If an ordinary Afghan could walk into the Washington war rooms where the faltering US war effort is being debated, his message would be: It's the corrupt government, stupid.

The counterinsurgency strategy outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in a report leaked Monday aims to win the Afghan population over to the side of their government. But last month's unresolved election, marred by widespread fraud, has left Afghans less optimistic that security and good governance are available from Kabul and its local emissaries.

In the contested province of Kandahar, for instance, tribal elder Haji Padshah says police told voters to reelect President Hamid Karzai in districts like Arghandab, Shorabak, Spin Boldak, and Registan. Such incidents show how corrupt political leaders stand in the way of General McChrystal's vision of training a police force that serves the people, and in doing so, wins undecided Afghans away from support for the Taliban.

"If you have fraud in the elections, you don't have the right person [as leader], and if you don't have the right person, you can't make security better," said Mr. Padshah in a telephone interview.

The McChrystal report appears to agree with Padshah. In it, he argues that NATO forces must "prioritize responsive and accountable governance – that the Afghan people find acceptable – to be on par with, and integral to, delivering security."

But there's serious debate as to whether that can be done in the context of the government that emerges from these elections. Some argue that a focus on improving local government can redeem the Kabul regime; others see that as an impossible mission, given the centralized structure of the government. To the consternation of both sides, Washington appears fixated on the question of more troops, not on reducing corruption and other abuses by Afghan officials.

"Here, the discussion centers around how many more troops should we send, when we should be talking about how to get the Afghan government to clean up its act," says Christine Fair, an Afghanistan expert at Georgetown University in Washington. "More troops can't fix this. The only reason we are talking about this is that's the one element we can control."

While he wants more boots on the ground, McChrystal also agrees that they won't do much good without fundamental changes in Afghan political and police behavior. "Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely,'' he wrote. "The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change... in the way that we think and operate."

Afghans focused on fraud

The question uppermost in many Afghan tribal leaders' minds is how any good can come of an election that many of them believe was fixed to favor President Karzai.

"How is the fraud good for the country? The government offices are full of corruption, and it will be like this to the end," says Haji Abdul Ahad, a tribal elder from Helmand Province. Says Haji Jahndi Khan from Paktika Province: "We can't improve daily life with fraud."

Fraudulent election practices kept good people from winning provincial council seats, says Zabit Mohammad Karim from Balkh Province. "Without power and money, you can't do anything in this country. If we have fraud how are we going to improve the corruption?"

To be sure, most of the Afghans interviewed for this article supported sending more US forces, largely because they don't trust local security forces. Nor do they expect to be able to trust police and Afghan officials anytime soon, if a government comes to power through a rigged vote.

Echoes of Soviet occupation

Afghan analysts in Kabul share their skepticism. For security analyst Haroun Mir and political scientist Wadir Safi, the present situation echoes the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Russia committed more troops in the 1980s than current NATO levels, but "the Afghan people refused to accept the authority of the central government," says Mr. Mir.

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