LONDON: The Bush administration’s claim to be pursuing a coherent policy in post-Taliban Afghanistan becomes less credible with each passing day. Consider the events of the last two weeks.

On the military front, US bombing in the east of the country, as intense as at any time since the war began in October, appears to be in inverse proportion to remaining, legitimate targets.

Despite all this aerial frenzy, none of Al Qaeda’s elusive senior leaders has been killed or caught while regrouped gangs of Taliban “holdouts” materialize in intelligence reports only mysteriously to disappear once the B-52 and B-1B bombers take to the air.

One entirely predictable consequence of this unguided thrashing-about was the murderous Dec 29 attack on Qalaye Niazi village that vaporised a wedding party somehow mistaken for top Al Qaeda desperados.

The UN says that 62 civilians died that night; other estimates run as high as 107. Having initially denied any error, the Pentagon now promises an investigation.

But this bombing already constitutes the deadliest single “collateral damage” incident in the Afghan war. It also symbolises the continuing, unjustifiable threat to the Afghan population posed by the US air force.

It is only a matter of time, if matters do not improve, before Afghanistan’s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, will be obliged to join those in his coalition who have demanded a halt to US operations; or before allied governments, including Britain’s, must disassociate themselves from these increasingly mindless tactics.

On the political and diplomatic front, the puzzle that is Washington’s policy grows more complex and contradictory. Tiring of admitting he has no idea where Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar are, the Pentagon’s spokesman, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, says the US has decided to stop ”chasing shadows”.

But even George Bush knows that victory will never be complete with Osama and his top thugs still unaccounted for.

Thus one day sees the US saying it will extend the hunt into Pakistan, the next that Somalia or Yemen may be in the cross-hairs. Iraq, apparently, is off the hook for now.

But then up jumps Bush with a new hunch: Iran. “We hope they wouldn’t allow Al Qaeda murderers to hide in their country,” he said on Thursday, implying that is exactly what the US believes Iran is doing.

Meanwhile, loath to risk an extended US ground presence in Afghanistan and overly reliant on pay-as-you-hunt proxy forces, Washington is forced to look on as warlords cut private deals, carve up the country and, as happened this week, allow three wanted Taliban ministers to walk free in Kandahar.

Into this fraught arena comes the British-led, 18-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that was formally launched on Thursday by UK defence secretary Geoff Hoon.

Its objective is to help stabilize the country and bolster the central authority. But, thanks as much to the US as the Northern Alliance, its powers are perhaps fatally limited.

The ISAF is restricted to the Kabul area; it will be 5,000-strong at most; it has no remit, for example, to counter alleged Iranian-inspired agitation in the west; and all its activities are, in any case, subject to veto by an America that insists its flailing, rudderless war on terrorism must take priority over reconstruction.

“It would be a terrible mistake to walk away and let this place fall back into the dictatorship and poverty that is the ground in which fanatic extremists like Osama grew,” warned US Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman during a visit to Kabul this week.

But that, tragically, could be the net effect of current US policy. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service