The central government's limited writ and its perceived corruption are helping sustain a Taliban insurgency and painting President Hamid Karzai as a weak leader. However, factional and ethnic differences have remained confined to political debate, the largest regional strongmen have been marginalized, and Karzai is focused on reversing the perception of security deterioration in the runup to his re-election bid in the fall of 2009. See CRS Report RL30588, Afghanistan: Post-War Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, by Kenneth Katzman.