The next five years with President Karzai

Hamid Karzai has been sworn in today as the president of Afghanistan for a second five-year term. After an optimistic first presidential election in 2004, this second election was, in the words of President Obama, “messy.” It was fraught with allegations of corruption, and looked like it might require a run-off. However, today’s inauguration officially secures Hamid Karzai as president for the next five years. The inauguration itself is to be held as a private event on the heavily-secured presidential palace grounds. Anand Gopal of the Wall Street Journal, on the ground in Kabul, gives us the scene during the inauguration.

President Karzai still faces great international pressure to address corruption in the government in order to continue receiving support from the United States. Earlier this week the Afghan government announced plans to create a major anti-corruption unit to investigate senior officials. This Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on ABC’s The Week “I have made it clear that we’re not going to be providing any civilian aid to Afghanistan unless we have a certification that if it goes into the Afghan government in any form, that we’re going to have ministries that we can hold accountable.”

We discuss this statement and the possible impact on the future of Afghanistan with Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.