An upsurge in insurgent violence in Afghanistan and deepening public frustration is eating away at domestic support for internationally backed President Hamid Karzai, analysts say.
Five years after the fall of the hardline Taliban government, the insurgency is only more bloody and is undermining the authority of Karzai's government which is propped up by international funds and security forces.
The May 29 riots that shook Kabul pointed to growing frustration, with some of the demonstrators chanting "Death to Karzai" and attacking images of him.
A series of minor bomb blasts in the city last week appeared intended to deepen a feeling of instability, although security officials have cast doubt on the Taliban's claim of responsibility.
With anger increasingly directed at the man who won 55 percent of Afghanistan's first presidential vote in 2004, there is more and more talk of opposition groups aligning themselves into new political fronts against him.
Only his international support is guaranteeing his position, political analyst Waheed Mujda said.
"There's no doubt Karzai has lost his popularity due to many reasons: intensified fighting in the south, corruption and poverty that the ordinary people are fighting with. If you put all these together, then you can say he is in a very fragile position that may cost him dearly -- maybe even his government," he said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a big show of support for the 49-year-old president during a fleeting visit last month, describing him as a man of courage and wisdom admired around the world.
But should the international community "crutch" be taken away, "then he is over," Mujda said.
Karzai, who was little known before he was appointed interim leader soon after the Taliban were driven out in late 2001, could today summon little support in the Pashtu-dominated south from where he hails and which has been particularly hard-hit by the insurgency.
He has never had much backing in the Uzbek and Tajik-dominated north of the ethnically riven nation.
"Karzai did get a mandate from the people and I don't think he always remembers that," political analyst Joanna Nathan said.
People are in particular unhappy with appointments to national and provincial government, with some officials alleged to be involved in crime, the opium trade or past human rights abuses, she said.
"The administration needs to seize the agenda and tackle corruption and change peoples' lives," she said.
Afghanistan's infrastructure was all but destroyed in the past nearly three decade of war; the country is one of the poorest in the world with some of the lowest human development indicators.
It supplies Europe with almost all its illegal opium, with drugs traders and other criminals adding to instability wrought by the Taliban.
"Any government dealing with the enormous task of state building as this one is would be as fragile as this government is today," rights activist Nader Nadery said.
The task has however been hampered by a focus, led in part by the international community, on political development at the expense of issues like judicial reform and disarmament, he said.
Karzai has long called for more international troops to defeat the insurgency. And as the unrest has peaked this year, he has urged the international community to find a better way to tackle terrorism.
That he has called for an improved plan "indicates that this is an extremely difficult time," a Western analyst said on condition of anonymity.
"But to read from that that he is particularly fragile is going too far. From the international community's point of view he is the only credible person to deal with," the analyst said.
The president's office meanwhile dismisses suggestions that his popularity is waning, saying saboteurs try to detract from his successes by creating security problems.
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