The election in Afghanistan

When is the election?
On August 20, around 17m registered voters will make their way to 7,000 polling places across Afghanistan's rugged landscape and choose a new president from 40 candidates. Because parts of the country remain inaccessible, a herd of 3,000 donkeys will carry the ballot papers to regional centres for counting, with the result – and a possible second round of voting – expected in October. Security is a major concern. The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the election and 700 polling places are at risk of being shut down, mostly in the volatile south. The election comes after the deadliest month for foreign troops in Afghanistan since 2001, with more than 70 killed in July. More than 1,000 Afghan civilians have died in the violence so far this year.

Who is going to win?
Hamid Karzai, who won the last presidential election in 2005, is the odds-on favourite. A Pashtun aristocrat from southern Afghanistan, he has ruled the country since December 2001, when a group of tribal leaders chose him to chair the caretaker government after the fall of the Taliban. Though up against a field of 39, including two women, Karzai has only two serious rivals: Abdullah Abdullah, his former foreign minister and a well known mujahideen from the Eighties, and Ashraf Ghani, a respected former finance minister and World Bank adviser. Karzai is keen to win in the first round with more than 50 per cent of the vote. But there's a chance that Ghani, also a Pashtun, could split Karzai's tribal vote, opening up the possibility of a less predictable run-off.

Has Karzai done a good job?
Depends how you look at it. On the one hand, Karzai's rise to power (see box) and very survival have been remarkable. He considers himself the father of post-Taliban Afghanistan and has proved an arch conciliator of the competing domestic and international agendas in his country. His clothes say it all: the karakul hats, made from the skin of two-day old lambs, flowing capes and loose trousers are a mixture of garments from different parts of Afghanistan, a symbol of his 'big tent' coalition of various tribes and factions. The problem, though, is that after eight years, Karzai's big tent now holds some very dubious figures, whose presence makes critics wonder whether Karzai is hindering his country's fragile development.

What kind of dubious figures?
Warlords, mainly. Ashraf Ghani, the presidential rival, compares Karzai's circle to a crime family: 'Karzai Incorporated'. "The largest threat to Afghanistan now is this government," he told Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times. Since 2006, Karzai has largely shed the foreign-educated experts of his first years in power – known as 'dogwashers' (Afghan slang for those who go abroad and take humiliating jobs) – and replaced them with former jihadis and veterans of the tribal power structure. Karzai's election team, dubbed the 'warlord ticket', includes Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, the former governor of Helmand in whose compound British troops found nine tonnes of drugs; Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek war-lord suspended from public office last year for kidnapping a rival; and Karzai's running mate, Muhammad Fahim, a former head of the army implicated in a land-grabbing scheme in Kabul.

How bad is the corruption?
Hideous. Afghanistan fell from number 117 on Transparency International's list of corrupt nations in 2005 to 176 last year, below Zimbabwe. Police jobs, court cases, everything can be bought. Even ballot papers for the coming election are on sale for $20 each. Opium, of which Afghanistan is by far the world's leading supplier, is the main source of illicit income in the country, with an annual crop of 7,000 tonnes providing half of the country's GDP. Around 10 per cent of the population is thought to be actively involved in the drugs trade, including members of Karzai's own family. The president's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is the chief of Kandahar's Provincial Council, where he has been accused of ordering the police to hand back huge seizures of heroin. Another brother, Mahmoud Karzai, has benefited from government contracts to become one of the richest men in the country.

Why doesn't Karzai do anything about it?
He says he is trying. One of the paradoxes about Karzai is that by trying to balance all the forces around him, he has little power of his own, while the growing threat of the Taliban and the rising unpopularity of Nato, caused by civilian casualties, has driven him back into Afghanistan's traditional, factional style of politics. The constant danger to his life also means that he spends nearly all of his time isolated in the Arg, the presidential palace in Kabul. According to observers, this has made Karzai erratic and paranoid about threats to depose him, chiefly seen to come from the Americans and British, of whom he has grown increasingly suspicious since last year's attempt to make Paddy Ashdown a UN 'super envoy' to Afghanistan.

Why do people support him?
Partly because of the tribal nature of Afghan politics. Pashtuns – from whom the Taliban recruit almost all their followers – make up around 40 per cent of the population and Karzai still holds the loyalty of those influential tribal and religious leaders across the country anxious to stem the Taliban's power. In turn, they bring him votes. "We have been ordered by our leader to vote for Hamid Karzai," as one Afghan leader of the Ismaili sect declared at a recent rally. Karzai is also a skilled operator. He has already promised more posts than there are cabinet positions to his supporters, and with just days until the election, he is said to have offered a new role, equivalent to prime minister, to Ghani, his challenger, to make room for one more in the tent. ·