On August 19, Afghans celebrated their independence from the British Empire in 1919. Few countries have suffered a harsher history since. The country now stands at a potential turning point, with its first ever direct presidential election scheduled for October 9.

Unfortunately, a better future for Afghanistan is by no means assured. The country's long-term stability rests upon two critical and interrelated developments:

• First, the central government must establish legitimacy by building a governance structure—backed by a military and police infrastructure—that can provide security and justice to its citizens.

• Second, the government must rein in the flourishing drug trade, which threatens to turn Afghanistan into a narco-state.

On governance and stability, the Afghan government and the international community have made slow but important progress. But on drug control, there has been wholesale regression to Afghanistan's ignominious past as the world's leading poppy exporter. Even though virtually every expert predicted trouble, the international community failed to proactively address poppy cultivation, beginning with Britain's muddled attempt to freeze production and continuing through America's 'see no evil' approach toward traffickers. While narcotics suppression has received a lot of lip service, the effort has gone nowhere thanks to the absence of a coherent strategy and political will. The result has been an explosive growth in cultivation and trafficking, along with a set of powerful spoilers who favor chaos over stability.

Karzai, sensing that his hand is weak, has been cautious in challenging drug traffickers and regional strongmen. His hand has been weak primarily because the U.S. and NATO have failed to provide him with sufficient military and technical support. In several key areas—reconstructing the army and police, rebuilding the justice system, and pre-empting the drug economy before it could establish itself—the international community has failed to provide adequate leadership, manpower and funding.

Source: America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq. Rand, 2003. James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel Swanger, and Anga Timilsina.

What have been the consequences of America's narrow pursuit of Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants? By not backing Karzai in challenging the power bases of regional warlords, the U.S. has allowed provincial governors and strongmen to consolidate their power. These leaders—many of whom are involved in human rights abuses, extortion, and narcotics trafficking—command loyalty through a combination of patronage (private hospitals) and punishment (private jails). For Afghan citizens living in these regions, justice is arbitrary and violence always close at hand. Most Afghans yearn for national unity and desperately want the national government to play a larger role in their lives.

It is a testament to the Afghan people that things are going as well as they are. When the Taliban fell, Afghanistan was near the bottom of virtually every index of human misery. Working under tough conditions, the U.S., its allies, and their NGO partners averted a pending refugee crisis and reduced reliance on food aid from 10 million to less than 6 million. There had been progress in repairing critical infrastructure, such as the Kabul-Kandahar highway, and Afghanistan's legitimate economy grew by almost twenty percent last year. Recent surveys suggest that Afghans are optimistic about the future and eager for elections.

Nevertheless, the long-term prospects of extending justice to the provinces do not seem good. Afghanistan's economy is driven by transit trade, smuggling, and the opium economy, making it very difficult for the central government to assume power from local leaders. Transit revenues and drug profits, which together are larger than the government's budget, provide both the incentive and the means for these strongmen to hold on to their power. Kabul has been unable, even after two years, to force anything more than symbolic concessions from regional commanders, whose private militias, estimated at 50-100,000 strong, outnumber Afghanistan's national army of 13,500.

A critical step toward solving both the legitimacy problem and the drug problem is to build a strong security infrastructure loyal to the central government. Yet military and police training has gotten off to a slow start, with only 13,500 soldiers equipped and 20,000 police trained. Per soldier costs have been exorbitantly high, and retention rates have been low among Pashtuns, a real problem for what must become a multi-ethnic national army. Police training has gone better, but has focused on getting basic cops on the street and given too little attention to preparing specialists, such as investigators and border patrolmen, who are necessary to really tackle drug and smuggling networks. We've seen that the U.S. military can command remarkable results when a goal is prioritized: in Iraq, they were able to fully train over 100,000 security personnel in less than a year. One can only wonder why Afghanistan's security forces have not received similar support.

If Karzai scores a resounding victory in the October election he may be emboldened to use his new mandate to consolidate national authority. If he does, the U.S. must be prepared to give Kabul the support it needs to turn the corner. The international community, and the U.S. government in particular, can no longer afford to shirk its responsibilities in this most critical of struggles.

Carl Robichaud is a program officer at The Century Foundation.