Afghan election weaves rich tapestry

By Lyse Doucet BBC News, Afghanistan

Afghanistan holds its first parliamentary elections in three decades this weekend. It is a momentous time for a country still trying to emerge from a quarter of a century of war. There has been much criticism that this poll will only consolidate the existing power structure. But the very existence of an election process has brought new energy to a long-stagnant political life.

We used to say in Afghanistan that carpets told this people's story - the tightly knotted threads in deepest reds, and darkest browns, the distinctive patterns linked to certain places and times.

When the Soviet invasion of 1979 provoked a brutal war, Afghans who fled to refugee camps wove images of tanks and warplanes into their rugs.

Everywhere you look there are the faces of election candidates... Hardly anyone is smiling. Tradition says photography is a serious business

But now Afghanistan is a place where you don't look down to read the carpets' tale. You look around, sometimes in wonder.

When the Taleban were toppled in 2001, first it was the massive hoardings for mobile telephones... the images of Afghans, laughing and chatting.

Afghans, the ads declared, were now connected to each other and to the world.

Now there is a veritable forest of signs at every square and roundabout in Kabul and other cities - billboards selling luxury watches, promoting national unity, the new Afghan army.

But, for the past month billboards, walls and fences across this land have been telling another story.

Everywhere you look there are the faces of election candidates... middle-aged men in suits and ties, men with turbans and long thick beards as dark as the night or as white as the first Afghan snow.

Hardly anyone is smiling. Tradition says photography is a serious business. (Even wedding photographs here barely coax a smile.)

Around a quarter of parliamentary seats are reserved for women

And in a country where only four years ago, women were largely confined to their homes under an oppressive Taleban rule, there are their faces too - candidates like young Sabrina with a fetching canary yellow headscarf.

Shukria with finely pencilled eyebrows, gazing into the distance, cradling a pen in her hand.

Bright new canvas

The faces are plastered on every available bit of space, sometimes on top of each other. (It has led to Afghan cartoonists sketching someone's face on top of someone else's legs.)

At first glance, these walls are just an unsightly mess of photographs. But, like the carpets of old, if you know this nation's history, you can read meaning into what seem like random patterns.

These layers of paper form a bright new canvas of a nation's dark history.

General Ulumi, who once worked with the Soviet Red Army, is running for parliament.

So is Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf, whose forces battled against Russian occupation and then carried out abuses documented by human rights groups.

There is also Mullah Khaqsar who used to execute the writ of the Taleban.

But there is also Malalai Joya, the young woman who, a few years ago, bravely condemned the warlords in public.

The elections are having an impact in the villages as well as the cities

And as I drove out of Kabul one day, I even spotted the face of Ali Dayani, an interior designer I met while he was decorating a new residence for the former Afghan king.

In this election, candidates must run as individuals, not as members of parties.

But Afghans know who everyone is. They know their past. They know their father, their grandfather, or at least, they do in most cases.

But what if they don't? In the last month of campaigning, in towns and villages across this country, Afghans, from village elders with wizened faces, to wide-eyed teenagers too young to vote have sat cross-legged in the shade of mulberry trees, or in air-conditioned rooms run on electricity powered by generators.

They have pondered and argued and debated the questions of this time. Does someone who has a father we do not know have the right to represent us?

The assassination clause allows losing candidates to take the place of the winners if they happen to be killed

Who is a good commander and who is a bad one? Can we accept Afghan communists who brought Russian troops here?

But it has not all been so well mannered. Several candidates have been dragged from their cars and their homes and shot dead by Taleban still determined to fight.

Voters have been intimidated by powerful warlords who still play by old rules.

The critics say these commanders should not even have been allowed to take part in this new poll.

New chapter

But judged by the ugly brutality of the past, in a country where people have been all too ready to turn their guns on each other, there has been a remarkable measure of decency.

When one of the new Afghan television stations boldly criticised the powerful Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf, he decided to retaliate, but only by setting up his own TV channel. Although his critics still strengthened security around their compound, just in case.

And Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about what has come to be known here as the assassination clause - it allows losing candidates to take the place of the winners if they happen to be killed.

One-dimensional photographs, after all, only tell part of this new story.

As one Afghan friend put it, in real life, many candidates with a past are two-faced.

If elected to parliament, it is still not clear which face they will show.

But whatever happens, the opening of parliament will be the start of a new chapter.

And no-one here can say with certainty how that Afghan story will unfold.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 17 September, 2005 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.