April 4, 2003	Friday	Safar 1, 1424

KABUL: As the United States pushes for a decisive victory in the war in Iraq, fears are mounting that it may be about to “lose the peace” in Afghanistan.

With security deteriorating, the Taliban re-emerging, warlords reluctant to give up power, neighbouring countries interfering and the world’s attention distracted by Iraq, the achievements of the past year and a half in Afghanistan are in danger of unravelling.

Aid workers sometimes talk of a window of opportunity for restoring confidence in the Afghan state and rebuilding the country from the rubble of more than two decades of war.

“The balance is going the wrong way,” said Rafael Robillard of aid coordinating body Acbar. “The window is in danger of closing.”

Perhaps of greatest concern is the “security vacuum” caused by the central government’s feeble hold over the country, and the world’s unwillingness to station peacekeepers outside Kabul.

That vacuum is preventing promised aid and development reaching large parts of the south and east, adding to the disenchantment of majority ethnic Pakhtoons who feel they are not properly represented in the power structures in Kabul.

Into that vacuum has stepped the Taliban, the student militia ousted from government by US-backed opposition groups in late 2001. These days they are not a major political force, but they can have a massive nuisance value.

Last week, they are said to have murdered a Salvadorean Red Cross worker in a roadside ambush, the first killing of a foreign aid worker in the country in at least five years.

“I don’t think the Taliban can win,” said one diplomat, “but they can set things back a long way.”

Thousands of US troops continue to surround villages and search homes in the Pakhtoon heartland for Taliban fugitives and their Al Qaeda allies, but their methods have brought them few friends. The war in Iraq is bringing them still fewer.

“If search operations continue to be conducted without regard for local customary norms, and if they (the US) support local commanders viewed as extortionists, there will be opposition,” said Vikram Parekh of the International Crisis Group.

Instead of the virtuous circle where confidence and

peace bring investment and prosperity, diplomats and aid workers warn that a vicious circle is being created where insecurity prevents development, and that in turn breeds more insecurity.

“We are in a cleft stick,” the diplomat said. “You can’t get security and development in the regions unless you go there. If this results in the UN and agencies leaving you can’t easily replace that.”

In the capital Kabul, there are other concerns too. Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim and his allies from the Panjsher Valley north of Kabul seized control of the country’s security apparatus shortly after the fall of the Taliban.

More than a year later, they seem reluctant to share those levers of power, and their reluctance is stymieing efforts to disarm the country, create a national army and bring the era of warlordism to an end, diplomats and analysts say.—Reuters