ISLAMABAD -- The latest U.S. promise to enhance Afghanistan's security in the years to come raises more questions than it answers for the the war-ravaged country, although the so-called declaration of strategic partnership signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington has certainly pleased the Afghan government.
Karzai claims that Afghanistan now has a U.S. commitment for a partnership extending beyond the central Asian country's elections on Sept. 18, which are supposed to mark the end of the international community's engagement with Afghanistan, according to the Bonn agreement in 2001.
Under that agreement, the international community was to take Afghanistan toward economic rehabilitation so that it could consolidate itself with an elected government. Judged by Western standards, Afghanistan has arrived at the point where a representative democracy is around the corner, but stability and continuity remain in question as the country has yet to be rehabilitated economically and faces an intense security challenge amid doubts about whether its government can survive.
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