The U.S. Institute of Peace has highlighted the critical role of credible elections and a political transition from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose term expires next year, to securing peace and preventing backsliding in the war-torn nation. The Senate resolution, adopted unanimously on July 9, was followed by a hearing of the chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee to assess preparations for the transition.

A democratically-elected and legitimate government is important to ensuring the long-term stability of Afghanistan, as is the successful training and fielding of the Afghan National Security Forces,” according to the resolution, co-sponsored by Senators Bob Casey, Robert Menendez and John McCain. “Transparent and credible elections will help safeguard the legitimacy of the next Afghan government and will help prevent future violence by groups that may be ready to contest a process perceived as rigged or dishonest.”

The resolution notes that “on several occasions since the late 1970s, civil war has broken out in Afghanistan over the legitimacy of the Afghan government.”

Karzai on Jan. 11, 2013, standing alongside President Barack Obama at the White House, said his greatest achievement would be “a proper, well-organized, interference-free election in which the Afghan people can elect their next president.

“I cannot stress enough the importance of a successful and democratic political transition next year,” Dobbins told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in written testimony for the hearing on July 11.

Even more than preparations to withdraw most U.S.-led NATO troops by the end of 2014 or efforts to kickstart negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, the U.S. sees its “main priority for the coming year” as the political transition with the presidential election in 2014, Dobbins told the panel during the proceedings.

“The future stability of Afghanistan rests on the peaceful transition of political authority in the course of 2014,” Dobbins said. “If this occurs, then I believe these other problems and challenges will resolve themselves quite satisfactorily.”

Stephen Hadley, senior advisor on international affairs at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a former U.S. national security advisor, told the committee  in separate testimony that a “safe, secure and prosperous Afghanistan” is “essential to achieving stability, peace and prosperity in all of northwest Asia – Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Central Asian states and even Iran and Russia.”

“The success of the security transition depends in large part on political stability and whether a majority of the Afghan people see their next government as legitimate and acceptable,” Hadley said, noting to the panel that he was expressing his own views, since the institute doesn’t take policy positions.

The risk of a tainted election is that “we will be transitioning security responsibility to a government in a political meltdown,” Hadley said. The result risks splintering the Afghan national security forces that the U.S. has spent billions to train “and perhaps a return to civil war,” he said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said he was worried about persistent delays by Afghanistan’s administration and parliament in agreeing on the needed new electoral laws and appointments to related boards such as the Independent Election Commission, the Supreme Court and a standard procedure for handling complaints about the elections process.

“Many of us here in Congress are concerned that the window for establishing a successful election framework for next April’s vote is closing,” Menendez said during the hearing. “There is little time left to get a credible pre-election process off the ground.”

He also sought to reassure Afghans who have been concerned at media reports that the U.S. is reducing its civilian and military presence in the country and might leave no troops behind at all. Hadley said the uncertainty has prompted Afghans and their neighbors to adopt potentially damaging political or economic “hedging strategies.”

“As long as the Afghan people and their government want the United States as a partner, we do not intend to leave Afghanistan alone,” Menendez said. “Our goal -- our clear intent -- is to stay committed with both security and civilian assistance post-2014.”

Ahmad Nader Nadery, founder and executive chairman of the nonprofit Free and Fair Election Foundation in Afghanistan, cautioned that Afghans have been “shaken” by recent media reports that the U.S. is considering leaving no troops behind at all and accounts of Taliban representatives using an office in Qatar intended for peace negotiations as a political base.

“Afghanistan is at the turning point, with transformation made in many spheres and newly found confidence in our state and security forces,” Nadery told the committee. “We understand your frustration, but respected senators, your real partners in Afghanistan are the Afghan people, not our current officials alone.”

Hadley said that, while “careful” outreach to the Taliban should continue, “the best time to test Taliban intentions will be after the conclusion of a successful election by a government of renewed legitimacy and popular support.”

Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, called attention during the hearing to the May assassination of Afghanistan’s highest-ranking female police officer to highlight the potential danger to Afghan women should a transition fail to secure the advances they’ve made in the past decade. Lieutenant Islam Bibi was gunned down as she was being driven to work by her son in the capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

“She joined the police force nine years ago, when it was particularly risky to do so,” Casey said. He said he’s concerned that, once NATO troops are out of the country, it “will go back to the old ways where women are not just marginalized, but really targeted for discrimination and abuse.”

Afghanistan has more than 400 women in its army, 44 in the air force and more than 1,500 serving as police officers, said Peter Lavoy, the acting assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security, told the committee.

Afghan military and police leaders are “incorporating these norms and values in the leadership,” Lavoy said. “So I do believe this will be sustainable going forward.”

Dobbins also said that, despite recent setbacks in negotiations with the Afghan government over a bilateral security agreement necessary to allow some U.S. troops to remain in the country after 2014, the administration still believes it will be able to reach an accord.

He also said Afghanistan has made more progress than might be perceived. A recent study by the Rand Corporation, where he was a center director before taking the State Department position in May, examined statistics from groups such as the World Bank, Freedom House and the United Nations Development Program for 10 civil-military interventions during or after conflict. They included Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and others.

“Afghanistan rated quite high on most of those indexes,” especially in human development improvements such as life expectancy increasing from 44 years to 60 years and literacy rates doubling to 33 percent, he said.  

Afghanistan will continue to require assistance “for some time,” and the U.S. will continue to work with the country’s security forces to provide higher-level training and support to develop its logistics and administrative capabilities, he said.

“We should, however, recognize that a country that, a little more than a decade ago, provided a haven from which the 9/11 attacks were planned,” Dobbins said, “has already become a staunch partner in the fight against international terrorism.”