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Suddenly in Kabul, DJs are in demand. Ball gowns are being brushed off and red, white and blue outfits picked out. American expatriates are debating the relative merits of competing inaugural balls, one hosted by Democrats Abroad, another by the U.S. embassy. Tickets for both are sold out, and for those who are neither Democrats nor American, viewing parties have been planned across the capital. Afghans with access to satellite television are charging car batteries to ensure that not one minute of the inaugural festivities will be lost to the city's chronic power outages. Not even Saturday's suicide car bombing in the capital, which killed four Afghans and one American, has dimmed hopes that Barack Obama's campaign slogan, "Change We Can Believe In," applies just as much in Afghanistan.

Perhaps it should. While the death toll was low compared with other recent attacks, the bomber — Shamsullah Rehman, according to the Taliban spokesman who took credit for the blast — was able to penetrate the very center of Kabul. He detonated his Toyota Corolla in front of the German embassy and across the street from a U.S. military base on one of the most well-guarded roads in the capital. The attack took place less than two months after a similar bombing in front of the U.S. embassy that killed four, and just over a year after an audacious commando-style suicide charge on the capital's only luxury hotel took the lives of four foreigners. While it has been largely accepted that the rest of the country is slipping into chaos, the capital, at least, was supposed to be exempt. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)

It's not. And as President-elect Obama heard from Vice President–elect Joe Biden and Senator Lindsey Graham last week, when the two returned from a fact-finding visit to Afghanistan, "things are going to get tougher" here.

Throughout his campaign Obama correctly (if incompletely, considering the near civil war boiling over in neighboring Pakistan) identified Afghanistan as the central front in the war on terrorism. He has echoed the demands of commanders on the ground for more troops, and the Pentagon has tentatively agreed to send as many as 30,000 more U.S. soldiers to the country. That will nearly double the number of American troops on the ground, and bring the total number of foreign soldiers, including those of NATO nations, to about 92,000. (Iraq, which is smaller in both size and population, had 162,000 troops even before the surge.)

It's a bit of a Cinderella promise. Obama won't get the troops he wants for Afghanistan until they are done cleaning house in Iraq, a line of fine print that has been largely overlooked by escalation cheerleaders. Meanwhile, the incoming administration has indicated that the increase is only a placeholder until a comprehensive new strategy can be developed for the region. (See pictures of Afghanistan.)

The Bush Administration's strategy for Afghanistan was largely defined by its absence of one. Once the Taliban were defeated, U.S. troops remained here in a mostly counterterrorism capacity that ultimately proved self-defeating. Terrorists cannot be wiped out if the factors that lead to the creation of new terrorists — indoctrination, fear, poverty and lack of education, foreign influences and sanctuaries across the border — are not also eliminated. Despite a steady increase of troops in Afghanistan from both the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban insurgency, all but defeated in 2001, has grown in strength and capacity. More of the same is not going to be enough: the year 2008 was the mostly deadly for foreign soldiers since the war began, despite the record number of troops.

The best questions for the Obama Administration to ask are not how many troops, how quickly or for how long but rather what Afghanistan should look like when the U.S. leaves and how much time and money Washington is willing to spend.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

Seven years and billions of dollars have brought Afghanistan no closer to the peaceful democracy that George W. Bush promised at the beginning of the war. Instead, the country more closely resembles the warlord-led kleptocracy of the 1990s that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place. Corruption is the defining characteristic of the central government, and President Hamid Karzai is largely seen as an American puppet unable to rein in the excesses of government ministers or even his own family. And he's not even a good puppet — Karzai routinely and publicly berates his foreign guests in a naked attempt to court popularity in advance of presidential elections scheduled for later this year. In doing so, he is not only encouraging anti–foreign sentiment when it is least helpful, but also undermining his own status by proving that he is powerless to do anything.

At least the Obama administration is not going in blind. Last week Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton called Afghanistan a "narco state" whose government was "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption." And former ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke, who will serve as Obama's envoy for Southwest Asia, said last year that the Afghan government "is weak; it is corrupt; it has a very thin leadership veneer." And it's not just the Americans. On Sunday NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer wrote in the Washington Post that "the basic problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance. Afghans need a government that deserves their loyalty and trust; when they have it, the oxygen will be sucked away from the insurgency."

There has been development, of course. But even success stories are full of problems. The U.S. has built new schools, but there are not enough teachers, and salaries are so low that nobody stays. On a trip to Helmand last summer I met a farmer who had been offered a water pump that would have enabled him to turn his desert-like property into a field of wheat and vegetables. He declined it, fearing that the Taliban would find out he had accepted a gift from foreigners and would execute him as a spy. (See pictures from Prince Harry's deployment to Helmand.)

Afghans do not see that foreign troops are bringing them the safety they desire. Instead they associate foreigners with air strikes on innocents and raids on houses, while basic security, justice and protection from crime remain out of reach. As one 13-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and raped on her way home from school told me, "Yes, I used to like school, but this happened to me when I walked home one day. Life has not improved since the Taliban left. Either way I can't get an education, but at least under the Taliban I wouldn't have to worry about getting raped."

When farmers are afraid of water pumps and young girls are nostalgic for Taliban rule, it is clear that there has been a strategic failure. Success in Afghanistan will not be measured by the number of Taliban killed or the capture of Osama bin Laden. Even elections mean little when most Afghans assume that they are fixed by foreign nations from the outset. No, success will come as incrementally as the number of teenagers who graduate from school and find a job. It will come when Afghans look to their police for help, and when they can get justice from the courts without a bribe. This is the kind of strategic vision Obama's team needs. This is the change Afghans can believe in.

— With reporting by Ali Safi/Kabul

See pictures of the perils of childbirth in Afghanistan.

Read a TIME cover story on Afghanistan.

• Aryn Baker / Kabul
• Afghans hope for change along with the rest of the world. Here's how the new president could really make a difference