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Summary

The central government's limited writ and perceived corruption are helping sustain a Taliban insurgency, and feeding pessimism about the Afghanistan stabilization effort. However, ethnic disputes remain confined largely to political debate and competition, enabling President Karzai to try to focus on accepting U.S. and international advice on how to improve governance, reversing security deterioration, and on winning re-election in presidential elections slated for August 20, 2009. Karzai is running for re-election, but he faces substantial loss of public confidence and fluid coalitions of potentially strong election opponents. Despite the government's widely noted shortcomings, many agree that the country has made substantial progress on personal and political freedoms since the fall of the Taliban regime. At the same time, over the past year U.S. officials have been shifting away from reliance on building the central government and toward promoting local governing bodies and security initiatives as a complement to efforts to build central government capabilities. That trend is likely to continue, based on press reports of a pending review of U.S. strategy being conducted by the Obama Administration. See CRS Report RL30588, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, by Kenneth Katzman.

Related Reports:
• RS21922

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