Kabul  - It was a novelty for Afghanistan when the two main challengers to President Hamid Karzai in the August 20 election recently faced off in a television debate.

Abdullah Abdullah, the candidate of the Northern Alliance, which with the support of the US-led coalition overthrew the Islamist Taliban regime at the end of 2001, lined up against, Ashraf Ghani, a scientist and former chancellor of Kabul University.

The central podium remained empty in the first debate because Karzai chose not to face his challengers.

Abdullah and Ghani know the president well after serving in his cabinet after the overthrow of the Taliban.

Abdullah, an ophthalmologist, was foreign minister until 2006. Ghani, who worked for the World Bank for 11 years, was finance minister in the transitional government until 2004.

Abdullah is thought to have a better chance in next week's election and is seen as likely to come second behind the favourite, Karzai, and ahead of Ghani. The other 38 candidates, including two women, are considered outsiders with little chance of success.

In his election campaign, Abdullah has relied on his connection to a dead man and his popularity among non-Pashtuns in particular.

He has repeatedly stressed his connection to the military leader of the Northern Alliance, the national hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, who al-Qaeda killed just before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. He was an adviser and close companion of Massoud, according to the candidate's homepage.

Abdullah was involved in the resistance against the Soviet occupiers of his homeland in the 1980s. During this time, he got to know Massoud, who later with the mainly Tajik Northern Alliance offered bitter resistance to the Taliban, which originated among Pashtuns in the south.

Abdullah was born in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar - later a Taliban stronghold - and wants to win votes among the country's largest ethnic group with the story of his Pashtun father so he can compete with Karzai, whose popularity is built on Pashtun votes.

Ghani is also a Pashtun and was born in 1949 in Logar province south of Kabul. In contrast to Abdullah and Karzai, he cannot point to any record in the resistance.

He was studying anthropology in New York when the Red Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and stayed in exile until the Taliban was overthrown. Ghani got his doctorate, taught at US universities and worked for the World Bank.

After the Taliban was overthrown, he returned home, initially working for the United Nations before joining the provisional government. After the 2004 presidential election, he did not return to the cabinet and instead became head of Kabul University.

Given his background, it is not surprising that Ghani is seen as an intellectual rather than a full-blooded politician.

"When he outlined his 10-year action plan for the country - economic development, women's rights, alleviating poverty - it was not so much a campaign pitch as a polished seminar presentation, perhaps unsurprising for a former professor," the Los Angeles Times said.

Ghani has attempted to counter this image and present himself as a man of the people. "I feel very comfortable in rural Afghanistan," he said.

Ghani, who was seen as a possible UN secretary general in 2006, is as urbane as Abdullah. Both speak fluent English. However, Ghani, who as finance minister made an international name for himself as a reformer, cannot rely on a broad support base unlike his two rivals. He attempts to compensate with the most detailed manifesto of the three leading candidates.

Ghani's programme is specific. He wants to quadruple rural incomes and promises a million new jobs. He also wants to close the controversial prison at the US military base in Bagram north of Kabul within three years.

Karzai and Abdullah both have generally vague programmes although Abdullah does favour a change from a presidential system of government to a parliamentary one.

An immediate withdrawal of foreign troops - as the Taliban demands - is wanted neither by Ghani nor Abdullah. Both agreed on one further point: criticism of their former boss.

"Under President Karzai's administration, corruption thrives and the trend in accountability is downward," said Abdullah, adding that the "failure" of the government has caused the population to lose trust and the militants' power to rise.

"Bad governance has led to the current crisis rather than the strength of the Taliban activities," he said.

Ghani said of Karzai: "This is not the man I knew; the man I knew had an unbelievable respect for rules. This man I don't understand."

If Karzai remains in power, "we will become [a country like] Somalia," he added. (dpa)