Despite the enormous effort and expenditure made toward a fair and corruption-free polling on Nov. 7, most observers consider the outcome a foregone conclusion: President Hamid Karzai will prevail, and by a sizable margin.
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, is expected to prevail for ethnic reasons alone over challenger Abdullah Abdullah in a Nov. 7 run-off election.
Instead, it's his ethnic heritage that is almost certain to assure Karzai a win in less than two weeks' time.
By birth, Karzai is Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, which makes up an estimated 42 percent of the country's 28 million people. For millennia, the Pashtuns have been the dominant ethnic group in the rugged mountainous terrain of southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Pashtun leaders exerted almost exclusive control over the country during centuries of monarchial rule until 1973, when a coup ended the 40-year reign of the last Pashtun king, Zahir Shah.
Today, led by Karzai, Pashtuns continue to dominate Afghanistan's government. The bulk of the Taliban insurgents are also Pashtun.
Karzai's opponent in the run-offs, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, says he has Pashtun blood from his father's side, but his opponents have expressed open doubt about that claim. On his mother's side, Abdullah is Tajik, Afghanistan's second-biggest ethnic group with about 27 percent of the population.
Abdullah was a close associate of the famed Tajik militant commander Ahmad Shah Masood, who led the Northern Alliance into battle against the Taliban after the departure of Soviet troops until his assassination in Sept. 2001.
Masood is revered by the country's Tajiks as a liberator on par with George Washington. His image is plastered throughout the Afghan capital in posters and memorials.
But attitudes in Tajik-dominated Kabul and northern Afghanistan are far different from those in Afghanistan's Pashtun south and east, where Masood -- and by association Abdullah -- have drawn a much cooler reaction. The Northern Alliance's allegiance with the U.S. military since Masood's death has stoked the flames of Pashtun disdain for Tajiks.
"Ethnicity has always been an important factor throughout the history of Afghanistan," said Waliullah Rahmani, executive director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, noting the bitter Pashtun-Tajik rivalry that has carried over into the country's political sphere. "And ethnicity will certainly play an important role in this election when there is a distinct line drawn between Pashtuns and Tajiks."
Ever the savvy politician, Karzai has tried to bridge that divide during his time in office, reaching out to Tajiks, Uzbeks, Harazas and other ethnic groups that make up the multi-colored tapestry that is Afghanistan and his administration.
Karzai has successfully cultivated alliances with prominent leaders from different ethnic groups. Parliamentarian Mohammad Mohaqeq, from the Hazara ethnic minority, and the notorious Afghan warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, campaigned for Karzai ahead of the Aug. 20 election. The president's supporters note that Karzai even received votes in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, the ancestral home of Masood and the Northern Alliance.
Still, even Karzai's most ardent supporters acknowledge the distinct ethnic advantage he enjoys heading into the Nov. 7 election.
"I am worried that many people are going to vote strictly along ethnic lines," said Hekmat Karzai, director of the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul and a relative of the Afghan president.
"The last thing this country needs is to be even more ethnically divided."
