Inside Karzai's Campaign

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To win decisively, Karzai needs support from his Pashtuns, many of whom are facing the threat of marauding Taliban and alQaeda fighters. It is a measure of the desperation of Karzai's supporters that a pro-Taliban tribal chieftain, Naim Kochi, was released two weeks ago from American custody in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, where he had been held for having truck with renegade anti-U.S. commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Kochi was sprung because he could deliver more than 55,000 votes from his Ahmedzai tribe, according to an influential tribesman involved in the negotiations. But after his two years in Gitmo, the gray-bearded elder may choose not to help Karzai. Revenge, after all, is an Afghan specialty.

On a crackling sat phone, Taliban spokesman Hakimi was heard ordering his men to turn off their motorcycle engines. He could have been speaking from a mountain road or a town in neighboring Pakistan, where many of the Taliban gather in the fundamentalist religious schools called madrasahs before crossing the border to try to kill U.S. soldiers. "Elections aren't part of Afghan culture. Anyway, it is fixed so the American puppet Karzai will win," he says. Afghan intelligence officials in the southern city of Kandahar say more than 2,000 Taliban fighters are roaming the desert outskirts of the city. Says Nick Downie, a representative of the Afghanistan Non-Governmental Organizations Security Office (ANSO), which provides security updates for aid workers: "The Taliban seem to be consolidating, moving their men into place for a big push at elections." In Kabul, coalition soldiers have found explosives hidden in trucks, taxis and even fruit carts. There are fears that more bombs may have gone undiscovered, primed for election targets.

National Security Adviser Rassoul says the Taliban and al-Qaeda may terrorize the election but they won't succeed in stopping it. More than 10 million voters are registered, he says, though some observers say those figures are inflated by multiple registrations. Says Rassoul: "The Taliban won't derail the process." In the meantime, Karzai is assured of one vote from his Kabul shopping trip: a bent old man who pleaded with him to help free his son, thrown in jail during the Taliban days and forgotten there. Karzai drove the old father back to the palace to personally arrange the son's release. So at least one Afghan is on the path to freedom. But for the rest of this country, the freedom to vote isn't likely to translate soon into freedom from the fear of warlords and terrorists.