AFGHANISTAN: Afghanistan's watershed election campaign assaults the senses. Kathy Sheridan in Kabul reports on what happens when a country of wars and warlords, steeped in ancient traditions, has a run at being a liberal democracy
Anyone close to choking on spin, soundbites, photo-ops and bottomless slush funds for slick election campaigns should take a trip to Afghanistan. But make it quick. They'll soon catch on.
This is an election all right, PJ, but not as we know it.
Take a country the size of France, with a population of about 27 million and up to 11 million registered voters, some living in areas accessible only by donkey. Add the fact that the vast majority are voting for the first time and are only vaguely acquainted with the democratic process.
Recall that only five of the 18 candidates have ever been heard of and the rest not only have no idea how to sell themselves but don't see the point of it in a few cases. Consider that up to 90 per cent of the voters are illiterate and that recognition depends entirely on the photographs on the ballot paper. And remember the man we met who lives only 35 kilometres from the capital, Kabul, yet has never seen a photograph of the current president/candidate, Hamid Karzai, never mind the other 17.
No one here thinks much in terms of political parties. Lamentably (not least for journalists trying to cover this campaign), few candidates are prepared to get out there among the punters for fear of taking a pot shot from a Taliban type.
What do you do? How do you fill the knowledge gap and kick-start the kind of excitement needed to encourage people to defy the militias (not to mention their menfolk) and get out to vote on Saturday?
Imagine you are the spin merchant. Your job is to project your candidate as the future of Afghanistan. But the first one turns out to be the guy who was once the minister for broadcasting and used the opportunity to ban all women singers from the television.
Dear, dear. Not much to work with there.
So how about the whisky-downing warlord implicated in thousands of civil war deaths? - No - The famous poet and excellent speaker accused of blasphemy and offending Sharia law by calling for a woman's right to divorce and who nearly got kicked out of the race for his trouble? - Mmmm. . . tricky.
Well, how about the sole woman candidate? In a country where all women still wear a veil or scarf of some kind, and only racy Westerners meet a man's eye and it's not done to shake a man's hand? Bit of a mountain to climb there, buddy.
Now imagine you are the spin merchant charged with promoting them all. Meet Mr Christian Marie, ex-political adviser in France, humanitarian worker for many years in Afghanistan, now contracted by the UN to help the 18 candidates to stand out from one another. The first thing you do of course is identify your USP (unique selling point).
"But it's the principle of the bazaar of Afghanistan," says Marie. "If I'm a butcher in France and want to set up a business, I do a survey of the town, find the part where there is no butcher and set up there. Here they all set up beside one another on the same street."
And so it was with the candidates. Fifteen of them arrived with exactly the same slogans - National Unity, Security and Reconstruction. Four turned up with birds for a logo (Afghans love birds) and another four with books (three of them the Koran).
And thus began the effort to present this crew of former Mujahideen fighters, academics, relatives of departed kings and queens (one is a brother of the dead queen, though unfortunately for him, the king has forbidden anyone to use the connection), and zealous promoters of Islam as representatives of the new, progressive Afghanistan. And beginning with such basic guidelines as using "together" instead of heavy, Soviet-era terms like National Unity.
Each candidate was given the guidance and facilities to make a three-minute video clip for use on election broadcasts, which are being aired at a rate of three a night all this week. Each is obliged to put forward the name of two potential vice-presidents and there is some unwitting hilarity.
In one case, a small candidate is suddenly joined at the end of his clip by his two would-be vice-presidents, one of whom is a stolid, grim giant, so enormous in height and girth that he fills the screen and dwarfs the others.
As well as the videos, each candidate was given a $5,000 grant for promotion and this, it was decided, would be used for posters. This is where the real challenge began.
Karzai was simple enough; he is pictured against a strong tree, with the obvious message. His video clip shows him posing against new roads, a new tunnel, being father of the nation.
General Dostum, the northern warlord accused of killing thousands in the civil war, fancied that he would look good set against the graves of martyrs who died fighting the Taliban. Not an image conducive to the "new" Afghanistan, Mr Marie suggested delicately. He came up with the suggestion that the horse-mad general (a keen player of buzkashi, where a decapitated calf is lifted in full gallop) pose astride his favourite horse, with the animal rearing on two legs and the general pointing to the future.
The general loved it. But he balked at asking the horse to make the effort to rear, as it was too close to buzkashi season. His video is the only one to show genuine rallies of adoring fans, enormous numbers kissing his image and chanting his name, young girls in jeans presenting flowers. He is the also the only one to have a female vice-president. "When I am president, men and women will join to build up the country", he says.
The female candidate, Massouda Jalal, presented her own challenge. Disinclined to smile (although she denies that this is cultural), they took her to a mosque and caught a shot of her face softened in prayer.
Her video is also pretty left-field by Afghan standards, showing her two young children running into her arms at the end.
The images devised for each are meant to represent a simple, easily-remembered manifesto. So for Jalal, for example, it is a loaf of bread and a wheat sheaf.
The slogans have also perked up from the original Soviet-style "National Unity, Security, Reconstruction" - at least for some. One simply says "Trust Me".
Another cogs from the French Republic: "Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood" and another sweetly promotes "Motherland, Freedom and Generosity". Several call on Allah and to vote for the Koran. Our former broadcasting minister who banned the singing women from the air has an unmistakeable message: "Vote for the Book".
And after all that, the posters go up and the innocence shows again. They were hammering them in with nails, to Marie's bemusement, who sees that - in French terms - as an invitation to rip them off the wall. (In France apparently, they glue them on the wall and occasionally add a little glass to the glue to surprise whoever tries to tear them down).
So they've learned to use glue here and remain relatively civilised about leaving rivals' posters in place.
Kabul is plastered with them.
Whether they will make a whit of difference in the end is debatable.