5 CANDIDATES VIE FOR AFGHAN PRESIDENCY

the government earlier this month, citing family divisions. KABUL, Afghanistan: The prospect of a peace deal with Taliban insurgents created an atmosphere of uncertainty in the months leading up to Saturday’s presidential election in Afghanistan. Even the 18 candidates for the country’s top job didn’t know whether an election would be held at all.

President Ashraf Ghani stood firm that polls would go ahead, but his campaign was barely visible.

It wasn’t until September 7 when US President Donald Trump stunned even his own peace envoy with a tweet saying a peace deal with Taliban insurgents which, only hours before, had seemed a certainty, was dead and the presidential election was back on.

But for many of the candidates it seemed too late, and while their names will appear on the ballot, most have dropped out.

The two top contenders for Afghanistan’s top job are long-time rivals Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who were forced by Washington to share power in a so-called Unity Government after the 2014 presidential polls were mired in widespread corruption and fraud, and a winner couldn’t be declared.

Here are the five leading contenders:

MOHAMMAD ASHRAF GHANI.

Born in central Logar Province on May 19, 1949, Ghani, who holds a doctorate in Anthropology

went to the US as a high school exchange student.

Except for a brief teaching stint at Kabul University in the early 1970s, Ghani lived in the US, where he was an academic until joining the World Bank as a senior adviser in 1991.

He returned to Afghanistan after 24 years when the Taliban were ousted by the US-led coalition.

Born in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sept. 5, 1960, Abdullah Abdullah joined the anti-communist resistance in Afghanistan shortly after graduating from Kabul University’s Medical School.

He joined the ranks of Afghanistan’s Jamiat-e Islami led by Ahmed Shah Masood, who was killed by suicide bombers on Sept. 9, 2001, just two days before the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Masood’s Jamiat-e-Islami was one of several US-backed mujahedeen groups who fought the former Soviet Union’s Red Army, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

ABDULLAH ABDULLAH. GULBUDIN HEKMATYAR.

Born in northern Kunduz Province on Aug. 1, 1949, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was a US- declared terrorist until he signed a peace agreement with President Ashraf Ghani in late 2016.

Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah (center), Afghanistan’s current chief executive officer, greets his supporters during an election campaign rally in Herat, Afghanistan. Abdullah is one of the frontrunners in the election today.

His history is a violent one. Hekmatyar was leader of one of the US- backed mujahedeen groups that fought the former Soviet Red Army in the 1980s and one of the largest recipients of US money.

When the mujahedeen government took control in 1992 from the pro- communist government, Hekmatyar was named prime minister but he instead went to war with rival mujahedeen groups, turning the capital into a battlefield.

Born on June 30, 1968 in Maidan Wardak Province, Nabil, an engineer, was the deputy director of internal affairs on the National Security Council following the collapse of the Taliban.

He later created and headed the Department of Protection for the President of Afghanistan.

He also served as deputy head of the National Security Council and in 2010 was appointed to head Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.

RAHMATULLAH NABIL. AHMAD WALI MASOOD

Born in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Nov. 1, 1964, Masood is the youngest brother of Ahmad Shah Masood, the Northern Alliance leader killed in a suicide bombing in September, 2001.

After university study, Masood took up politics under his older brother’s guidance. During the 1992 to 1996 rule of the mujahedeen government, Masood was appointed a diplomat at the Afghan Embassy in London, where he served as ambassador for the Taliban government, which was not recognized internationally.

His vice-presidential candidates are Faridah Mohammadi, a former minister of higher education, and Abdul Latif Nazari. Masood’s slogan is “Change.”