Two months before Afghanistan holds its first election for president, preparations have an air of democratic bustle.
Nearly 9 million eligible Afghans have registered to vote so far, several million more than expected, despite efforts by the Taliban to disrupt the process. NATO has agreed to provide extra forces to help the 18,000 US troops who are maintaining security.
The incumbent, President Hamid Karzai, and 22 opponents have registered for the race and are starting to hold rounds of news conferences and rallies.
Despite the trappings of a democratic election, the real decision about who will be elected president in October, and elected to Parliament next spring, will probably be made at meetings taking place right now in guest houses around town, where heavily armed guards idle outside near SUVs with tinted glass.
Inside, men who command thousands in their own private armies, some of them veterans from the wars against the Soviet Union and the Taliban, are deep in discussion.
Will they back Karzai, who has vowed, with US and international backing, to disarm them and build a unified national defense corps? Or will they form new alliances in opposition?
Whichever way they choose, their soldiers, or mujahedeen, and their local communities are likely to follow their instructions at the polls.
That means that Karzai may not be the shoo-in he was thought to be, unless he works out a deal with the regional commanders and governors who have become his single biggest challenge as he tries to maintain power and build democratic institutions. Their anger at him is rising.
"Karzai was the strongest candidate," said Massouda Jalal, the only woman running for president, who came in second to Karzai in the vote for leader of the transitional administration in 2002 at the loya jirga, or national assembly. "Now he is one of the strong candidates."
Jalal and others say that Karzai, whom opinion polls show to be overwhelmingly popular, may fail to win a majority of the votes and thus be forced into a runoff election. To gain the mandate to establish a strong central government, Karzai wants not only to win, but to win big.
Karzai went so far as to drop the most powerful leader of mujahedeen from his ticket, an action that has won him praise in some quarters but anger in others.
That was the powerful defense minister and vice president, Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, who has since led the defection from Karzai.
"Karzai from now on will not have the support of the big group in the Cabinet and the government that he has had in the past," said Fahim, an ethnic Tajik who is expected to take with him the support of most of the mujahedeen in the north.
Abdul Shakur Waqef Hakimi, a spokesman for Jamiat-e-Islami, one of the largest mujahedeen parties, said, "From the beginning the mujahedeen genuinely supported the government, but then Karzai made mistakes and he lost the support of the mujahedeen."
The mujahedeen are now rallying around Muhammad Yunus Qanooni.
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