Afghan Symbol for Change Becomes a Symbol of Failure

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Today, Little America is the epicenter of a Taliban resurgence and an explosion in drug cultivation that has claimed the lives of 106 American and NATO soldiers this year and doubled American casualty rates countrywide. Across Afghanistan, roadside bomb attacks are up by 30 percent; suicide bombings have doubled. Statistically it is now nearly as dangerous to serve as an American soldier in Afghanistan as it is in Iraq.

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The Defense Department initially opposed a request by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and Afghanistan’s new leaders for a sizable peacekeeping force and deployed only 8,000 American troops, but purely in a combat role, officials said. During the first 18 months after the invasion, the United States-led coalition deployed no peacekeepers outside Kabul, leaving the security of provinces like Helmand to local Afghans.

“Where the world, including the United States, came up short was on the security side,” said Richard Haass, the former director of policy planning at the State Department. “That was the mistake which I believe is coming back to haunt the United States now.”

The lack of security was just one element of a volatile mix. Twenty years of conflict had shattered government and social structures in Afghanistan, the world’s fifth poorest country, where the average life expectancy is 43. American officials said the country was more destitute than they had envisioned, yet the $909 million they provided in assistance in 2002 amounted to one-twentieth of the $20 billion allocated for postwar Iraq. Officials quintupled assistance to $4.8 billion by 2005, but then reduced it by 30 percent this year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?hp&ex=1157428800&en=f12786ce52bb6ae6&ei=5094&partner=homepage