Afghan election approaches, brings big tasks for leaders

KABUL -- An open secret among U.S. officials in Kabul is that Afghanistan was the Bush administration's second-string war. Taliban violence skyrocketed, prompting President Obama to boost the American commitment.

Now, both the winner of Thursday's presidential election and his international partners face a game of catch-up if they are to turn the tide of the Taliban insurgency.

They will all confront the added challenge of growing war-weariness among Afghans, Americans and other nations that provide troops. Resources are tight among coalition members facing their own domestic economic problems.

The international community is looking for an Afghan president seen as capable of tackling the problems of insurgency, narcotics and government corruption. Obama and other leaders need such a colleague to give hope to their own constituents as casualty figures rise.

President Hamid Karzai leads in the polls. Most analysts believe he will win a second five-year term, barring a surge in support for his top competitor, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. The two could also find themselves in an October run-off if Karzai doesn't get more than 50 percent of the votes this week.

An Afghan police man unloads ballot boxes from a donkey outside a polling station in Hisarak village in Rokha in Panjshir province north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009. Afghans will head to the polls on Aug. 20 to elect the new president.(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

The articulate, multilingual Karzai was once seen as a dynamic leader. Years of corruption, ineffectual government and rising violence have tarnished that image. To hold on to power, Karzai has again surrounded himself with tainted warlord power brokers, raising the question of whether Afghanistan was moving backward.

The Obama administration has said it is neutral in the contest, representing a step away from the warm embrace the Bush leadership once gave Karzai. U.S. officials have made clear that although they would work with Karzai, they won't accept business as usual during a second term.

"If you get a new government in place that is more of the same, you fail to satisfy expectations of the people, and that would not advance the national process in the way that is so sorely needed," said Timothy Michael Carney, a former U.S. ambassador who heads the U.S. electoral support team in Kabul.

For the Obama administration, the stakes are high. With troops moving out of Iraq, Afghanistan has become Obama's war, and his administration has spent political capital to increase troop levels and financial resources for the country at a time when many of the president's supporters want an end to the conflicts of his predecessor.

The U.S. hopes the election will give Afghanistan's leader a broad mandate allowing the president to carry out reform and reach out to supposed moderates in the Taliban -- if any are willing to break ranks with the hard-liners.

Afghan workers organize ballot boxes and election kits before being loaded on a truck for distribution, at the Independent Elections Commission on the outskirts of Kabul, Tuesday Aug. 18, 2009. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

However, it is unlikely that significant elements in the Taliban would agree to talks without a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces.

For now, however, the focus is not on withdrawal timetables but adding more troops.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in the country, is carrying out a 60-day review of Afghanistan, and some of the members of his panel have recommended a substantial increase in American troops, even as the U.S. reduces its numbers in Iraq.

Sen. John McCain, the former presidential candidate, called Tuesday for troop levels to be "significantly increased," including an additional three Marine battalions in the most violent province -- Helmand.

No matter the number of troops, reform after the election will still be slow.

Dahaneh resident Haji Mohammed Yunos has his photo taken Tuesday by International Election Committee official Abdul Basir while registering to vote in the upcoming presidential elections in Afghanistan. (Julie Jacobson ~ Associated Press)

If Karzai wins, his government could be beholden to power brokers with ties to organized crime, narcotics and in some cases even to the Taliban, said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"There will be no meaningful government services in far too many areas. There will be no Afghan source of security. Instead, there will be a corrupt and ineffective police, no courts, and no jails," he said. "The Taliban and other jihadist movements will still be able to exploit a near power vacuum in many rural parts of the country, and the central government's failures in a good part of the rest."

Carney, the U.S. election official, believes Thursday's vote will be a referendum on Karzai's stewardship, and a test of how far Afghanistan has "moved away from the old think of ethnic politics, or of deal making, smoke-filled room politics."

But Karzai, in the run-up to the election, has engaged in crony politics, bringing back two notorious warlords, moves that drew the ire of the top U.N. official in the country and the U.S. government.

On Karzai's ticket as vice president is Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a former Tajik warlord whom Human Rights Watch has accused of human rights abuses during the 1990s Afghan civil war. On Sunday, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum arrived in Kabul -- a powerful Uzbek warlord accused of involvement in the deaths of 2,000 Taliban fighters shortly after the 2001 U.S. invasion. Both men, in theory, can bring Karzai votes.

Karzai's top challenger, Abdullah, is the one of the few national leaders not swept up in Karzai's electoral family gathering. And as the threat of Taliban violence hangs over the election, there are some indications Abdullah supporters could take to the streets if the election outcome is not to their liking.

The top U.N. official in the country, Kai Eide, said Tuesday that elections are divisive by nature, but after the vote the various camps must come together to "address the most critical problems this country faces."

Eide noted that international community has a long-term commitment to Afghanistan but would insist that Afghan leaders "take responsibility for their security and their development."

Karzai says his top priority if re-elected will be peace through reconciliation, but the president has so far failed to attract militants to the negotiating table, and there is no indication that talks will start soon. Taliban leader Mullah Omar has demanded that U.S. and NATO troops first leave the country.

The more realistic of Karzai's goals is to double the size of the Afghan army and police -- something many U.S. commanders believe needs to happen, but a move that will cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars to train and equip troops.

That in turn could draw resources away from programs to promote economic development and effective governance -- often cited as goals that are critical to undermining the Taliban.

"Whoever that winner is going to be needs to understand the state of their country," Sen. Lindsay Graham, who traveled here with McCain, told reporters. "The institutions in this country are not working."

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Jason Straziuso has covered Afghanistan for The Associated Press since 2006.