Early results on Friday night showed interim leader Hamid Karzai far ahead of his chief rivals in Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election after a quarter-century of war. With vote counting on hold for a day as Muslims began the holy month of Ramadan, Karzai, who has led this predominantly Muslim country since the ouster of the Taliban regime by US-led forces in late 2001, is widely expected to win the vote and become Afghanistan's first popularly chosen president. The UN-backed election, which cost about USD 200 M, has generated huge interest among Afghans, who are aching for peace after conflicts spanning the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, a murderous civil war in the early 1990s, and then the Taliban's tyrannical rule.

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