Monday saw the first peaceful and democratic transfer of power in Afghanistan's history, as Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated to succeed Hamid Karzai as president. Ghani and his electoral rival, Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, now must make immediate, impactful decisions to demonstrate that the divisions and tension generated by their unity government's protracted and painful birth are in the past. The new government must move fast to show its citizens that it is capable not only of holding Afghanistan together, but also of working to serve them.
This was no easy transition: Thirteen years of rebuilding efforts nearly unraveled during a fraught electoral summer. The Taliban gained momentum and territory while the economy shrank and government revenues sank. Afghans' confidence in their constitutional system and in the future of democracy took a hit, and many fear that the political arrangement that has emerged will prove unworkable - that the national unity government, far from sorting out political rivalries, has institutionalized them instead.
If it is to reverse these setbacks, the new Afghan government and its international backers will have to act with unity of purpose. The establishment of a reform-oriented government strongly backed by the international community provides the best and possibly only opportunity to prevent Afghanistan from sliding back into anarchy and erasing many of the gains achieved at great cost since 2002. Missing this opportunity would also seriously undermine the clear U.S. interest in an Afghanistan that does not further destabilize this volatile region, in particular its nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan.
Four urgent priorities
Ghani's first priority will be to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement, allowing U.S. and NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama should then swiftly announce that Washington will reconsider its drastic timeline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Currently the foreign troop presence is scheduled to fall to 9,800 by the end of this year, and to nearly zero by the end of 2016.
Observers across the U.S. political spectrum - and U.S. commanders in Afghanistan - have questioned the scale and pace of the planned drawdown. While the aftermath of the Iraq withdrawal provides a cautionary tale, Afghanistan's peculiar context makes it even more essential that security conditions, and not the calendar, dictate the pace of troop withdrawals. The Afghan National Army and police have been under severe pressure all summer, suffering high casualties while resisting a major Taliban campaign with reduced assistance from international forces. For the Afghans to continue fighting the Taliban effectively, they need confidence that they are not being abandoned and that they will retain sufficient backing from international troops and air support.
Next, Afghanistan's new government needs to ensure that key positions are filled by qualified officials committed to a reform agenda, not doled out as political favors to electoral backers. The power-sharing agreement complicates this prerogative but cannot become an excuse to avoid reforms. The appointment of respected and competent figures to key posts will send a clear signal to Afghans, as well as to major donors, that the new government takes seriously the need for reform and good governance.
Ghani also must move early to address the rampant corruption that has undermined Kabul's legitimacy and corroded economic development. Amid the scattering of global crises, Afghanistan now faces stiff competition for strained attention and increasingly scarce resources. Donors will take their aid elsewhere if they determine that it will be wasted in Afghanistan. Specifically, Kabul should move fast to accelerate the recovery of some of the nearly $1 billion of stolen Kabul Bank assets - something Karzai refused to do.
The United States and other major donors must respond quickly to underwrite reform efforts with generous financial assistance: Without outside money, Afghanistan's new government will not succeed. Recent media reports suggest government coffers are virtually empty and government salaries can't be paid. While funding levels can be reduced from the highs of recent years, too sharp a reduction would be highly destabilizing and in effect would pull the rug out from under the new government. The flawed election process may have undermined the credibility of the new government, but an economic collapse so severe that the government cannot pay salaries or provide basic services would do far more to delegitimize Kabul and destabilize Afghanistan.
The election drama that played out over the past few months, from a hopeful beginning to its muddled ending, has been painful to watch for Afghans and international observers alike. But unlike other crisis spots in today's headlines, in Afghanistan there are obvious measures that can and must be taken to salvage a bad situation, and there are clear, tested partners to work with. Afghanistan's new leaders, backed by a renewed U.S. and NATO commitment to adequate military and civilian assistance, can still turn their country's transition into a success story in this increasingly troubled part of the world.
