More than 900 people have died in bomb attacks over the last year in Afghanistan, most of them foreign and local troops, aid workers and those involved in registering voters for presidential and parliamentary elections. Yesterday Médicins Sans Frontières announced it is withdrawing its substantial aid effort from the country, citing a lack of security and attacking the United States for confusing its work with the military campaign against al-Qaeda there.
This continues to involve a US-led force of 20,000 troops, in addition to the 6,500 strong NATO contingent in the capital, Kabul.
Paradoxically, the security issue is highlighted just as an election registration campaign comes to a successful conclusion. It looks as if some 7.5 million of Afghanistan's estimated 9.5 million voters will have registered by the end of this week, despite these attacks and efforts by conservatives to prevent women doing so. The presidential elections will go ahead on October 9th, while parliamentary ones have been postponed until next year.
This week President Hamid Karzai surprised observers by refusing to nominate his powerful defence minister, Mohammad Qasin Fahim, as his running mate in the presidential contest. This indicates he is willing to take on the warlords in the Northern Alliance after the election. They defeated the Taliban regime in December 2001 and have dominated most of Afghanistan since then, along with the drugs trade which goes predominantly to Europe. They have resisted Mr Karzai's proposed disarmament programme (through which he hopes to extend national control after the elections), are sponsoring an alternative candidate to compete against him, and are arguably more dangerous than al-Qaeda.
Despite these hopeful signs that its citizens are keen to vote and assert civilian control over the future of their country, it is doubtful that this democratic exercise can resolve the huge problems facing Afghanistan. For the last two years Mr Karzai's efforts to assert control beyond Kabul have come up against the US refusal to allow him do so while they still pursue Islamic militants there. NATO's presence around the capital is dwarfed by the 50,000-plus troops and militias under warlord control.
Cynics say the electoral timetable is dictated by President Bush's need to show a foreign policy success before the US elections, despite the lack of security. Yesterday's large-scale attacks and deaths in Iraq highlight once again the difficulties involved in making such a democratic transition after military occupation, without paying sufficient attention to nation-building.