On the one side are the insurgents, terrorists, men of violence, or whatever the current label is, who fear democracy and will do all they can to stop it. On the other is a people who have never had a chance to choose their leaders and want nothing more than to exercise it at last.

The contrast is comforting, but rarely conforms to reality in any but the remotest way. Elections can be manipulated and misused. They are only one part of a long process of enabling people to speak, organise and hold their rulers to account.

If they take place too early, they can be counterproductive and delay a society's transition to a culture of genuine debate and competition. That was the lesson of the Balkans in the 1990s, in particular in Bosnia, where the rush to vote (pressed mainly by the Clinton administration) entrenched hardline nationalists in power. Last week's local elections in Bosnia confirmed how hard it is to loosen the grip they acquired then.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the issue is whether elections that are meant to offer an alternative to violence are actually promoting it. That certainly seems to be the case in Afghanistan. With its requirement to have polling stations and registrars around the country, the election process becomes the softest of targets.

In recent weeks, attacks by a resurgent Taliban have increased. The United Nations has urged staff not involved in running the elections to go on leave. Aid agencies are imposing curfews and telling staff to restrict their movements or go abroad.

Some aid workers query the huge amount of money allocated for what they say is mainly a propaganda exercise, and say it would have been better spent on education and health. They point to the fact that high insecurity has deterred independent monitors, thereby raising the risk of fraud.

It is not just anti-government forces who are behind the violence. Local and regional warlords may not be rocketing polling stations or ambushing registrars, but they are making threats to opposition candidates and their supporters. Women voters are particular targets.

Several of the 18 presidential candidates are thought to have entered the race merely to strengthen their bargaining power in the closed-door meetings which have already got underway among Afghanistan's strongmen to discuss ministerial portfolios and the post-polling pace of reform. What was meant as an expression of democracy becomes a device to resist, rather than promote, change.

In Iraq, the black and white image of a government that wants elections, and insurgents who are ready to use violence to stop it, is even less accurate. The greatest risk of pre-election violence in today's Iraq comes from the United States, not from the various groups of insurgents.

In the name of recapturing Iraqi cities so that polling can take place, US forces have already started - and are planning to widen - a campaign of air strikes which will probably cause more civilian casualties than last year's invasion.

Iraq's health ministry recently compiled a chilling set of statistics, which were obtained and exclusively published by the American news organisation, Knight-Ridder. The ministry took reports from hospitals in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. It did not have data from the three Kurdish provinces where political violence is minimal.

The death tolls may include some Iraqi police and national guardsmen, but mainly count civilians. They are unlikely to include insurgents, since their families usually fear taking seriously wounded resistance fighters to government hospitals. They bury their dead without registration at the morgue.

The findings were that out of 3,487 Iraqi deaths since April 5, two-thirds were killed by US and multinational forces or Iraqi police. In other words, the footage of car-bombs and suicide attacks set off by insurgents, which TV cameras are able to film in central Baghdad and which we see on our screens, may give the false impression that anti-government forces are the biggest killers.

In fact, a greater toll is mounting up, unfilmed, in Sadr City, Falluja, Samarra and other cities where the US uses airstrikes. According to the health ministry, two Iraqis are being killed by the government side for each one killed by insurgents.

As for giving Iraqis a choice in the upcoming elections which will pick a constituent assembly and government, the danger that they will be disappointed is coming from backroom deals similar to the Afghan ones. A recent poll by the Iraqi Centre for Research and Strategic Studies shows that 61% believe suitable candidates will be prevented from campaigning.

One reason for scepticism is that Prime minister Ayad Allawi, supported by Washington, is trying to put together a "consensus list" of himself and the formerly exiled parties in the current government, including Kurds, Shias and Sunnis. Voters would be presented with a take-it-or-leave-it offer. For Allawi, who has little chance of retaining power if his party stands alone, the combined list is the only hope. For the Kurds who want to enshrine their right to autonomy in the constitution which will be drafted next year, it also makes sense to do a pre-election deal with the largest Shia parties.

The jokers in the pack are Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the respected Shia leader who has already criticised the concept of a government list, and Moqtada al Sadr, the radical cleric.

If al Sadr decided to take part in the poll and create his own "national patriotic list", with the central demand that foreign forces leave Iraq immediately, Allawi and his allies would be in serious trouble. It is not inconceivable that al Sadr could entice the leading Sunni organisation, the Council of Islamic Scholars, and the Iraqi Islamic party to his list. The grand ayatollah might even endorse it. Given the occupation's unpopularity, this would make the "patriotic list" unstoppable.

Although peace talks for Falluja and Sadr city are sputtering on, some Iraqis fear the looming US air offensive has unacknowledged aims. One is to provoke such resistance in the nationalist Sunni and al Sadr strongholds that elections can be cancelled in those areas. Another is to make it impossible for al Sadr to disband his militia and join the election without seeming to have been defeated on the battlefield.

It is a high-stakes game in which the US is working hard to prevent a government emerging that would ask it to go home. One early result is to expose how phoney the bombs-or-ballots alternative really is. Iraqis are going to get a lot of the former, whatever happens with the latter.