Mr. Hamid Karzai, the interim leader of Afghanistan, has won that country's first presidential ballot. The election is a momentous accomplishment for Afghanistan, a country that has been torn by war for decades. Mr. Karzai's win is a victory for him personally, but it is also an incalculable victory for the Afghan people. They took considerable risk to vote, determined to have their say in the future course of their country. The results should quiet skeptics who dismiss such ballots as empty rituals or who claim that democracy's importance is exaggerated and should be subordinated to more practical concerns.

U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan three years ago when the Afghan government, then headed by the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic group, refused to hand over members of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, who were thought to be in the country and were implicated in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The Taliban was quickly routed, and the U.S. handpicked Mr. Karzai to head the interim government after he worked to convince several ethnic Pashtun tribes to end their support for the Taliban. Since he was chosen president in June 2002 by the loya jirga, a grand council of tribal leaders, he has traveled the globe trying to secure international support.

Although Mr. Karzai enjoyed the support of regional tribal leaders -- the result of considerable political horse-trading -- the Afghan people had not given him their approval. In fact, no Afghan leader had ever been popularly elected -- until now. Seventeen candidates contested the presidency in the country's first presidential election. Some 8 million Afghans voted, despite threats by the Taliban to disrupt the balloting and isolated incidents of violence.