtun. However, the country’s security situation is dire, opium production has exploded and most Afghans live in abject poverty and have little access to health care. Voters may not have expected Karzai to solve the problems caused by almost three decades of war in only three years.
However, Afghanistan also needs foreign funds, and his urbane dignity goes down well with international donors.
Yunus Qanuni. Karzai’s Education Minister is best placed to defeat him at the polls. Qanuni served as the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and is a member of the country’s second-largest ethnic group, the Tajiks. He has two powerful backers in Karzai’s Defence Minister, Mohammed Fahim, and the former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah.
Massouda Jalal. The only female candidate on the list, Jalal is a former United Nations worker and a qualified paediatrician. She is independent of any faction, but that means she lacks a power base. She came a distant second to Karzai at the Loya Jirga in 2002.
Mohammed Mohaqeq. Formerly an anti-Taliban militia commander, Mohaqeq is from the long-suffering Shia Muslim Hazara minority of central Afghanistan. He served as planning minister in Karzai’s government until March, when he insists he was ejected from the Cabinet because of his candidacy. He could overshadow Karzai’s less popular Hazara vice-presidential nominee.
Abdul Rashid Dostum. A ruthless Uzbek warlord, he has a reputation as a serial betrayer, having allied himself with almost every Afghan leader over the past two decades. He fought both with and against the Soviets during the 1980s, and with the Taliban until joining the Northern Alliance, which helped the United States oust its regime in late 2001.
Abdul Satar Serat. An Uzbek and a former aide to Afghanistan’s last king, Serat has spent most of the past 30 years in exile. Many believed that the intellectual nationalist would head up the post-Taliban interim government, but Karzai, backed by the US, took the post.
Abdul Hafiz Mansoor. The traditionalist former head of Aghan state TV, Mansoor put on a rabble-rousing display at the Loya Jirga, which passed Afghanistan’s new Constitution in January. He has links with the Tajik faction in the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and has accused Karzai of attempting to install an elected dictatorship. He stirred up anger by ordering a ban on women singing on air.
Does the government control the country?
Some of Karzai’s opponents refer to him derisively as the ”mayor of Kabul”. He has not taken on the warlords, who have largely refused to disarm, but has instead negotiated alliances with them.
Any new president will have the backing of about 20 000 US-led troops and 10 000 Nato-led peacekeepers. Disarming regional factions, however, remains the key to creating a single country under a central government. An estimated 50 000 armed militia members are attached to warlords across the country. By contrast, the fledgling Afghan national army, controlled by the president, has 14 000 troops.
The country’s infrastructure has also been reduced to rubble by decades of fighting, cutting off one area of the country from another.
What is the security situation?
More than 1 000 people have died in violence over the past year, making it the deadliest since the US-led invasion ousted the Taliban. Karzai postponed the presidential election — originally scheduled to take place in June — until October, and the parliamentary elections until next year, in order to avoid voters being frightened from the polls by bloodshed.
The Taliban vowed to step up attacks in advance of the election, and on August 30 a car bomb ripped through the offices of a US security company in Kabul, killing 10 people.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff has promised to stop the remnants of the Taliban from launching raids into Afghanistan from bases inside Pakistan, but Afghan leaders say this is still happening.
In September 2002 Karzai survived an assassination attempt in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
Several organisations, including Médécins sans Frontières, have withdrawn from Afghanistan following unprecedented attacks on aid workers.
Who will vote?
The latest figures show 10,6-million registered voters out of a total population of about 25-million. The UN estimates that 90% of the Afghan electorate could vote.
Will the election be fair?
There has been widespread violence against election officials, and a dozen election workers have so far been killed in shootings and bombings.
US and Nato troops are patrolling the capital and countryside, leaving it to thousands of newly trained Afghan national police and army troops to guard candidates and polling stations.
A UN report warned that local warlords could use guns to intimidate both voters and candidates. It also suggested that a lack of information and understanding about how the elections work, especially in rural areas — where many people are illiterate — could hinder a fair outcome. — Â