Afghanistan's voters are going to the polls August 20 to directly elect a president for only the second time in their history.

Security is a prime concern for the voting in the conflict-racked country. Taliban militants, whose regime was toppled in 2001 by a US-led invasion, have vowed to disrupt the election, calling last month on Afghans to pick up weapons against the foreign forces in their country instead of voting.

The more than 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan as well as 200,000 Afghan security personnel are to provide security at 29,000 polling stations as 41 candidates, including two women and incumbent Hamid Karzai, compete to lead the impoverished Central Asian country.

Karzai, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani are considered the frontrunners, but Karzai was widely viewed as the likely winner even though he has lost support at home and abroad because of his government's weakness to establish security and tackle widespread corruption and drug production.

A runoff in the first week of October was expected because it was seen as unlikely, given the large pool of candidates, that any one of them would achieve the majority needed to win in the first round.

The eventual winner will not only have the Taliban to deal with but also another intractable problem: the economy. Despite billions of dollars in international aid, Afghanistan still remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and although there are no official statistics, some figures show that more than 50 per cent of young Afghans are unemployed.

Despite these economic difficulties and the continuing insecurity, the completion of the election was likely to be heralded as a mark of success for the international forces as well as donor countries that have contributed to Afghanistan's reconstruction as 17 million registered voters have been called upon to vote in a country where the infrastructure is so poor that 3,171 donkeys are to be used to transport voting materials to areas that cannot be accessed by car.

The dpa International Service in English is offering a package on the candidates, the security threats and what's at stake in the elections, which is moving immediately. It includes the following items: <# Zherai, - Security fears abound in Afghanistan as election Afghanistan nears. (dpa)