A look at the leading candidates in Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election:
Abdullah is a former foreign minister who has risen in the polls to about 25 percent support and could force Karzai into a run-off election. The trained ophthalmologist was a leading member of the Northern Alliance — a group of warlords and politicians from Afghanistan's north who helped oust the Taliban during the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. His father was Pashtun and his mother was Tajik. He is seen as the favorite of the Tajiks, who dominate the north and make up around a quarter of the Afghan population. Abdullah has talked about cleaning up government corruption as well as changing the government to a parliamentary system.
RAMAZAN BASHARDOST
Bashardost is a parliamentarian and former planning minister with a somewhat eccentric reputation. When not out campaigning, he spends much of his time working in a tent near the parliament building. His frugal style and populist rhetoric, criticizing corruption and cronyism in the government, has earned him enough of a fan base that he's garnering as much as 10 percent in polls. Bashardost is Hazara, a minority ethnic group in Afghanistan that is largely Shiite Muslim and thus was a major target of the Sunni Muslim Taliban during their reign. He spent many years abroad, including in France, and according to his Web site, has an extensive academic background.
Ghani is a 60-year-old, Western-educated former World Bank official who previously served as Afghanistan's finance minister. Considered a technocrat with a focus on detail, Ghani has been floated as a potential chief executive for the government — someone who runs the day-to-day affairs under the president. The multilingual Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun, has made eliminating corruption from government ranks a major theme of his campaign, and has pledged such programs as establishing model economic zones in the country and starting a women's-only university, but is still considered a long-shot for the presidency.
HAMID KARZAI
Karzai was named the interim Afghan leader in December 2001 after the ouster of the Taliban, then won a five-year-term as president in 2004. He briefly supported the Taliban in the 1990s, but broke with them amid signs they were falling under the influence of foreign Islamist extremists such as al-Qaida. His father, a Pashtun tribal chief, was assassinated in 1999 — purportedly by the Taliban. Karzai was among the few Pashtun exiles to mount armed resistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led attack of 2001. The 51-year-old is the front-runner, but his popularity has slipped amid Afghan anger over government corruption. He promises to pursue peace talks with the Taliban if he retains the presidency.
Source: AP News
