An Inside Look at Hamid Karzai's Rising Woes

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Hamid Karzai is a hard man to see. Even for those who gain access to the Presidential Palace in Kabul, his office is nearly invisible, tucked into the corner of a two-story building and marked only by a plainclothes security guard who sits outside its wooden door holding a machine gun. The interior of the office is adorned with large Afghan rugs, cream-colored sofas and a marble fireplace; behind Karzai's desk is a bookcase that prominently displays the collected writings of George Washington. From the serenity of that perch, it's tempting to gaze down at the blossoming rose garden below and convince yourself that the war being waged to save Karzai's country is far, far away.

But in Afghanistan, peace is still an illusion. Minutes before we are ushered in to meet Karzai, a distant blast shakes the windows of the palace. When he opens the door, he's in a typically affable mood, joking with his advisers, offering visitors coffee and apologizing for having a cold. As Karzai sits down for the interview, Amrullah Saleh, the head of Afghan intelligence, appears. "The chief of the spooks! How are you--good?" Karzai asks. But he knows the news is bad. The two men retreat into a back room, where Saleh tells him that a suicide bombing near the U.S. embassy, about a mile away, has killed two U.S. soldiers and 14 Afghans. It is the worst attack in the capital since the fall of the Taliban five years before, and for a moment, Karzai becomes grim. "Afghanistan has been going through this suffering for a long time," he says, "and you get very angry. Each time you get angrier." So how does he cope when every day seems to bring more tragedy? Karzai sighs. "We're used to it," he says.

Since becoming Afghan leader nearly five years ago, Karzai has been the face, voice and guiding spirit of the new Afghanistan, an urbane antidote to the depraved rule of the Taliban. In 2004, bolstered by billions of dollars in Western aid and the firepower of 18,000 U.S. troops, Karzai won Afghanistan's first presidential election in a half-century. Since then, nothing has gone right. Taliban guerrillas have overrun swaths of territory in the south, sparking a battle for control with NATO forces that has left 55 Western troops dead in five weeks. Squabbles between Western military commanders and the Karzai government over antidrug policies have allowed poppy growth to reach an all-time peak. It's a sign of how much security has deteriorated in Kabul that Karzai's movements are as restricted as ever. In his meeting with TIME, Karzai's aides would not allow him to be photographed beyond the door of his office, for fear that his whereabouts could be exposed. "The palace is like a jail," says Shukria Barakzai, a member of Afghanistan's parliament and a Karzai ally. "The walls are so high that he has become distant from his own nation." That helps explain why, as hope fades and parts of the country drift into lawlessness, Afghans have started to direct their anger toward Karzai himself.