by Rachel Morarjee
KABUL, Aug 10 (AFP) - Afghanistan's US-backed President Hamid Karzai will face 17 challengers including former ally and education minister Yunus Qanooni in historic presidential elections, the electoral commission announced Tuesday.
The main contest is expected to be between Karzai and Qanooni, who is part of the powerful ethnic Tajik bloc of former anti-Taliban commanders from the Northern Alliance.
The final list of 18 candidates for the October 9 polls, announced by the Joint Electoral Management Body in Kabul, also includes two powerful northern warlords despite a law banning military commanders from running for office.
A deluge of objections from the public was not enough for the joint UN-Afghan commission to disqualify three candidates who were known to be running private armies.
"We took note of the numerous objections regarding three candidates viewed as having unofficial military units and we asked those candidates to... endorse the immediate replacement of the commanders of units cited in the objections," the commission said in a statement.
Those candidates, who are thought to include Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam, ethnic Hazara commander Mohammed Mohaqeq, and Karzai's vice-president Karim Khalili, agreed to have officers from Afghanistan's fledgling national army.
The list of candidates unveiled Tuesday, "gives credit to those criminals who have the blood of the people on their hands," said Mohammed Ibrahim Rashid, one of the presidential candidates.
From the original list of 23, three candidates were rejected and two withdrew their names.
The joint UN-Afghan commission decided "that three of them were to be rejected for failure to comply with the nomination procedures," it said in a press statement.
Candidates had to prove they had the support of at least 10,000 voters by showing their registration cards.
Some candidates failed to gather the requisite number of supporters' cards, while others have dual citizenship, which also disqualifies them from running, officials close to the process told AFP.
Backed by the international community and hailing from Afghanistan's largest ethnic Pashtun group, Karzai is seen as capable of heading a multi-ethnic government and is still the favourite to win the presidential race.
But in recent weeks Karzai, elected as transitional leader by a traditional council of tribal leaders in 2002, has lost the backing of some of his former allies.
Qanooni, who has the support of powerful Defence Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, is expected to pose a serious challenge to Karzai.
The trio of Qanooni, Fahim and Abdullah -- ethnic Tajiks from northern Afghanistan's Panjshir valley -- were senior members of the Northern Alliance that joined with US-led troops to topple the fundamentalist Taliban regime in 2001.
Tajiks are Afghanistan's second largest ethnic group, at between 12 and 25 percent of the population.
However the inclusion of other commanders such as Dostam, an ethnic Uzbek who was also part of the Northern Alliance, has the potential to divide any anti-Karzai movement.
Dostam commands the support of both the Uzbek and Turkmen minorities and is based near Afghanistan's largest northern city Mazar-i-Sharif.
Also standing is ethnic Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqeq. The Hazaras -- Afghanistan's largest Shia Muslim minority, represent around eight percent of the population.
Some of the northern Afghan candidates command large militias, giving rise to fears that rivalry between Karzai and the northern bloc could spawn violence.
"Many times people have expressed that security is their most important concern. They can't trust pledges of non-violence from candidates because (violence) has been a way of life," said Telibert Laoc, of the US-based National Democratic Institute in Kabul.
Parliamentary elections have been pushed back to April 2005 due to insecurity, largely the result of a rising insurgency by Taliban loyalists.