Afghanistan's Presidential Contenders

A leader of the Hazara ethnic minority, Mohaqeq, 49, is a warlord who fought against the Soviets in the 1980s and now commands wide support in northern and central Afghanistan. He was made vice president and minister of planning in Karzai's first interim government but was sacked as vice president in 2002 and as minister in March this year.

Tipped as the top candidate of powerful anti-Taliban Northern Alliance commanders, Karzai's former education minister is now seen as his chief challenger in the presidential race. The 47-year-old Tajik commands substantial support in the Panjshir valley, a stronghold of resistance against the Taliban north of Kabul.

The only woman running for president, the 41-year-old Tajik doctor and mother of three rose to prominence at the constitutional loya jirga in 2002, when she came second to President Hamid Karzai in the vote to elect a transitional leader. She was asked by her patients to stand for office.

Gilani, 49, is an ethnic Pashtun and Sufi Muslim intellectual from a respected Afghan family which claims descent from the Prophet Mohammad. He joined the anti-Soviet resistance movement in the 1980s. He is believed to have strong support among the Pashtun majority. A keen hunter and famed gun collector, he is married with two daughters.

A medical lecturer and pediatric surgeon, the 50-year-old ethnic Tajik trained medical students at the Indira Gandhi hospital in India and returned to lecture in Kabul University in 1983. He speaks Pashtun, English and Arabic.

A new face in Afghan politics, 42-year-old Tajik is a father of four and speaks all of Afghanistan's official languages, Pashtu, Dari and Uzbek. He was imprisoned by the communists and is a member of the anti-Soviet mujahedin Jamiat party.

The French-speaking 41-year-old poet is an ethnic Tajik committed to ending the Pashtuns' dominance of Afghanistan. He studied literature and philosophy and in the early 1990s he founded a publication which denounced corruption and Islamic fundamentalists. He fled the Taliban regime in 1997 and took refuge in France, returning only this year to run for president with the express purpose of putting Karzai out of office.

The oldest candidate at 72, Khalilzai worked as a teacher and headmaster becoming a lawyer and prosecutor. An ethnic Pashtun, he was born in eastern Kunar province and studied law and religious jurispudence at Kabul University.

An ethnic Pashtun, Mangal was born 1954 in Khost in eastern Afghanistan and studied zoology at Kabul University before getting his masters degree in the Soviet Union. He has edited Jihad magazine, published several books and speaks Pashtun, English, Russian and Urdu.

Asifi represents the National Unity Party of monarchists with ties to former King Mohammed Zahir Shah. He served as a minister in Zahir Shah's government before going into exile for over 20 years and working as an advisor to foreign firms on Afghanistan. Asifi, 64, studied law and political science at Dijon university in France and is fluent Dari, Pashtun, English and French. He is married with three children.

A 41-year-old journalist and ethnic Tajik from the Panshir valley, Mansoor claims to represent the legacy of assassinated mujahedin commander Ahmad Shah Masood. A graduate of Kabul university's journalism faculty, Mansoor runs the weekly paper Payam-e-Mujahid (Mujahedin Message). He served as acting minister of information and culture and the head of State TV and Radio immediately after the fall of the Taliban.

A Uzbek warlord who fought for the Russians before changing sides and joining the mujahedin during the 1980s and 1990s, Dostam, 50, changed sides frequently. He now commands a private militia near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. He has married twice and has eight children.

The favourite to win, Afghanistan's US-backed president cuts a dapper figure on the international stage, with his well-spoken English and tailored Afghan clothes. An ethnic Pashtun, the 46-year-old from southern Afghanistan must win enough support from northern military commanders in order to win.

A professor of Islamic literature, 67-year-old Tajik Sirat ran against Karzai to form an interim government in Bonn after the collapse of the Taliban in 2001 and won 11 votes to Karzai's three, but later swung his support behind Karzai.

An ethnic Pashtun, the 65-year-old lecturer at Kabul Univerisity studied science before doing a masters in management in Switzerland and a doctorate in geochemistry at Moscow University. He was Karzai's minister of mines and industry to run for office before resigning to contest the polls. He has written several books on politics and economics.

Ethnic Tajik Aryan resigned as a police colonel to run for president after a decades-long career as a policeman. The 43-year-old father of five vows to give equal rights to women and not to campaign along ethnic lines.

A 49-year-old father of two hails from a Pashtun family of landowners who fled to Pakistan when the communists took power. Rashid studied in Germany and later worked with a Afghan-German refugee body in Pakistan. He speaks English, French, German, Pashtun, Dari and Urdu.

Ahmadzai, 61, an ethnic Pashtun, was a radical anti-communist leader who once headed the rebel government-in-exile over the border in Pakistan's Peshawar during the 1980's Soviet occupation. He fled Afghanistan when the Taliban came to power and took refuge in Turkey and Britain, returning only after the Taliban's defeat in late 2001.