Grading The Other War

KOJI HARADA/KYODO/AP
A crowded Northern Alliance tank rumbles down the streets of Kabul

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Sparing Civilians
From last October through the battle of Shah-i-Kot in March, the U.S. dropped around 20,000 bombs on Afghanistan. Pentagon officials privately acknowledge that the bombings probably killed hundreds of Afghan civilians; Afghan officials and U.S. aid workers in Kabul claim as many as 3,000 civilians died. Many ordinary Afghans were willing to live with the air strikes during the war, knowing that they were aimed at defeating a hated regime and its terrorist guests. But much of the goodwill the U.S. built up by liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban's rule has been dissipated by mistakes made after the fighting died down. U.S. forces allowed themselves to be duped by local bandits in eastern Afghanistan who called in American air strikes on their tribal enemies, pretending that they were al-Qaeda fighters on the run. Overzealous U.S. forces wiped out a wedding party and twice hit gatherings of Karzai supporters.

Hundreds of families of Afghans killed by errant bombs are demanding compensation for the loss of their loved ones, and the U.S. government has made some payments. Apart from their outrage at U.S. mistakes, Afghan civilians are frustrated by the plodding pace of the international relief effort. Washington has committed $280 million to Afghanistan this year more than any other donor country but aside from the yellow food packets dropped by allied warplanes during the war, ordinary Afghans have seen few tangible signs of the anticipated U.S. assistance. Because the Pentagon wants to maintain the combat readiness of American forces in order to launch search-and-destroy missions against remnant enemy targets, U.S. soldiers don't mix much with the civilian population. The U.S. has devoted just $16 million over two years to civilian projects such as school reconstruction and well digging, and most American troops are instructed to stay at the large U.S. bases rather than venture into Afghan villages.

Keeping the Peace
From the start, the U.S. never had much interest in maintaining a large presence in Afghanistan. The longer the U.S. stays, propping up embattled President Hamid Karzai while continuing to stage the dangerously scattershot hunt for bin Laden, the more Afghans will grow to resent the Americans. But with reconstruction efforts stalled and various warlords stirring up opposition to the Kabul government, the alternative is a return to chaos. And so in recent weeks the U.S. military has assumed the kind of peacekeeping duties that the Bush Administration has sought to hand off to the 5,000-person International Security Assistance Force. Last month Lieut. General Dan McNeill, the commander of U.S.-led forces in the country, spent an afternoon mediating a border-tax dispute between rival warlords from Kandahar and Herat. After an hour of discussions at a house overlooking Herat, the trio emerged and broke into a round of hugs. "We've been drawn into this nation-building process reluctantly," says a U.S. official in Kabul. "But this is what we have to do if we want to make this place work."

It isn't working yet. The U.S.'s chief security interest lies in shoring up the Kabul government and helping set up a national army that can solidify the central administration's authority in the lawless countryside. But to accomplish those tasks, the U.S. will have to navigate a thicket of ethnic rivalries and blood feuds and there is reason to doubt that the U.S. is committed to doing the dirty work. Western diplomats in Kabul say protecting Karzai, a member of the majority Pashtuns, should remain the top priority for U.S. forces; but the military is preparing to take special-ops troops off Karzai's security detail and turn the task over to a private U.S. security firm. At the same time, the fledgling U.S. effort to arm and train a multiethnic army that reports to Karzai has started to irritate leaders of the Northern Alliance, who view the new force as a potential threat to their hard-won power.

With a new war looming, the temptation will only increase for the U.S. to allow the bickering Afghan warlords to settle scores on their own. But the risks of walking away now are huge. If the U.S. does, says British Colonel Nick Parker, a military planner in Afghanistan, "we'll all be back here in five years fighting another terrorist organization." If America hopes to rally the world to help rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq, finishing the job in Afghanistan is a test it still must prove it can pass.