President Hamid Karzai's re-election on 2 November 2009, following widespread fraud in the 20 August presidential and provincial polls, has delivered a critical blow to his government's legitimacy. The deeply flawed polls have eroded public confidence in the electoral process and in the international community's commitment to the country's nascent democratic institutions. Confronting the strategic costs of corruption and weak institutions must be the highest priority for the Afghan government and international community. An Afghan government that continues to face a crisis of credibility of such huge proportions cannot defeat the insurgency and risks being subsumed by it
Notes
Caption itle from title screen (viewed December 7, 2009)
