October 7, 2002	Monday	Rajab 29, 1423

KABUL: The United States can look back on a year-long military campaign in Afghanistan on Monday and see it as a job well done.

At a cost of minimal casualties the Taliban is overthrown, what remains of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network is scattered and a government has been installed in Kabul that, if not representative of the people’s will, appears to have broad backing.

However, none of this has been achieved without compromise.

Analysts say that without a significant shift in focus of the US campaign, there is a risk of the achievements unravelling and Afghanistan slipping back into the chaos and bloodshed that marked much of its last tragic quarter century.

Hamid Karzai’s administration remains fragile, a fact starkly underlined by the president’s narrow escape from assassination in early September, and US military operations have been reliant on unholy alliances with notorious regional warlords.

Some of them appear more interested in battling each other to bolster their personal power bases and wealth than ensuring a long-term future for their country.

Analysts say that unless central authority can be established nationwide, there is a danger of a new descent into factional rivalry and regionalism that would provide a breeding ground for the very extremism Washington has been trying to eradicate since the September 11 attacks last year.

With the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar still unknown and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar lurking in the wings, they remain potential focal points for the discontented.

Karzai’s government, with the support of the international community, is under pressure to make a tangible improvement, quickly, in the lives of ordinary people.

“It’s been a military success in that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been defeated,” Pakistan-based Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid said of the past year.

“But US strategy has not changed since last year. What is needed now is a greater implementation of a political and economic strategy to strengthen the central government in Kabul and the economy. The real battle now needs to be fought on a different front.”—Reuters