Karzai’s risky road: from jihad to presidency

KABUL—Hamid Karzai has steered Afghanistan from the ruins of war to its first elected presidency, using skills honed from plotting to end Soviet occupation and negotiating the minefield of volatile Afghan politics.

The cosmopolitan Pashtun tribal chief’s aides and even his chief rival said Sunday that p reliminary results indicated he had won outright victory in the violence-stricken land’s first democratic poll.