Afghanistan

Afghanistan held its first-ever presidential election on October 9, 2004. Large numbers of Afghans turned out to vote in the election, which was largely free of the violence threatened by the country’s former Taliban leaders. Karzai won 55.4 percent of the vote, easily beating 15 other candidates in the first round of voting. His victory was officially announced on November 3, following an investigation into charges of electoral fraud. According to a three-member United Nations panel set up to examine the complaints—made mostly by the losing candidates—the election’s “shortcomings...could not have materially affected the overall result.”

Karzai’s top goals after forming a new government included curbing the power of regional warlords, building an effective national security force, and pursuing national redevelopment plans. Uniting the country despite its longstanding ethnic, religious, and regional rivalries remained one of Karzai’s highest priorities.

Elections to the lower house of the National Assembly took place in September 2005, and in December 2005 President Karzai used his constitutional powers to appoint the members of the upper house. On December 19 Afghanistan’s first democratically elected legislature in more than 30 years officially convened. The new legislature represented a wide spectrum of the country’s political groupings and factions, including former warlords and former Taliban officials.

Despite its initial defeat following the U.S. invasion of 2001, the Taliban regrouped, using remote areas of Pakistan for refuge and staging sporadic guerrilla attacks in areas of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. By 2007 the Taliban adopted tactics that included suicide bombings and roadside bombs, while also besieging remote U.S. and NATO outposts in the countryside. In June 2007 U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates expressed cautious optimism that the military campaign was having success against the resurgent Taliban. Defense Department officials said they believed NATO operations had helped thwart a planned spring offensive by the Taliban.

However, Afghan civilian support for the U.S. and NATO military operations waned in the spring of 2007, particularly after a series of attacks that resulted in civilian casualties. In early May, following an April ground attack and air strike on a small village in western Herāt province in which about 50 civilians were reportedly killed, Afghan president Karzai told U.S. and NATO officials that civilian deaths had reached an “unacceptable level.” About a week later lawmakers in the upper house of parliament, the Meshrano Jirga (House of Elders), passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire with the Taliban and for setting a date for the withdrawal of foreign troops. Many of the legislators cited an incident in March in which a U.S. Marine Special Operations force opened fire on civilians lining a highway as the marines fled the scene of a suicide bombing attack. The incident in the eastern Afghanistan province of Nangarhār resulted in the deaths of 19 Afghan civilians and the wounding of about 50 others. A U.S. military commander later determined that the marines had used excessive force and he referred the incident for a possible criminal inquiry.

By June 2007 the Associated Press reported a death toll of 2,300 in insurgency-related violence in 2007 alone. The International Red Cross said that violence was occurring throughout Afghanistan. The Department of Defense reported nearly 400 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, and Great Britain reported the deaths of 60 British soldiers during that same period.