Forty-four candidates submitted nominations to run for president before the close of registration on Friday, a field full of people who served under President Hamid Karzai but have since broken with him, often over his management style. The large crowd of presidential hopefuls included two women, several former ministers, a mix of former Communists and people who fought against them in the jihad, a former boy genius and Mr. Karzai, said the spokesman for the election commission, Noor Muhammad Noor.Mr. Karzai, despite his falling popularity, is widely recognized as the leading candidate. After him, the most serious contender is Dr. Abdullah, 51, an eye specialist who uses only one name and who served as foreign minister under Mr. Karzai for five years. He is the candidate for the main opposition movement, the United Front, which commands wide support among the northern tribes.
The broad field showed AfghanistanÂ’s progress from its first presidential elections five years ago, which were dominated by faction leaders of the mujahedeen, the armed groups that once helped push out the Soviet occupation. This time, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the powerful Uzbek militia leader, is absent from the race, as is Muhammad Mohaqeq, a former Hazara militia leader and member of Parliament with significant popular support.
The group Dr. Abdullah represents, the United Front, is based on the old Northern Alliance, the main mujahedeen faction of the north. But he is seen as a moderate reformer who has chosen educated civilian deputies as his running mates, Homayoun Shah Wasefi and a well-known surgeon, Dr. Cheragh Ali Cheragh. Instead it is Mr. Karzai who has stuck with old faction leaders, naming the former Northern Alliance leader and former Defense Minister Muhammad Qasim Fahim as his first vice president, and Muhammad Karim Khalili, an ethnic Hazara, to continue as his second vice president.
Mr. Karzai seems to be calculating on maintaining deputies who appeal to mujahedeen supporters who can mobilize a huge popular vote, especially in the rural areas, but he also seems to be seeking to divide his opponents, in particular the United Front, analysts and diplomats said. Nevertheless, Western officials in Kabul and many educated Afghans have criticized Mr. KarzaiÂ’s choice of deputies, in particular his choice of Mr. Fahim, who represented the rigid determination of the jihadi factions to hold on to power, and came to symbolize a resistance to disarmament and reforms when he served as defense minister and vice president in the first government after 2001.
“It is so important to avoid that burden of the past that squanders the hopes for the future,” said Kay Eide, the head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. “I am concerned when we see candidates presenting their teams that they should be forward looking,” he said.
No greater authority on 'squandering the hopes for the future' than someone from the UN, admittedly.
Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister and mastermind of the early reconstruction efforts, also entered the race. He has been a sharp critic of Mr. KarzaiÂ’s leadership since leaving his government.
Two other longtime allies of the president also entered the race against him. One of them, Abdul Salam Rocketi, is a former mujahedeen commander who also fought with the Taliban and has been working on establishing contacts with the Taliban for Mr. Karzai. The other is a former minister, Hedayat Amin Arsala. The two men may be calculating to garner support and then withdraw in favor of the president closer to election time, as candidates have done in the past.
The two women joining the race are little known. They are Dr. Frozan Fana, a medical doctor and widow of Dr. Abdur Rahman, the civil aviation minister who was murdered in 2003, and Shahla Atta, an independent member of Parliament from Kabul. Other candidates include the former Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabit; the former minister of planning and anticorruption campaigner, Ramazan Bashardost; a Turkmen leader, Muhammad Akbarbai; and Syed Jalal Karim, a former Afghan boy genius and now a