A DANGEROUS PEACE

Kabul has slipped into a nervous tension. Early last week President Hamid Karzai surprised his fellow Afghans and foreign diplomats by choosing to drop Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim from his presidential ticket in favor of Ahmed Zia Masood, the brother of the late Ahmed Shah Masood, a well-respected mujahedin leader. Although a political decision, it immediately set off security concerns: NATO's peacekeeping force was placed on heightened alert in response to fears that Fahim or other angered Northern Alliance leaders might resort to violence against Karzai's central government.

Anxiety was already running high. A series of grisly armed attacks and bombings against foreign workers, U.S. soldiers, Afghan election workers and newly registered voters is testing the country's resolve ahead of the October presidential elections. Indeed, the violence has been bad enough that the international aid agency Medecins sans Frontieres, which had endured two decades of civil war in Afghanistan, announced it was withdrawing from the country. "We are facing severe threats to the state," says Interior Minister Ali Jalali. "And we don't have a lot of time to deal with them."

The real tragedy in Afghanistan is that a political standoff or outbreak of violence could jeopardize what has, until now, been significant progress in rebuilding the country. The United States, NATO and the United Nations have helped establish a central government with a democratic constitution, new currency and a new army and police force. Afghan women enjoy far greater freedom than during the Taliban period, and 3 million children, including girls, have now returned to school. The U.S. military and its allies have spent a substantial amount of time training the Afghan National Army and police to be the front line against insurgents, drug-traffickers and criminals, and the work is paying off. Afghan units have conducted successful combat operations against Taliban and Qaeda remnants and helped stem interfactional fighting. "Afghanistan has made notable progress since 2001," says a senior Afghan national-security official in Kabul. "But the system is now extremely volatile."

That was underscored by Karzai's decision last week. During tense negotiations, Fahim refused to disarm his militia and insisted that an ethnic Tajik ally succeed him as Defense minister. The presidential election is now viewed by many as a contest between Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun who represents a broadly nationalist government, and officials from the Northern Alliance, who represent a swath of Tajiks, Uzbeks and other northern ethnic groups. "The elections have now let the ethnic genie out of the bottle," says the national-security official.

At the same time, Karzai can claim some concrete successes in the struggle to rebuild Afghanistan. Kabul is now awash in electronics equipment and a sprinkle of new Internet cafes. The streets are clogged with bright yellow taxicabs, watermelon carts, bicycles and cars imported from Europe and Asia. Young girls shuffle to school along the city's congested sidewalks. Economic conditions in much of the country have improved. Construction projects dot major cities, including efforts to rebuild bridges, office and apartment buildings and well-traveled roads like the Kabul-Kandahar highway.

Across the country most Afghans agree that life is better. In a recent public-opinion poll conducted by the Asia Foundation, two thirds of Afghan respondents said the country was headed in the right direction. They cited as key reasons the end to civil war, the beginning of disarmament and international reconstruction efforts. Unlike in Iraq, most Afghans also have positive views of the United States and the international community. Nearly 85 percent have a favorable impression of the United Nations, and two thirds have a favorable impression of the United States and its military forces.