ISHPONI BABA (Afghanistan): As Afghanistan’s interim government desperately tries to move this demolished country into the category of somewhat functional Third World nation, one problem looms, perhaps above the myriad others: rampant lawlessness.

The outside world is trying to help bring some measure of stability to the country. The US continues to bomb suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs almost nightly in the south and east of the country in an attempt to root out terrorists. International peacekeepers are beginning to patrol the capital, Kabul. Aid agencies are flying and trucking humanitarian supplies as quickly as possible into a country where the United Nations operates under its highest threat level.

Despite such efforts, this remains a perilous land. Since the fall of the Taliban, internal violence, bribery, kidnapping, extortion - crimes committed primarily by soldiers working for one warlord or another, most people believe - has grown worse. How can a nation be rebuilt when moving about it sometimes means courting death?

“Security is the most important thing in any crisis in any nation,” said one Western diplomat in Kabul. “If a country is secure, people will stay, refugees will return, food will come, things will improve. More than drought or famine or anything else, insecurity is the most destabilizing force.”

Here, insecurity is almost all there is. Forty miles east of Kabul, the village - if 15 men with a lot of weapons, a one-room hut and a bag of onions can be called a village - is perched 50 feet above one of the most dangerous roads in Afghanistan. The Kabul-Jalalabad road has been a home for mayhem since it was only a donkey trail between the capital and the eastern city. For perhaps hundreds of years, several different tribes have claimed various parts of the route, and fought over it almost constantly.

The road, mostly dirt and gravel, is so rutted vehicles often travel no more than five or 10 mph. Heading east from Kabul, the sheer Mahipar Mountains are a stone barrier to escape and a hide-out for pirates on the left. On the right is another nearly vertical drop, down to the Kabul and then Panjshir rivers. ”Somebody who loves his life cannot live here,” said Gul Agha, one of the soldiers here.

The same is increasingly true for those who simply want to pass through. Four international journalists were stoned and shot to death in November just up the road in Sarobi. A taxi driver, who was last seen picking up a group of Northern Alliance soldiers in Kabul, was found dead last week with four bullet wounds in his chest. His car is missing.

Travelling British aid workers were stopped last month, robbed and relieved of their vehicle. Here, as in many parts of this mostly rural country, robberies that do not lead to murder seem increasingly rare. After more than two decades of war, no one has the slightest idea what the murder rate is in Afghanistan, or if it has risen since the fall of the Taliban. Brutal and repressive, the Taliban did create a society of very little violent crime.

Early optimism in the new government’s ability to keep order has waned dramatically in recent weeks. Adding to the growing sense of fear is the unpredictability of the violence; one day a road is clear and safe, the next it is a gauntlet of unofficial checkpoints, where the guards want $100 for passage, or wheat bound for refugees, or your truck. Or your life.

Without the national army that interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai hopes to build, there is no way to close the pass and clear out the armed men. Doing so hardly would address the problem, anyway, because this route is hardly unique. Although a handful of regions are considered relatively safe - mostly in the northeast and southwest - many more are deemed the opposite by international relief and other agencies.

The UN is operating in Afghanistan under rules known as “Phase 5,” meaning no workers are allowed to travel alone, or at night. They may not go anywhere without a two-way radio, or anywhere out of radio range. In Kabul, UN workers must be in their homes by 9pm, an hour before the official government curfew. In Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold, for more than two weeks workers have been ordered to stay in their homes and not go to work.

But, “If you really want to stabilize Afghanistan, you’re looking at estimates ranging from 50,000 to 200,000 troops,” said a US diplomat in Kabul. No one expects anywhere near that number to be deployed. But if there is increasingly more unrest, other nations are certain to become reluctant to commit any additional troops. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times.