Despite scattered gains by international troops fighting Taliban insurgents in the country's south, Afghan and foreign analysts here have voiced concern that a recent peace initiative is backfiring and that lapsed Afghan militias could be drawn into the conflict unless it is quickly quelled and replaced by aid and protection.
NATO and U.S. military officials here said this week that an intensive two-week operation against Taliban fighters in Kandahar province had been a tactical success, killing more than 500 insurgents and forcing others to retreat. Afghan and foreign forces also retook a district in neighboring Helmand province that had been seized twice by the Taliban.
But these pockets of progress on the battlefield are part of a larger, murkier political map. As other Afghan militias begin defensively rearming, ethnic tensions have risen, raising the specter of the kind of civil conflict that devastated the country in the early 1990s.
A call for additional troops by NATO's senior commander has so far drawn only one positive response, Poland's offer of 1,000 personnel. Military officials here say pro-government forces need to win key areas soon and to begin delivering aid and security if they are to halt the slide in public support.
"We can't just keep fighting endless battles without having something to offer the next day," a senior Western military official said. "We have killed a lot of Taliban, but they are not running out of foot soldiers, and for every one we kill, we create new families that hate us."
Peace pact with Taliban forces
On Sept. 5, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, announced a peace pact with domestic Taliban forces operating in the tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border. The next day, he traveled here to promote the agreement and to try to ease tensions with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, saying the two leaders should work together to fight the Taliban and terrorism.
Under the peace deal, Taliban groups in Pakistan pledged not to cross the border to attack in Afghanistan. But since Sept. 5, assaults on Afghan and foreign forces near the Pakistani frontier have continued.
Musharraf, meanwhile, infuriated Afghan officials by making comments in Europe this week that equated members of the Taliban with Pashtuns, the largest Afghan ethnic group, and suggested they were more dangerous than al-Qaeda.
"Associating the Pashtuns with the Taliban is an affront to a community who is eager to establish security and sustainable stability all over Afghanistan," the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The ministry expressed "profound regret over Pres. Musharraf's attempt to attribute a murderous group and the enemy of peace to one of the ethnic groups living on the both sides of the Durand line."
The Durand Line, arbitrarily drawn by the British in 1893 to separate Afghanistan from what is now Pakistan, is a perennial irritant for both countries. It divides Pashtun tribal lands and is not accepted by many Afghans.
Many Afghans say they suspect that Musharraf's deal with Taliban forces in his own country is an attempt to wash his hands of a domestic problem and push it across the border into Afghanistan. At the same time, they say, he has gratuitously insulted a neighbor that had hosted him just days before.
Musharraf has stood by his pact and denied intending to give offense. He and Karzai are scheduled to meet separately with President Bush in Washington this month. The Bush administration strongly backs both rulers and is eager to patch up their tense relations. Since the overthrow of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in late 2001, the United States has made a major investment in troops and money in an effort to bring stable and democratic rule to the region as an antidote to Islamic extremism.
Persistent and widening attacks
Inside Afghanistan, persistent and widening attacks by anti-government insurgents have provided ethnic militia leaders in both the north and south with an excuse to regroup and potentially rearm their forces, many of which were disbanded after 2001 under an ambitious, U.N.-sponsored program.
In the Pashtun south, where Afghan army and police forces are underpaid, poorly equipped and scattered thinly across the conflict zone, the government has authorized local police forces to form auxiliary contingents, most likely drawing on idle former militiamen. In some cases, tribal leaders have threatened to form their own defense forces.
In the north and west, dominated by the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups, former Islamic militia figures who fought Soviet troops in the 1980s are said to virtually control daily life in many areas. Despite a new program to disarm and pacify the region, Afghan and foreign observers said some commanders appear to be gaining further strength as the Taliban threat draws closer and villagers seek powerful patrons to protect them.
"In the north, they ask how they can be expected to disarm if the south is arming itself," said one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. Ethnic divisions are so deep in Afghanistan, the diplomat added, that if the Karzai government were to fall, civil conflict might resume almost immediately.
"Five years ago, the Taliban were very weak and the warlords had all fled the country," said Sayed Daud, director of the Afghan Media Resource Center, a nonprofit research agency. "Now the Taliban are back and the warlords are back. They have made a lot of money, they have weapons, and the government can't touch them."
Insurgency spreading
The insurgency continues to spread beyond the south. In the past week, fresh attacks have taken place as far apart as Ghazni province in the east, where Taliban and NATO forces have been battling over several villages, and Farah province in the far west, where 150 Taliban fighters stormed the provincial capital and others shot and killed an Afghan U.N. employee.
But the most urgent need, military officials and diplomats said, is to contain the southern conflict, defeat the insurgents in key districts of Kandahar and Helmand, and begin providing support to civilians there.
British and Canadian troops have fought intensely and suffered numerous casualties since NATO took over command of the southern front from the U.S.-led coalition on July 31. But military and diplomatic observers cited concern that forces from other NATO countries, operating under narrower mandates laid down by edgy governments, will not shoulder enough of the burden.
"A great deal is at stake here for NATO. It's their first operation outside Europe and an important test case," said one foreign observer. "If the fighting worsens, some members may ask whether it is worth the risk, and some may ask why they should put their soldiers in harm's way while others are sitting in easy places."
Even more is at stake for Afghans, who felt abandoned by their Western supporters after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 and now fear the same could happen again. NATO and U.S. military officials reiterated this week that their commitment is long-term, but they also said time is running short.
"It took us four years to learn how to operate here. NATO doesn't have four years," a U.S. military official said. "It's not enough to kill Taliban. We're trying to help build a government that is weak and still fighting off the competition. That's the really hard part."
