As U.S. Attention Turns to Iraq, Afghanistan Slides Toward Chaos

by Jim Lobe

The two incidents will also give weight to critics of Bush's apparent determination to go to war against Baghdad who say Washington should consolidate its victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan before moving on to other military adventures.

Those critics include German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who, of all major U.S. allies, has come out most solidly against a U.S. war to oust Hussein, even if Bush gets support from the U.S. Congress and the United Nations Security Council.

"My concern is that we have not even begun to achieve in Afghanistan anything that could be called nation-building," he warned in an interview with the New York Times.

"Before we have made any progress there, before we have proved to the disenfranchised masses in the third world that it is worth their while to return to the Western fold," he continued, "I would say that military interventions -- in whatever terms they may be justified -- tend to be counterproductive for the international coalition against terror."

The first of Thursday's incidents took place in a busy Kabul shopping area near the information ministry. A small explosion was followed by a much larger car bomb that sent debris and body parts flying across the area.

UN sources said more than 20 people may have been killed in the second blast. It was the worst in a series of recent bomb attacks that officials have blamed on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and another anti-western faction headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahid chieftain who ironically received the bulk of Washington's covert aid when Afghanistan was occupied by Soviet troops in the 1980s.

Several hours later, an Afghan security guard reportedly fired on a convoy in which Karzai was riding in southern Kandahar, prompting the president's U.S. bodyguards to begin shooting.

While Karzai emerged unhurt in the exchange, at least three Afghans were killed in the exchange and Kandahar's governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, was reportedly grazed by a bullet in the neck.

Kandahar is the heartland of the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, who have become increasingly disaffected with the U.S.-backed government since the mainly Pashtun Taliban was ousted from power last November.

Although Karzai is himself a Pashtun, he is widely seen by the group as a front for the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which controls key cabinet positions, including the defence and foreign ministries.

Many Pashtuns reportedly believe that the Alliance was behind the July assassination of the only Pashtun vice president, Hajji Abdul Qadir, an incident that increased internal tensions markedly and persuaded Washington to replace Karzai's Afghan bodyguards with U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel.

The move also contributed to the sense that the country's effective stabilization remains far off.

Hekmatyar, also a Pashtun, bitterly opposed the Taliban but may now be linked to its remnants, as well as to al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.

Earlier this summer, the United States mounted an attack on a convoy that it believed, mistakenly, was carrying Hekmatyar in an apparent bid to eliminate him.

The increasingly high-profile attacks in Afghanistan come as the Pentagon has reportedly reconsidered its opposition to expanding the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) beyond Kabul and into other major cities around the country, including Kandahar.

For most of the past eight months, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected appeals from Karzai, European allies, a number of U.S. lawmakers, and relief groups operating in Afghanistan to enlarge the 5,000-man ISAF and extend its reach to help stabilize regions where tensions between rival ethnic militias and warlords occasionally erupt into violence.

The same forces also argued that extending ISAF control around the country was the only effective way of asserting the central government's authority over the warlords.

But Rumsfeld steadfastly opposed such an effort, insisting that it would interfere with Washington's efforts to track down and eliminate remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Those efforts have turned out to have been largely fruitless and reportedly are causing a drop in morale among U.S. SOF and ground forces assigned to the task.

Instead, the Pentagon concentrated on equipping and training a new, multi-ethnic Afghan army, a process that most observers believe will take years.

It pledged to intervene through its air power and SOF personnel, who have been attached to key warlords around the country since last November to prevent local conflicts from getting out of hand.

The latter strategy is increasingly seen here and in Afghanistan as counter-productive, especially in Pashtun areas that have borne the brunt of deadly U.S. air and commando strikes against civilians that resulted for the most part from mistaken intelligence or manipulation by rival warlords.

More recently, the disclosure that mainly Uzbek forces under the control of Northern Alliance commander Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum killed hundreds of mainly Pashtun and Pakistani prisoners after the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz last November by sealing them in sealed containers has further inflamed Pashtun opinion against the United States, whose denials of any knowledge of the killings have met with a skeptical reception.

Dostum has received strong U.S. backing. Meanwhile, international reconstruction aid has fallen far below targets agreed to by donors last January and has been overwhelmed by the return of as many as 1.5 million refugees from neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

Many of the returnees are camped on the dusty outskirts of Kabul and other cities without access to basic services, according to relief agencies.

"One has to wonder how this administration thinks that it can invade and then stabilize Iraq with less international support than it had in Afghanistan, when the situation in Afghanistan itself is bordering on chaos 10 months after we went in," noted one Congressional staff member.