The relationship between the Afghan government and the international community has entered a new phase with the completion of parliamentary elections and the completion of the program outlined by the Bonn process. In a sense, the deadlines imposed by the Bonn process were the easier part of Afghanistan's recovery and the much harder process of national reconciliation and renaissance must now begin. The Afghan government now has formal structures in place, but must act to implement the constitution and prove itself capable of governing. This will not be easy.

The relationship between the Karzai government and the international community must change, as must the relationship between Karzai and the various elements that previously composed Afghanistan's government. As Karzai asserts himself with relation to both, tensions may well appear. There have already been some hints of this in Karzai's calls for a cessation of heavy bombing by the Coalition and for the assent of the Afghan government before house to house searches take place. The practical adherence to these policy changes would bring both strategic and operational difficulties. The international community has not met the goals presented to it by the Afghan government, in 2004 pledging only $8.3 billion over three years in response to the Afghan request for $27.4 billion in seven years. It remains to be seen how much of that pledge is actually delivered. Karzai has also called for greater control on the part of the government of Afghanistan over the use and spending of assistance funds. There have been widespread complaints from Afghans about the high overhead charges for international assistance, the question of decision-making authority for programs, and the issue of capacity-building for Afghans by the international community.

Similarly, Karzai faces problems in ruling within his own house. While some of the major warlords, such as Ismail Khan and Gen. Dostum, have been removed from their local official positions that does not mean that they have been removed from the exercise of power altogether. The loose collegial management style which Karzai effectively used to paper over many serious problems and disagreements during the implementation of the Bonn process will not necessarily work as well now, as the Afghan government becomes more and more responsible for direct governance. In any number of public opinion surveys, the people of Afghanistan have indicated that security and the warlords are the number one problem, with the ongoing Taliban resistance somewhere farther down the list.

In addition, the presidential and parliamentary elections have accentuated traditional divisions within Afghanistan and precipitated the resignations from the Karzai cabinet of such primary Tajik figures as Marshall Fahim and former Education Minister Qanooni, as well as the Hazara leader Mohaqiq. While Karzai has brought in other leaders from these ethnic groups to maintain a nationally inclusive visage to his government, the divisions brought about by their departure from the government become increasingly important as the transition to an elected government takes place. The newly elected parliament will contain many individuals, including fundamentalists and acknowledged warlords, who have as their goal the aggrandizement of their own personal, ethnic, and sectarian power, individuals who are likely to give Karzai a difficult time as he attempts to assert his constitutional powers.

The complaints about the pace of reconstruction have been loud and constant. While it is clearly more difficult to reconstruct an Afghanistan, already one of the poorest countries in the world before its more than twenty years of war, than it is to rebuild Bosnia, reconstruction could have moved faster in a number of areas. It took months before the United States government, for example, heeded President Karzai's calls for reconstruction of the road network that had distinguished Afghanistan in the 1960s. Then it took months more before Japan could galvanize its governmental structures to join the partnership. In the end, the Kabul to Kandahar road was finished ahead of schedule, but subsequent follow-up on other parts of the road have been hampered by security problems, equipment failures and bureaucratic complications.

The lead nation system for improving different structures of the government has functioned imperfectly at best. One reason has been the lack of an overhead supervisory structure. In the judicial sector, slow progress was abetted by the failure to replace the existing Taliban-appointed judiciary. Karzai was able to bypass some of the judicial tangles this elicited in the early years, but the new constitution, with its lack of clarity on the question of Islamic law and secular values, will cause definite problems down the road. Ambitious programs for educational reconstruction faced a daunting (though heartening) number of students who came to class nationwide. Construction of school buildings has not been matched with the availability of teachers or texts. The inability of the international community to coordinate and rationalize assistance except on an ad hoc and usually temporary basis is a problem is not unique to Afghanistan. But it has clearly added to the difficulties of the largest refugee return in history to one of the poorest nations on earth.

