Afghanistan's election: Losing sight of the issues

Is there, inside the ballot-selling, patronage-peddling and tribal manoeuvring that has so dismally characterised the Afghan election campaign until the very eve of the vote, a real election struggling to get out? The answer is a qualified yes. One candidate, Ashraf Ghani, has run a genuine, issue-based campaign, lifting the level of debate even as his own chances of success have shrunk.

Mr Ghani is also a leading candidate, at least in the intellectual sense. But he is a student of underdeveloped and conflict-ridden societies, and knows that ethnic pacts of this kind, between the "big men" of each tribe, reinforce warlordism and virtually guarantee corruption and jobbery. - Afghanistan's election: Losing sight of the issues Comment is ... The Guardian,