Afghanistan, and its president, in waiting

Thursday's poll will likely hand victory to one well-known candidate, but others of interest emerged during the campaign. We profile six.

Jean MacKenzieAugust 18, 2009 07:01Updated May 30, 2010 12:05

Afghans attend an election rally in Kandahar province on Aug. 16, 2009, in support of Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking a second term in the country's upcoming presidential election. The election will be held Thursday, Aug. 20. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

KABUL — It’s been a season of surprises for Afghanistan election watchers. Six months ago the race was wide open and President Hamid Karzai was a political corpse. By mid-May the resurrected Karzai was a shoo-in, and his rivals an uncoordinated and constantly squabbling pack of no-hopers.

Then one of the contenders emerged with what many saw as a real chance. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s former foreign minister, ran a strong campaign that, for a period of a few weeks, seemed able to change the dynamic. (Here is GlobalPost's guide to the candidates.)

But with just days to go before the Aug. 20 polls, the results of the ballot are no longer seriously in doubt. Veteran Afghan hands agree: Karzai will stay in office for another five years. The only suspense surrounds voter turnout, ballot box fraud and possible violence after the results are announced. Tuesday morning, just two days before the elections, three bombings ripped through the heart of Kabul.

To a large extent, the elections seem to have been reduced to a feel-good exercise for the foreign community, which is at some pains to prove that its eight-year presence in the country has not been in vain. Last summer, diplomats were speaking in lowered tones about the impossibility of conducting a valid poll in a country that was fast degenerating into chaos. Then came the decision, anointed by the United Nations: the elections will go forward because they must.

U.N. Special Representative Kai Eide has already sought to lower expectations, saying that the poll is “not perfect.” No one speaks any longer of “free and fair” elections — now international experts are content with “credible.”

For many Afghans, the whole idea was absurd from the beginning. With huge swaths of the country too volatile to establish secure polling stations; campaign teams bent on bribery and intimidation; and a host of candidates with no answers to the country’s seemingly insurmountable problems, the voters have very few expectations from the exercise.