In two weeks, or six if there is a run-off, Afghanistan will have a new president for the next five years. Whether in five years the new president will still have Afghanistan is uncertain. It depends not on the elections themselves but on what happens afterwards.
These elections, as part of a broader strategic review, will, it is hoped, re-energise the troubled international effort to secure and stabilise Afghanistan by bringing a new legitimacy to a government elected by an imperfect but theoretically universal suffrage.
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