A Violent Wake-Up Call; After last week's riot, and with the Taliban resurgent, Karzai is under mounting pressure to take charge.(Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan)

Byline: Ron Moreau, Sami Yousafzai and Joe Cochrane (With Zahid Hussain in Baluchistan)

Urbane, dapper hamid karzai has always come off well in the international spotlight. But the Afghan president looked decidedly uncomfortable last week as he addressed his own nation following a riot in Kabul on May 29--triggered by a deadly traffic accident between a U.S. military convoy and civilian vehicles that killed seven people. The violence was the worst to strike the capital since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. The mob's rage was directed partly at the U.S. military--but also, surprisingly, at Karzai himself. In one of Ka-bul's main squares, protesters burned a huge portrait of the president.

The 48-year-old Karzai has been running Afghanistan for four and a half years. He became the country's first democratically elected president in a landslide victory two years ago. But with the southern part of the country racked by a mounting Taliban insurgency, and economic progress slow and spotty at best, Afghans seem to be turning on their once popular leader. "The rioting was more anti-Karzai than anti-American," says author and Afghan expert Ahmed Rashid. "There's real anger against the president for the lack of reconstruction, for a lack of good governance and for his inability to control corruption and drug trafficking."

Part of the problem is that expectations were so high. To most Afghans and his international supporters alike, Karzai once seemed the ideal man for the job. While respected as a Pashtun tribal leader, he also represented a break with the country's traditional past--a president rather than a warlord, more concerned with the national well-being than lining his pockets. And he was perceived, rightly, as America's man, able to keep billions in reconstruction aid flowing.

Now, however, many Afghans, including many ethnic Pashtuns, decry his cautious governing style. They blame his timidity for allowing corruption to flourish once again in Kabul, and for doing little to stop the nationwide drug trade. Meanwhile, the Taliban have stepped up attacks in the south. "It's quite clear President Karzai wants to govern as the ruler of all Afghans and not displease anyone--but he has," Francese Vendrell, the European Union's special representative to Afghanistan, told NEWSWEEK. "He has not been able to act firmly. Many provincial governors are incompetent and corrupt, and many police chiefs are linked to the drug trade and criminal groups."

Of course, the picture is not all bleak. Billions of dollars have poured into Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster, and some 23,000 American soldiers and 9,000 NATO peacekeepers are securing the country and training Afghanistan's fledgling Army and police. Girls are going to school in record numbers. Kabul is awash in secondhand cars brought in from neighboring Iran. New commercial buildings and ornate residences are sprouting. The latest consumer goods appear on store shelves.

But the good life is available to only a few. For most Kabul residents, electricity and running water are scarce, raw sewage runs in the streets, roads are broken, unemployment is high, especially among the young, and officials are corrupt. Some complain that they have to pay the equivalent of a $15 bribe simply to get a mandatory national identity card, in a country where the average annual income is less than $800. Of roughly $10 billion in aid pledged by international donors since 2001, only half has actually been distributed. (In February, 60 nations pledged an additional $10.5 billion.)