A Dangerous Peace; Political tensions in Kabul have put the country on edge. If the rifts aren't healed, much could be lost.

Byline: Seth G. Jones (Seth G. Jones is an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation.)

Kabul has slipped into a nervous tension. Early last week President Hamid Karzai surprised his fellow Afghans and foreign diplomats by choosing to drop Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim from his presidential ticket in favor of Ahmed Zia Masood, the brother of the late Ahmed Shah Masood, a well-respected mujahedin leader. Although a political decision, it immediately set off security concerns: NATO's peacekeeping force was placed on heightened alert in response to fears that Fahim or other angered Northern Alliance leaders might resort to violence against Karzai's central government.

Anxiety was already running high. A series of grisly armed attacks and bombings against foreign workers, U.S. soldiers, Afghan election workers and newly registered voters is testing the country's resolve ahead of the October presidential elections. Indeed, the violence has been bad enough that the international aid agency Medecins sans Frontieres, which had endured two decades of civil war in Afghanistan, announced it was withdrawing from the country. "We are facing severe threats to the state," says Interior Minister Ali Jalali. "And we don't have a lot of time to deal with them."

The real tragedy in Afghanistan is that a political standoff or outbreak of violence could jeopardize what has, until now, been significant progress in rebuilding the country. The United States, NATO and the United Nations have helped establish a central government with a democratic constitution, new currency and a new army and police force. Afghan women enjoy far greater freedom than during the Taliban period, and 3 million children, including girls, have now returned to school. The U.S. military and its allies have spent a substantial amount of time training the Afghan National Army and police to be the front line against insurgents, drug-traffickers and criminals, and the work is paying off. Afghan units have conducted successful combat operations against Taliban and Qaeda remnants and helped stem interfactional fighting. "Afghanistan has made notable progress since 2001," says a senior Afghan national-security official in Kabul. "But the system is now extremely volatile."

That was underscored by Karzai's decision last week. During tense negotiations, Fahim refused to disarm his militia and insisted that an ethnic Tajik ally succeed him as Defense minister. The presidential election is now viewed by many as a contest between Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun who represents a broadly nationalist government, and officials from the Northern Alliance, who ...