Foreign Policy -- Casting his vote for who he hopes to be his successor, Karzai marked the beginning of a new chapter in Afghanistan's history -- a chapter that will be dictated by the 7 million Afghans who flocked to the polls that blustery Saturday. He is the first ruler of Afghanistan to step down from power and, if everything goes smoothly, witness a peaceful transition of power to someone other than him. A look into Afghanistan's past will indeed underscore the significance of this moment. --- Of the 28 monarchs and rulers who sat on the Afghan throne between 1747 and 2001, only six were confirmed to have died of natural causes while in power. Five were assassinated by political rivals or discontent subjects, the most recent being Burhanuddin Rabbani in 2011. The remaining 18 were all deposed and killed in vicious manners by their successors. --- The most heinous of brutalities, however, happened within the last 40 years and are yet to be forgotten by the Afghan people. In 1978, Mohammad Daoud Khan -- then Afghanistan's president -- disappeared from the palace with his entire family after a coup-d'état by the Soviet-backed communists. Witnesses who toured the presidential palace after the communist take-over narrated spine-chilling stories of human flesh and blood on the palace's trees and walls. It was not until 2008, 40 years later, that their bodies were found inside two mass graves in the outskirts of Kabul. --- Almost every transition of power in Afghanistan, even between members of the same family, has come hand-in-hand with bloodshed and cruelty. Since being built by the British Indians during their occupation of Afghanistan in 1880, the coveted presidential palace has been a grave to many of the ambitious men who have sat on its throne. Karzai is no stranger to the sinister history of the palace, and he is wise to know that should he cling to it, the palace will not remain any more loyal to him than to those who came before. --- Whether Karzai truly believes in democracy and the notion that the Afghan people should decide who rules them or if he contrived a plot to indirectly remain in power is known only to him, and maybe few around him. Nevertheless, his decision to step down from power and vote as an ordinary Afghan citizen closed the chapter on Afghanistan's history of violence and blood and ensures his legacy as the president who laid the foundations for Afghanistan's newborn democracy. -- Although Afghanistan will still be plagued by insecurity, corruption, and a frail economy for the foreseeable future, the country strengthened its process of democratization the moment Karzai dropped his ballot inside the blue-colored election box. - Abuzar Royesh is a student at Tufts University, originally from Afghanistan. - More, http://southasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/05/09/what_karzai_got_right