June 29, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 24, 1429

WASHINGTON, June 28: Afghanistan is now rivalling Iraq as the biggest cause of concerns for the United States, says a Pentagon report on the situation in a country where until recently US officials were confident of a convincing victory against the extremists.

The Pentagon’s first assessment of the Afghan situation since the US invasion of 2001 depicts a grim picture. The report concedes that the Taliban militants — who ruled Afghanistan from the late 1990s until 2001 — have regrouped after their initial defeat and have “coalesced into a resilient insurgency”.

“The Taliban will challenge the control of the Afghan government in rural areas, especially in the south and east,” the report warns. “The Taliban will also probably attempt to increase its presence in the west and north.”

The Pentagon notes that the Taliban militants carried out a record 2,615 roadside-bomb attacks in 2007, up from 1,931 in 2006. The roadside bombings — along with a wave of suicide bombings and other types of attacks — killed 6,500 people in 2007, also a post-invasion record.

The report coincides with recent warnings by senior US military and intelligence officials that if Al Qaeda re-emerges as a significant international threat, it will do so from its bases in Afghanistan and Fata and not from Iraq.

The Pentagon report confirms these fears, acknowledging that Afghanistan’s security conditions have deteriorated sharply while the Karzai regime remains incapable of extending its reach beyond a few major cities.

Embarrassment for govt

The report is particularly embarrassing for the Bush administration, which had counted Afghanistan as the pinnacle of its success in the war on terror.

The US media, while reporting the Pentagon’s assessment, noted that senior US defence officials have ordered a top-to-bottom review of US strategy in Afghanistan. “The review was prompted by high-level concern that the US was losing ground and slipping backwards,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Like other recent reports and statements by senior US officials, the Pentagon report also blames cross-border infiltrations from Fata as the main cause for Afghanistan’s problems.

“The greatest challenge to long-term security within Afghanistan is the insurgent sanctuary within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan,” says the report. It suggests better coordination between the Afghan and Pakistani security forces to “eliminate threats emanating from within Pakistan”.

The report notes that the Pakistan military’s clashes with the Taliban in the tribal areas have, in the past, contributed to a decrease in cross-border violence in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.

The report also mentions US concerns about ceasefire negotiations and other agreements between Islamabad and possible militant groups in the tribal belt. The report claims that after similar agreements were signed in 2005 and 2006, cross border operations by extremist groups against US and Nato forces increased substantially.

“The United States recognises that there is no purely military solution to militancy, but we have made it clear to Pakistan that any agreement should be enforceable and backed up by the credible threat of force. However, it remains to be seen as to whether these gains will be enduring.”