By Jenny Cuffe BBC correspondent in Afghanistan

Residents of Kabul can now enjoy golf, among other new pleasures

For the more affluent residents of Kabul, there are many new pleasures to enjoy.

Restaurants selling Thai and Iranian food, a golf course on the edge of the city, shops selling flouncy wedding dresses and strapless gowns.

If you cannot afford to go out, and the electricity supply is working, there is the first local television channel to watch.

Last Friday, the entertainment on offer was a game of Chinese whispers.

I had been invited to dinner with our translator Qudrat's family and we were all sitting on tapestry cushions eating chicken, okra and rice.

His sister had been telling us about her recent trip to the UK with a delegation of pharmacists, and we had been having a laugh trying on her old burka.

But the effort of making conversation without the proper vocabulary meant we ended up turning to the small television screen above our heads.

Musical chairs is what the leaders of Afghanistan are playing right now

The show was called What's the Answer? - perhaps not the most imaginative of titles.

And in the middle of an orange and green set, the hosts - a young woman in a head scarf and a man with a dashing moustache - sat stiffly at a table staring out over bunches of flowers.

Whether Chinese or Dari, the convoluted messages hissed by one team member to the next would never have made any sense to me but my companions giggled along with the studio audience.

The next item was a game of musical chairs.

Five young men battled it out until there were only two left, circling the last plastic seat. One grabbed the back of it and would not let go.

As the music stopped, his taller rival - brown suit flapping - landed in his lap, then slid to the floor.

Mounting alarm

Musical chairs is what the leaders of Afghanistan are playing right now as they prepare for the first national election.

But there are forces at work here that do not want anybody to grab the central seat of power.

Afghanistan has long struggled with the illegal narcotics trade

A recent spate of attacks on international and Afghan workers trying to reconstruct the country, and a wave of violent crimes, are causing mounting alarm. Police and intelligence staff see them as deliberate efforts to subvert the democratic process.

From Kabul, we travelled to Kandahar - seat of kings and home of President Hamid Karzai.

It is also the region where the Taleban presence remains strong.

You could feel it in the stares of the men and the absence of women as you drove in the midday heat down the wide main street.

People here, I was told, are still traumatised by years of war and oppression.

They are easily intimidated by the fanatics who send letters at night warning them not to register to vote, or the drug barons who will buy their support with a handout - or insist on it at the point of a gun.

Warlord confrontation

The man who is said to rule Kandahar is a former mujahideen commander, Gul Agar, a man with huge appetites and a finger in every pie.

The wealth he has accumulated is said to come from the drugs trade (this is an area where the poppy grows like weeds) and if he is feeling generous or needs to win support, he drives around the town handing out bundles of Afghan notes.

His armed men have other methods of persuasion and the confidence of knowing they act with impunity.

I wanted to meet this man whose picture hangs above the desk of so many Kandahar officials

Gul Agar has the support of the Americans who need him in their fight against al-Qaeda.

His younger brother provides the guards who secure their army base in Kandahar.

He also has a seat in the transitional government of Afghanistan.

I wanted to meet this man whose picture hangs above the desk of so many Kandahar officials, even now when he is no longer governor of the province.

And I found him at the governor's compound, holding court to tribal leaders.

As I entered the room, 25 turbaned heads turned towards me, eyes glittered from weather-beaten faces.

Gul Agar, heavy-jowelled with a dark black beard, was sitting in an armchair at the far end of the room, toying with his worry beads.

I picked my way gingerly across the floor, through the crowd of elders, and perched on a high chair beside him.

Well, what do you say to a warlord?

Precious prize

Flattery is a good beginning, so I asked if it was true he was the most powerful man in Kandahar and he said that power comes from the people and the people love him.

To a question about drug dealing, without a flicker of discomfort or irritation, he said he was a good Muslim and abhorred the use of opium.

Most Afghans are fed up with being ruled by men like Gul Agar - and he is by no means the worst on a scale of wicked warlordism.

They do not want a return of the Taleban either - who would choose a leadership that outlaws laughter?

Over the coming months they will find out who the contestants are in the presidential election - and whether there is a genuine chance for change or just a re-arranging of the furniture.

The prize for the television game of musical chairs was unexpected - a supermarket cardboard box full of shampoo.

The winner of the first democratic election will have the future of a country in his hands.