PESHAWAR, Feb 8: “Why are you letting them in,” screamed an Afghan refugee. Her burqa hid her age but not her anger: “The Americans are not good. They are hurting our people in Afghanistan.”

Our small party quickly retreated. A crowd was gathering, and we had already been warned that another camp was unsafe for foreigners. Obviously, not all Afghans were grateful for being “liberated.”

The Bush administration has overthrown the Taliban and smashed the Al Qaeda network, but it says US troops will remain in Afghanistan at least till mid-year. Washington’s allies are hoping to move peacekeeping forces into the Afghan countryside and will stay even longer, reports Japan Times.

Unfortunately, winning the war was easy compared to creating a liberal and stable government in Kabul. The United States should temper its objectives: Afghanistan’s political development doesn’t matter so long as Afghans aren’t helping Arabs kill Americans.

The US and its allies had a vital interest in ending Afghanistan’s support for a murderous terrorist network. They have fulfilled that objective brilliantly.

There is no similar stake in attempting to construct a new regime in Kabul. Although the West could not abide another government that sheltered terrorists, such a government is quite unlikely.

Washington has demonstrated that while it will not enforce the right to, say, fly a kite, it will depose a government that allies with groups hostile to the US. Ruling elites, like the Taliban, then will find themselves to be former ruling elites.

Even the most xenophobic Afghan warlord is not likely to host an Al Qaeda training camp in the future.

To try to create a nation-state in the West’s image would be a fool’s errand, however. David Malone, President of the International Peace Academy, acknowledges: “Ideal social engineering projects devised in the United Nations Security Council or in regional organizations cannot be imposed on populations.”

That is certainly the case in Afghanistan, an artificial country. It is sharply divided among ethnic groups, which dress, talk and worship differently. They have stronger ties with ethnic brethren in surrounding states than with each other.

There is little loyalty to the entity of Afghanistan.

Britain’s Lord Curzon, who did much national map-redrawing in his career, called Afghanistan “a purely accidental geographic unit,” an outgrowth of the so-called Great Game played by imperial Britain and Czarist Russia.

The mind boggles at the thought of the United Nations trying to “nurture” democracy in Afghanistan. Local warlords have re-emerged out of the ashes of Taliban rule, controlling an estimated 80 per cent of the population.

Foreign peacekeepers might deter them from battling for control of Kabul. Far more difficult will be dampening growing violence elsewhere: Rival factions have, for instance, been fighting in the provincial capital of Gardez.

Simple banditry in outlying areas will be hard to suppress, even if Britain and other countries pour in more troops. And no occupation will generate allegiance to whatever set of political figures is recognized by the West as the national government.

Still, Ivo Daadler of the Brookings Institution speaks of a peacekeeping operation “only for a limited time — a matter of months.” In fact, such a short-term, soft approach would likely leave little imprint.

Thus, any occupation inevitably would end up long-term. In 1995, US president Bill Clinton promised that Americans would leave the Balkans after one year. They are still there.

But a longer, tougher presence would generate local opposition that could easily turn violent. It’s one thing to stick around to eradicate the remnants of Al Qaeda. It’s quite another to, as suggested by President George W. Bush, try to bring stability to Afghanistan.

Of course, Washington’s allies should be welcome to try to do so if they want. America’s comparative advantage is fighting wars. The Europeans are better at garrisoning defeated lands.

Does the West have a responsibility to try to re-create Afghanistan? Olivier Roy, of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, opines: “America is fighting now because it left too soon 13 years ago.”

But the US was never there. Washington aided Afghan rebels struggling against rule by the Soviet Union and its Afghan surrogates. Once Moscow withdrew, the Afghans were no more disposed to accept direction from America. And the West’s recent efforts at nation-building give little reason for confidence. Somalia and Haiti remain disasters. Bosnia is an artificial state that survives only through Western military occupation. In Kosovo even NATO’s military presence did not prevent the ethnic cleansing by Albanians of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and non-Albanian Muslims.—NNI