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Summary

The Afghan government's limited writ and widespread official corruption are helping sustain a Taliban insurgency, and have fed pessimism about the Afghanistan stabilization effort. However, President Hamid Karzai has been able to confine ethnic disputes to political competition by engaging in compromises with major faction leaders, combined with occasional moves to weaken them. This strategy has enabled Karzai to focus on trying, with limited success to date, to win over members of his ethnic Pashtun community, some of which are tolerating Taliban insurgents. Karzai has faced substantial loss of public confidence, in large part due to widespread official corruption, but he is still considered a favorite for re-election on August 20, 2009. A major question is whether he wins more than 50% to avoid a second round run-off, and whether a run-off, if held, would increase the chances for his defeat. The United States is officially neutral in the contest, although Karzai has complained about U.S. official meetings with his challengers. Winning Pashtun support for the Afghan government is predicated, at least in part, on the success of efforts over the past few years to build local governing structures. New provincial councils will be elected on August 20 as well, although their roles in local governance and their relationships to appointed governors, remains unclear and inconsistent across Afghanistan. The trend toward promoting local governing bodies is to accelerate, according to the Obama Administration's review of U.S. strategy, the results of which were announced on March 27, 2009. The core of the new strategy is a so-called ficivilian surgefl that is in the process of doubling, to about 900, the number of U.S. civilian personnel to deploy to Afghanistan to help build its governing and security institutions, particularly at local levels, and to increase economic development efforts. Under an FY2009 supplemental appropriation (P.L. 111-32), the Administration is required to develop, by September 23, 2009, fimetricsfl by which to judge progress in Afghanistan, including the performance and legitimacy of the Afghan government and its efforts to curb official corruption. Small amounts of U.S. funds are tied to Afghanistan's performance on such metrics. For further information, see CRS Report RL30588, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, by Kenneth Katzman.

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