In addition to building an infrastructure of roads and telephones, Afghanistan must find the energy it needs to build its future. Electrical supplies are minimal nationwide and the gas and oil deposits which brought Afghanistan $200 million a year in Soviet times still have not been more than minimally activated. Afghanistan's neighbors are scrambling to sign up the energy supplies of Central Asia and Iran, and a gas pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India is still very much on the table, although there are supply problems. Afghanistan will lose out and vitiate what progress it is making if it cannot guarantee energy supplies for current and future activity in a world where the finite nature of supply is becoming increasingly obvious.

The regional situation has altered in a way that will also affect Afghanistan. Pakistani and Indian cooperation may well result in a gas pipeline to Turkmenistan, and this may bring Afghanistan both gas of its own and transit fees. The economy will benefit from a joint Iranian-Indian road, which will eventually connect to the Afghanistan ring road and other road links to the border in all directions. Northern neighbors, however, have not moved forward after initial declarations of interest in economic cooperation in 2004, and growing concerns among Central Asian nations about the U.S. program for democratization makes them cooler toward Afghanistan, where they forecast a permanent U.S. military presence. There is also the subtext here of past assistance given by Afghanistan's northern neighbors to both Afghan Uzbeks and Afghan Tajiks in the Northern Alliance. Karzai will have to watch out for is this possibility, particularly if the presence of ex-Taliban or like-minded people in the Afghan Parliament allows those in the north to exacerbate the issue.

The new national army and the new national police are achieving respectable numbers, and the army in particular has been able to operate with Coalition forces. There remains, however, the question of where the ultimate loyalties of those forces will lie, especially in a future when they are not coupled with Coalition forces. The early battalions were formed in cooperation with a Ministry of Defense dominated by Tajiks, but difficult negotiations by Coalition military staff brought about a more balanced superstructure. Minister of Defense Wardak is capable and well-intentioned, but electoral results, which show most Pushtuns voting for Karzai and most Tajik and Hazaras voting for their own ethnic leaders, underscore a threat to national institutions. The failure to do so will not result in any kind of partition of Afghanistan, but could lead to a reversion to regional/ethnic conflicts. These conflicts brought about the current situation and led to the takeover by the Taliban in the first place. The change in leadership and responsibilities of international soldiers in Afghanistan, the role of the PRTs, and the role of NATO leadership are all vectors that must be calibrated carefully in the next few months and years.

The main problems of Afghanistan are simple and clear: security, drugs, money, and reconstruction (which is often first-time construction.) Each of these problems is interconnected. If Karzai cannot control drugs, he cannot control security. If he does not have money and security, reconstruction will falter. If he does not get the money from the international community, he cannot control security or fund reconstruction, a problem complicated by the tendency of the international community's attention to wane or be captivated by new emergencies. The fact that Afghanistan is the world's largest drug-supplier-mostly to donor countries-does not help matters. The linkage to Iraq has helped to keep Afghanistan in people's minds and brought it more assistance than it might otherwise have had. The converse, however, is not true: the money that went to Iraq would not necessarily have been allocated to Afghanistan if the Iraq war had not occurred.

Afghanistan is still a case in point where the united world community took a stand and removed a government that supported terrorism. The Taliban-era government was amazingly dysfunctional and inherited and augmented the legacy of two decades of war. There is reason to be dissatisfied with the progress that has been made so far and there is the obligation to be concerned about the future. There is also much that has been done and reason to believe that Afghanistan can eventually become a self-sufficient, secure nation. About two-thirds of Afghans support the government and think the country is going in the right direction. The world should continue to support them.

Robert Finn was the first U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in two decades, and served from March 2002 until November 2003. Prior to coming to Kabul, Ambassador Finn had a distinguished Foreign Service career, serving in Azerbaijan, Croatia and Pakistan and as U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan (1998-2001). Ambassador Finn has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, where he currently teaches.