Gwynne Dyer: Opium is thriving and the Taleban are back in Afghanistan

COMMENT


Two years after American troops arrived in Kabul, how is the Bush Administration's project for a democratic and prosperous Afghanistan coming along?

Well, the opium crop is booming - 3600 tonnes this year, almost back to the peak production of 4600 tonnes reached before the Taleban banned the crop in 1999.

But virtually none of the revenue finds its way to Hamid Karzai's interim government in Kabul.

The provincial warlords who control almost everything outside the capital keep it for themselves.

The rest of Afghanistan's cash income comes almost entirely from foreign aid, but much of that is channelled through the same local warlords, strengthening their grip on the population.

Small wonder that the new Afghan army, supposed to be 70,000 strong, trained just 4000 troops last year, and that the proportion of girls at school, never more than half, is dropping again because of widespread intimidation in rural areas.

Karzai is a legitimate and respected political leader, but he is only a Pashtun-speaking figurehead in an interim government whose dominant figures are mostly drawn from the non-Pashtun minorities of the north.

That was inevitable at the start because the United States subcontracted the job of overthrowing Taleban rule to the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Turkmen militias of the Northern Alliance.

But little has been done to adjust the balance since.

So the southern, Pashtun-speaking provinces that were once the Taleban's heartland are falling back into the hands of the resurgent fundamentalists.

Most of Zabul and Oruzgan provinces and half of the Kandahar region are once again Taleban-controlled by night, and US troops and those of the International Security Assistance Force have come under fire more often in the past three months than in all of the previous 15.

More than two dozen American and ISAF troops have been killed this year, a proportional loss rate worse than Iraq because of the far smaller number of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

US officials claim to be inflicting vastly greater casualties on their opponents - more than 400 Taleban fighters killed in September - but the fact that most of these casualties are caused by American airstrikes or by local militias leaves much room for doubt.

The militias have a habit of furthering their private interests by labelling their opponents Taleban, and the airstrikes are often inaccurate because the intelligence is so bad.

Two US attacks in southeastern Afghanistan killed 15 children in the same week early this month.

After 15 aid workers were killed in Taleban attacks in recent months, the United Nations has pulled its foreign workers back to Kabul.

Senior UN officials have publicly doubted whether the elections scheduled for June will happen at all.

"There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narco-terrorists," warns Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

But why has it gone so badly wrong? Simple arithmetic provides the answer.

Afghanistan's population is only slightly smaller than that of Iraq, about 20 million versus 25 million.

The occupation force in Iraq has at least 150,000 American and allied troops. There are only one-tenth as many in Afghanistan - 10,000 US regular and special forces soldiers spread round the country plus 5000 ISAF troops who are largely confined to the capital.

Military experts reckon even the US-led force in Iraq is too small for such a large and populous country.

So the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan is hopelessly inadequate for the job.

Why is it so small? Because US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was determined to keep most US troops free for the attack on Iraq.

This meant that his only option for controlling rural Afghanistan was to make alliances with local warlords and rule through them.

Until recently, these alliances did stop a Taleban comeback, but that containment policy is now failing in Pashtun areas, meaning that the project for a democratic Afghanistan was doomed from the start.

It was probably never taken seriously at the Pentagon, which has always backed its warlord allies against Karzai's attempts to assert the authority of the centre.

When Karzai tried to fire four or five "governors" who were running their provinces as personal fiefdoms last May, US officials over-ruled him.

Until recently, the US also blocked any expansion of the ISAF's role beyond Kabul, because international peacekeeping troops would not tolerate the American-warlord alliances in rural Afghanistan.

Now the roof is slowly falling in, and US policy is starting to change.

More aid money and rebuilding teams are being sent to Afghanistan and the ISAF is at last being asked to deploy outside of Kabul.

But Nato countries have little enthusiasm for playing second fiddle to American special forces in the provinces, and the US shows no sign that it will break with its warlord allies.

Three predictions:

* No internationally recognised free elections will take place in Afghanistan next year (but some sort of charade may be arranged).

* US forces will pull out within three years.

* The Taleban will be back in power within five.