Calls grow for shift in Afghan policy

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The Bush administration faces increasing pressure to make a major policy course correction on Afghanistan, shifting the focus from Iraq to fight a resurgent terrorist threat and build up the faltering government in Kabul.

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing today is set to take up a string of new reports warning that the political and economic situations in Afghanistan are deteriorating amid growing strains between the United States and its NATO allies over the military mission there.

"Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," warns a new study by the Atlantic Council of the U.S. "Unless this reality is understood, and action is taken promptly, the future of Afghanistan is bleak, with regional and global impact."

Private analysts and a number of top lawmakers say the trends in Afghanistan today are not good, even as the situation in Iraq has taken a more hopeful turn in recent months.

Challenges include a Taliban-al Qaeda insurgency that has grown more aggressive in the south; soaring opium production that is undermining the legitimate economy; instability across the border in Pakistan's tribal strongholds; and public squabbles between the NATO allies and with the government of President Hamid Karzai on the way forward.

"The bottom line is that, on the current course, we're losing ground in Afghanistan," said Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that monitors Afghanistan.

A second new study, produced by many of the diplomats and strategists who drafted the December 2006 Iraq Study Group report, warned that Afghanistan has become a "forgotten war" in the U.S. focus on Iraq, and that Afghanistan is in danger of political collapse if major policy changes are not instituted.

Afghanistan, the report concluded, "stands today at a crossroads." Key recommendations included "de-coupling" Afghanistan from Iraq in U.S. policy and funding debates and to appoint a U.S. government "czar" for the Afghan mission.

"The United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," the Afghanistan Study Group report said.

Gen. James L. Jones, former U.S. NATO commander and a co-chairman of the study, said, "It's not a question of effort. It's a question of focus."

But the study called for more coalition forces at a time when the NATO allies are bickering over troop levels and the division of labor in the war. Canada, with a large contingent in the country's violent south, has appealed so far without success for other NATO countries to share the burden.

President Bush has approved the dispatch of 3,200 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but the Pentagon this week made clear that no more American forces would be deployed for now.

Mr. Bush is his State of the Union address Monday gave a brief but positive review of the Afghan mission, saying the international coalition had helped turn a "safe haven for al Qaeda" into a democracy where new schools, hospitals and roads are being built.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Afghan mission remains challenging, but there had been real progress and the U.S. commitment remained firm.

"We know what a failed state looks like. It was Afghanistan under the Taliban," he said. "While Afghanistan of today has a variety of different challenges, it is not Afghanistan of 2001."

But U.S. officials and private analysts expressed disappointment that veteran British diplomat Paddy Ashdown this week withdrew from consideration as the new U.N. "super envoy" to Afghanistan after Mr. Karzai effectively vetoed the nomination.

"It's a tragedy that Lord Ashdown is not able to take that job," said David M. Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, which organized the Afghanistan Study Group report.