Being a true leader means putting people first; In other words a true leader considers the people supreme and ensuring the rights of the people is his ultimate goal. In our age leadership requires a good understanding of the current political, economic and social situations of the country, region and the world. Such a leader could address the concerns of the people and could manage the challenges people face successfully.
Leadership is just filling a position for many people, especially in Afghanistan; but as a matter of fact, leadership is guarding the trust of the people. In our world, electoral processes are one of the common means that people elect some specific people to fulfill a responsibility they gave to them.
In the context of Afghanistan, many people who are elected by the people do not subject themselves to serve the needs of the people. They just make unreliable promises to the people during election campaigns and once they get the vote of the people, they totally forget those who have given the position and responsibility to them. There may be various factors involved in such political behavior in our society, but the most common and influential one is the lack of believing to democratic principles by such leaders. They merely consider elections as a tool that they can deceive some people and have their votes, and then feel no responsibility to these people, because they neither consider themselves accountable to the people and nor consider their positions as a responsibility given by the people to them to guard their trust.
Considering the widening social division and conflicts in Afghanistan, we need leaders who could unite the different groups of the society and create a common vision to motivate all of them to pursue it. Such leaders have the capability to lead the society towards prosperity, not further their own interests.
One of the other characteristics of a good leader is being a just person. Justice in leadership is a core concept, because a good leader should put aside his personal inclinations and preferences. As we witness in our society, most of the Afghan leaders lack this characteristic and there are various examples how they misuse their power and distribute the resource to their family, and ethnic groups and etc.  
Further, lack of good governance is one of the major problems in the context of leadership in Afghanistan. Good governance implies being honest, fair; merit based, ensuring participatory processes and equal distribution of opportunities and resources among all the people. It requires having a strong political will to govern well and empower it. Poor management of public resources and failure in policy implementation by the current Afghan leaders are the consequences of weak governance because they are not committed leaders and also lack integrity and relevant knowledge. In other words, these leaders do not have the relevant knowledge and are not capable of demonstrating high competencies and correct attitudes for their supporters to replicate them. While they are expected to contribute constructively in the national processes, and be directly involved in formulating, implementing, controlling and supervising policies that are specifically designed to address the problems of their constituents according to the right order of priorities; they usually fail to do so either due to lack of competencies or lack of commitment to the people at the national level. On the other hand, incompetent leaders usually incite group, ethnic, religious, etc. divisions to cover up their weaknesses and gain the support of those elements of society who do not have a big vision and can easily be satisfied by short term interests.
Leaders play a crucial role in different political, economic and social issues. Nation building is one of the areas that leaders are expected to play a constructive role in it. In fact, leaders are the prime movers in nation building agenda in any country. It is self evident; nation building is the process of constructing or structuring a national identity through state power. The aim of nation building process is unifying the people within a state so that it remains politically, economically and socially stable. Nation building ensures that the nation become strong and resistant in the long run and different groups of the people share a shared vision in terms of the critical issues of their country. To realize this, a nation should have leaders who are proactive and innovative in their approach to ensure that the objectives of the nation building are achieved and the interests of different social groups are ensured. Therefore, ensuring nation building and having a unified vision and a strong nation, require good governance: And good governance needs highly qualified and competent leaders who consider the people supreme.
The prosperity of a nation depends on its leaders. Good leaders, who consider leadership as a responsibility given by the people to them to ensure their interest, are aware of the political, economic and social issues and can make informed public policy decisions, can lead the society toward peace, prosperity and a shared vision. No society would achieve these, unless it has just and competent leaders and a good governance system put in place and led by such leaders.