We don't yet know who the next president of Afghanistan will be. But there are good omens:
•The recent Afghan vote, its outcome still unresolved, was substantially cleaner than the corruption-filled, ballot-box-stuffing 2009 election of President Hamid Karzai.
•When the results are totaled, whoever wins won't be Karzai.
Last weekend, Afghan voters turned out in massive numbers, despite the looming threat of Taliban attacks. They waited in long lines, in the rain, at schools and mosques. Many polling places ran out of ballots and had to be resupplied. Some voters trekked from Taliban-controlled villages to cast ballots in the greater security of nearby cities and towns.
They all shared one thing: determination. They would not be denied their right to vote. "We showed the world we are a democracy," Karzai told the nation in an evening address.
So they did. And they also showed the world that there's much work still to be done to secure the entire country from the barbaric Taliban. Afghan officials declined to open 956 of a planned 7,168 polling stations because they were located in regions that soldiers and police couldn't secure.
The Taliban are "stepping up their campaign of terror," Time magazine reports. The election? "The Taliban are not especially interested in who wins: Bullets and bombs, not ballots, are their ticket to power."
That raises the possibility that, with the U.S. approaching substantial if not total withdrawal from the country, the invidious Taliban ultimately will win Afghanistan.
Afghanistan still needs U.S. military help to tamp down the Taliban. The country's fragile democracy can't yet stand on its own. But, to Washington's frustration, Karzai has thumbed his nose at this reality. He refused to sign a security agreement that would allow several thousand U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan to carry out anti-terrorism operations and help train Afghan forces after a planned allied troop withdrawal at the end of the year.
He refused, in other words, to help the next president, the next government of Afghanistan, prevail against the Taliban.
Luckily, each of the three leading presidential candidates has pledged to sign the security agreement. We'd expect a done deal on the new president's first day in office.
The next president of Afghanistan still faces monumental challenges to boost the economy, tame the terrorists and curb rampant government corruption. But let's not overlook a decade of progress. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, James Dobbins, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, ticks off hard-won gains:
The size of the Afghan economy has more than quadrupled, with GDP reaching $19.1 billion in 2011, up from $4 billion in 2002. Longevity has increased by 20 years to over 62 years in 2012 from 42 in 2002, an extraordinary improvement. Literacy has more than doubled to nearly 30 percent in 2012 from 12 percent in 2003. With nearly a third of all Afghans currently in school, including more than four million girls, the literacy rate should double again in the coming years.
Another stirring sign of change: Some 300 women were on the ballot for provincial council seats, more than ever before. For the first time, a woman ran for vice president.
These huge gains, however, are reversible. The Taliban have been subdued, not defeated. When not launching disruptive attacks, they bide their time, waiting for the American drawdown that President Barack Obama long ago telegraphed.
For lack of a security agreement with Karzai, Obama has threatened the "zero option" — leaving no American troops after 2014.
But leaving Afghanistan now is a sure way to invite the Taliban back to power.
Such a move would squander a decade of American sacrifice and leave Afghanistan vulnerable to a terrorist takeover, as the next president of Afghanistan will surely tell Obama.
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