AFGHANISTAN: Packed into a stadium in Kabul, Kathy Sheridan, saw two very different types of campaigning.
After weeks of a campaign dominated by nothing more exciting than posters plastered around town and the wrong kind of publicity, the Afghan presidential election campaign finally produced the right kind of excitement yesterday - even if it comes a tad late, about 24 hours before electioneering is brought to a mandatory halt.
With security building to extraordinary levels around Kabul - streets closed off, enormous concrete bollards and sandbags topped with barbed wire stacked 15 feet high around many buildings, new barriers suddenly materialising and manned by squads of increasingly sullen, itchy-looking security guards with very large guns - for Afghan citizens to assemble in any public place at such a nervous time requires a leap of faith. The fact that the Interior Ministry refuses to keep the public informed about the many security threats, on the basis that "it would spread fear among them", does not engender confidence.
Nonetheless, they turned out in their thousands at Kabul's sports stadium for rallies on behalf of the outgoing president, Hamid Karzai, favourite son of the US, and in the afternoon, for Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, serial side-switcher and more recently, alleged peace merchant.
Both generated about the same number of supporters - around 4,000 to 5,000 - with Karzai probably having the edge, but there any resemblance ended.
Karzai's intensive security operation meant that the media had to assemble at 7 a.m. for a 9.30 start. After close body searches and property inspection, journalists were escorted to the stadium's pitch, to a corral roped off between them and the mass of supporters. The American security company, DynCorp, was running the show, as it has been for Karzai for some time.
They secured the wide pedestrian walk between the pitch and the stand where Karzai was due to appear. In the lower stand, one section was reserved for women, about 300 of them, the rest of it occupied by trusted supporters and workers. Many of them had been trickling in since 7 a.m. Back on the pitch, an inordinate number of supporters closest to the media, appeared to be students at the city's university, all with the same hopes and upbeat views on Karzai.
They believed he would bring about disarmament, more industry and jobs, a better education system, good roads, independence. Expectations are exceedingly high. No-one here seemed to have a problem with the US presence. "We need them for now," said 20-year-old Abdul Manan at one end. "The US security policy is very good," said Tadj Malik, an international cricketer, conspicuous by his tracksuit, at the other. Karzai's team may well have cottoned on to orchestrated support, western-style.
It was close on 10.30, after a long chanting from the Koran by a blind mullah, when the man himself appeared and the DynCorp crew - at least a dozen of them - took up position, some of them resembling giant ex-Mujahideen, others typically American, all scowl and shade, and at least one woman, brisk but courteous.
When Karzai appeared in the stand, and began a rather pedestrian speech - thanking the US for its help, promising more industry and assuring the crowd that all the people would share his presidency - a supporter across beside us worked himself into a loud, frenzied chant of "Long live Karzai".
The crowd around him duly joined in, causing a stampede of massed cameramen delighted by the distraction. Moments later, the cricketer started up, triggering another rush. Contrived? No-one was saying. But without the chanting, it would have been a pretty dull rally. Later Karzai made to walk into the crowd, thought better of it and retreated. Under the grim direction of DynCorp, no-one moved until he was well away from the stadium.
Dostum's crew, by contrast, showed some rally know-how. Sure, they could attract only about eight women (to Karzai's 300) and his dozen or so guards looked like Afghan army rejects, albeit with large guns, and the women who frisked us looked rather too comfortably settled in their chairs, but who else would station a couple of horses in the crowd to add some spice?
Truk, his magnificent black stallion and star of his campaign posters, stood on the pitch, slightly nervous, saddled up cowboy style with a colourful rug, green (Muslim) ribbons and silver decorations on the bridle.
At the other end, musicians knocked some loud and lively music out of a traditional instrument called the sornie and a barrel shaped drum, while a dozen men joyfully gave themselves up to a dance entailing a great deal of whirling, clapping and shoulder action. Above them, posters of Dostum, posing at a construction site, Dostum, embracing small children, Dostum, on his horse (over and over), were stranded across the stand like bunting. Taking pride of place on the podium was a huge framed picture of Truk. Around the pitch, young boys sold eggs and water in the oppressive heat. Some came dressed in rich green traditional costumes. But this was palpably a different crowd to Karzai's.
"They are all Uzbeks," said our young female translator, shrinking into the embrace of The Irish Times, as a choir of magnificently costumed little girls launched into a shrill rendering of a song about the motherland.
While a male singer entertained us with a hugely popular song about how their great religious leader, Azrat Ali, would solve all the problems from the shrine in Mazar, and the podium party waved pretty bunches of flowers, she said she had heard that Dostum's men had once filled a container with people and set it alight from below. "These people are not literate," she exclaimed, nostrils flaring. That may be so, but you still must translate what they say, said The Irish Times. And what they said was that Dostum had hunted the Taliban from the north when no-one else could do so and that he would bring peace and greatness to the country.
Several chantings from the Koran later, Dostum finally appears. He is always referred to as General Dostum here, despite the fact that all candidates were obliged to produce a letter of intent to put away all military trappings.
The crowd roars, he makes a speech, Afghan-style, that seems interminable but includes a few sideswipes at Karzai - "I did not come from abroad, I know everyone" - and finally two hours after the whole show began, he is fitted with a fabulous, green costume and jaunty, ribboned head-dress, and heads for his horse in a mad rush of supporters and media. Meanwhile, the music and dancing resumes and minutes later, he is away, in a fleet of speeding, horn-honking SUVs.
As for the trembling translator, it didn't help that she (never mind the rest of us) was horribly groped in the scrum on the way out and was goaded into smacking one assailant very hard on the head. The worry is that her brother - the male from whom she takes directions, like most Afghan women - may not release her for work tomorrow when he hears of her adventures.