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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 disillusioned members of his ethnic Pashtun community, some of whom are tolerating or even supporting Taliban insurgents. Despite the measurable loss of confidence in Karzai, many Afghans consider their country's difficulties as beyond his control, and he was still considered a favorite for reelection on August 20, 2009. Turnout was lower than expected, particularly in Karzai's home provinces in the south, and, with only partial results released, a major question is whether he has won more than 50% to avoid a second-round runoff. The United States was 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 in each of the 34 provinces were elected on August 20 as well, although their roles in local governance and their relationships to appointed governors remain unclear and inconsistent across Afghanistan. The trend toward promoting local governing bodies will be accelerated, 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 "civilian surge" 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, particularly in agriculture. Under an FY2009 supplemental appropriation (P.L. 111-32), the Administration is required to develop, by September 23, 2009, "metrics" 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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