KABUL, Oct 3 (AFP) - Three years after the September 11 attacks on the United States changed the course of Afghanistan's history, the shattered nation this week begins a nervous countdown to unprecedented elections.
With 27,000 foreign troops in the country, warlords running personal fiefs and Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden lurking in the shadows, a mostly illiterate electorate is preparing to cast a vote with global resonance.
At stake is not only the presidency of this turbulent land, but the status of the US-led war on terrorism, which has sharply divided the world over the past three years.
The war-weary men and women who leave their farms and villages for the 5,000 voting stations scattered through Afghanistan's wild landscape on October 9 will be playing a part in the bitter battle for the US presidency.
A smooth election with an undisputed outcome -- neither of which is guaranteed -- will enable President George W. Bush to claim a victory for his much-maligned foreign policy and predict a similar outcome for Iraq.
"It is likely the Americans will play it as a success and say it could be an example for Iraq, but there is a significant difference between the two," said Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University.
US-led forces are struggling against a growing and bloody insurgency in Iraq's cities, while in mostly-rural Afghanistan attacks have been sporadic and on a smaller scale despite pledges by militants to disrupt the vote.
Some 18,500 US-led troops remain in the country after failing to capture or kill bin Laden, whose presence in Afghanistan was the reason for the invasion after the September 11 attacks on the US.
They are supported by around 9,000 NATO troops responsible for security in the capital Kabul and in the northern provinces.
The US-backed candidate, urbane incumbent President Hamid Karzai, 46, who was elected by a council of tribal leaders in June 2002 after the former Taliban regime was ousted in the invasion, is widely tipped to win.
Seventeen other candidates are standing for election, but former education minister and prominent anti-Taliban fighter Yunus Qanooni, 47, is seen as Karzai's only serious challenger.
Among the others are two former communists from the days of Soviet control in the 1980s; a couple of warlords; five with links to anti-Soviet Islamic fighters; one woman, and a French-speaking poet.
Little attention has been paid to the sort of issues that dominate most elections, with polls by rights groups showing that the overwhelming majority of Afghans simply want peace after 25 years of conflict.
But ethnicity, in the absence of any significant political parties, is expected to play a large part in the way the more than 10 million registered voters cast their ballots.
Karzai is a member of the majority Pashtun tribe, while Qanooni is from the next largest group, the Tajiks.
Alongside ethnicity, powerful warlords, the de facto rulers of large areas of the country, are seen as threatening a free and fair election.
Among the presidential candidates are Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostam and Mohammed Mohaqeq, an ethnic Hazara, both of whom command powerful regional militias.
The Washington-based Human Rights Watch said last week that gun-wielding militia commanders seeking to intimidate voters pose a far greater threat to the election than Taliban-led militants.