Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government Performance
Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs
Congressional Research Service
March 19, 2013
Summary
The capacity and transparency of Afghan governance are considered crucial to Afghan stability
after U.S.-led NATO forces turn over the security mission to Afghan leadership by the end of
۲۰۱۴٫ The size and capability of the Afghan governing structure has increased significantly since
the Taliban regime fell in late 2001, but it remains weak and rampant with governmental
corruption. Even as the government has struggled to widen its writ, President Hamid Karzai has
tried to concentrate authority in Kabul through his constitutional powers of appointment at all
levels. Karzai has repeatedly denied that he wants to stay in office beyond the 2014 expiration of
his second term, but there are concerns he plans to use state election machinery to support the
election of a successor. International efforts to curb fraud in two successive elections (for
president in 2009 and parliament in 2010) largely failed, but Afghan efforts to improve election
oversight for the April 5, 2014 presidential and provincial elections are taking shape. Opposition
parties and civil society organizations are working to try to ensure a fair election.
Fears about the election process are fanned by the scant progress in reducing widespread
nepotism and other forms of corruption. President Karzai has accepted U.S. help to build
emerging anti-corruption institutions, but these same bodies have faltered from lack of support at
senior Afghan government levels. At a donors’ conference in Tokyo on July 8, 2012, donors
pledged to aid Afghanistan’s economy through at least 2017, on the condition that Afghanistan
takes concrete, verifiable action to rein in corruption.
No matter how the Afghan leadership succession process works out, there is concern among
many observers that governance will founder as the United States and its partners wind down
their involvement in Afghanistan at the end of 2014. The informal power structure consisting of
regional and ethnic leaders—who have always been at least as significant a factor in governance
as the formal power structure—is already beginning to assert itself in anticipation of the 2014
international drawdown. Many Afghans are looking to the faction leaders, rather than to the
government, to protect them from possible civil conflict with the Taliban after 2014. But, an
increase in the influence of faction leaders could produce even more corruption and arbitrary
administration of justice than is the case now. President Karzai is seeking to establish himself as a
nationalist leader and perhaps to attract Taliban support to rejoin Afghan politics by asserting
Afghan sovereignty as the United States draws down troops. Leaders of factions outside Karzai’s
ethnic Pashtun base criticize Karzai as too willing to make concessions to insurgent leaders in
search of a settlement. Afghan civil society activists, particularly women’s groups, assert that a
full reintegration of the Taliban into Afghan politics—a development increasingly likely as talks
between relatively moderate Taliban figures and Afghan political leaders proliferate—could
further set back human and women’s rights.
Broader issues of human rights often vary depending on the security environment in particular
regions, although some trends prevail nationwide. Women, media professionals, and civil society
groups have made substantial gains since the fall of the Taliban, but traditional attitudes
contribute to the judicial and political system’s continued toleration of child marriages,
imprisonment of women who flee domestic violence, judgments against converts from Islam to
Christianity, and curbs on the sale of alcohol and Western-oriented programming in the Afghan
media. See also CRS Report RL30588, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S.
Policy, by Kenneth Katzman; and CRS Report R41484, Afghanistan: U.S. Rule of Law and
Justice Sector Assistance, by Liana Sun Wyler and Kenneth Katzman
