MAZAR-I-SHARIF: At first glance the election commission's map of Afghanistan appears to be a colour-coded layout of the country's patchwork ethnic groups. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a display of voting results.

A belt of beige colours the southeast for Pashtun Hamid Karzai, the north is green for Tajik Yunus Qanooni and blue for Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostam, and the centre is splashed with purple for Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqeq.

Voting in the rugged Central Asian land's first presidential ballot has dramatically mirrored ethnic and regional fault lines, but analysts said intimidation could also have played a part.

While Karzai, the incumbent leader who has won 55.4 per cent of near-complete preliminary results, dismisses such divisions, voters in this northern region need some convincing.

"In this election people voted for their own ethnic groups. Pashtuns voted for Karzai, Uzbeks for Dostam, Tajiks for Qanooni. So if Karzai is elected he will be the president of Pashtuns, not the president of Afghanistan," shopkeeper Atiqullah, 26, said.

West of Mazar-i-Sharif, three Uzbek-dominated provinces are blue for Dostam, the swaggering warlord who turned up at campaign rallies on horseback. East are a belt of three Tajik-dominated provinces coloured green for Qanooni.

"As Karzai is now elected he will bring more Taliban. He is not acceptable for us, he is not our president," Hazara labourer Mir Ali said, reflecting his people's bitter memories of abuses by the ultra-orthodox Islamists.

Pashtuns, from whom the Taliban were drawn, make up about 40 per cent of Afghanistan's 28 million people. Tajiks account for 25 per cent, followed by Hazaras with 20 per cent and Uzbeks around six per cent.

One of Karzai's biggest challenges is to unite the fractious groupings. Aides say he is cut out for the job.

"He considers himself Afghan before Pashtun," press adviser Khaleeq Ahmad said.

"He can sit with people from the north part of Afghanistan and talk to them as if he's one of their own. But he can also sit with people from another part of Afghanistan and talk with them as if he's one of their own."

In a 2002 interview, Karzai dismissed what he regards as an obsession with ethnic rivalries.

"I'm an Afghan. I consider myself an Afghan, that's it," he said.

Analyst Vikram Parekh, from the International Crisis Group, said economic security was wrapped in with ethnic identity.

"If you look at the results province by province, there is a very close resemblance with the ethnography of Afghanistan," he said.

"They vote for continuity in rural areas. Access to land depends on whether your ethnic group is in power or not. There is this idea that security is guaranteed."

One Kabul-based observer said the results were deceptive and denounced the "propensity to simplify" Afghanistan.

"It's a mixture of ethnicity and geography," he said.

North of Kabul in the celebrated Panjshir valley, the fiefdom of revered former anti-Taliban hero Ahmad Shah Massood, voters chose Qanooni en masse. They gave him 95 per cent of the vote and less than one per cent to Karzai.

But among the Tajiks of Badakshan in the far northeast, Qanooni got less than half the vote and almost a third went to Karzai.

"It's a combination of factors: constituencies, lack of knowledge of other candidates, deals with different tribal elders, the voter's environment," said Tom Muller from the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit.-AFP