The future success of the US-led war against terrorism depends less on catching the remnants of al Qaeda than on ensuring that the escalating domestic political troubles gripping Afghanistan's neighbors do not lead to even greater instability across the entire region.
Nine months after the defeat of the Taliban, the Bush Administration remains primarily focused on its military and intelligence war against al Qaeda, rather than on development of a political and economic strategy to stabilize Afghanistan. Moreover, the lack of a US strategic vision for the region, which should have nudged Pakistan, Iran and the five Central Asian Republics towards greater political and economic reform, is now being held hostage by the intensity of the debate in Washington over toppling the regime of President Saddam Hussein.
While al Qaeda has become a potentially more unpredictable force, Washington has consumed itself with debate on toppling Hussein. This debate has created a perception in Europe and the Muslim world that US foreign policy is unpredictable and inconsistent.
Though al Qaeda has lost its bases and command centers in Afghanistan, tactical failures by US military forces allowed hundreds, if not thousands of al Qaeda militants to escape, permeating the world with more dangerous and secretive terrorist groups that may carry out new attacks against Western targets.
Afghanistan itself remains vulnerable. The car bomb attack in Kabul and the attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai on September 5 demonstrate how fragile Afghan security remains. Nine months after he became Afghanistan's leader, Karzai has been unable to extend the writ of central authority across the country and find a political formula to rein in armed, defiant warlords outside the capital.
The international community has simply failed to invest in Afghan security or recovery. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was supposed to stabilize Kabul and five other cities, still has only 5,000 troops in Kabul. And the reconstruction funds that nations committed and which Karzai needs in order to lure citizens away from militias - has stalled. At a January conference in Tokyo, nations pledged $4.5 billion in reconstruction aid, $1.8 billion of it this year.
According to US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "barely 30 percent" of this total has reached Afghan's coffers- and what aid has arrived has not found a banking or credit system to house it. ''My biggest single concern is that the economic aid which was promised at the Tokyo conference which I think is crucial, not just for economic purposes but for political and security purposes, is just not coming through at the levels that were pledged," Wolfowitz said at the Pentagon. "I don't know all the reasons why, but I don't see any reason why that should be the case.''
As Wolfowitz' concern suggests, the Pentagon has acknowledged the risks inherent in letting Afghanistan founder. Wolfowitz says the US no longer objects to broadening ISAF's mission, but it refuses to send troops in as lead peacekeepers. No matter who runs ISAF, though, Afghanistan will sit in the eye of a political storm.
Central Asian states also face the risk of instability. Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have hosted Western military forces for the war in Afghanistan, and have used their geographic importance as a convenient excuse to step up repression of their political opponents. Without a vision guiding regional policy, American agreements with Central Asian states can do little to discourage or punish repression.
So in February and March, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed strategic treaties with the US which stipulated the need for political and economic reform. But the Bush administration has declined to link continued assistance to political and economic reform. This has permitted Central Asian presidents to collect aid while moving away from democratization.
Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, facing an increasingly organized opposition, has rejected curbs on his own power after a clash between police and civilians left at least five citizens dead in March. Karimov even refused to allow the Uzbek media to publish the text of the treaty with the United States. In that treaty, Uzbekistan pledged to ''intensify the democratic transformation of its society politically and economically.''
While a Western military presence has emboldened existing leaders, it has also revived hopes for democracy amongst Central Asia's secular political forces. In every country political movements both at home and amongst exiled politicians have intensified. For the first time in a decade, both Akayev and Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev face street protests and open calls for their resignations.
Unless leaders like Kyrgyzstan's Akayev receive stern warnings from the United States, a political crisis in several countries is inevitable in the months ahead. These countries have no established succession processes and weak or non-existent civil society institutions, making longer-term instability appear guaranteed. ''The Pentagon and the CIA run the policy in the region and their concern is not reform but access to bases,'' says a senior US diplomat.
Afghanistan's other neighbors, more practiced at statecraft, remain deeply unstable. Pakistan, where al Qaeda fighters have found shelter, is facing a divisive October 10 election while a bellicose India uses Bush's antiterrorist rhetoric to suspend negotiations over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Iran, which Bush branded a part of the "axis of evil" in January, is grappling with a domestic political stalemate between the moderate government of President Mohammed Khatami and hardline mullahs. In July, Washington distanced itself further from Khatami, saying his moderate policies had failed to make a difference. US policy will now be aimed at supporting the Iranian people - a vague policy shift that has served to strengthened the mullahs. The mullahs are determined to undermine Khatami and have vowed to support all anti-Western Islamic groups from Central Asia to the Middle East.
Such political instability is just what al Qaeda and other extremist Islamic groups desire. An unstable Pakistan torn between the army and politicians, or a war between India and Pakistan that leads to Islamabad's defeat, could create an opening for an Islamic state in Pakistan.
The collapse of one or more Central Asian regimes, in the absence of democratic alternatives and a solid professional class, could create an opening for the establishment of new command and control centers for terrorists. If Washington continues to support corrupt regimes without placing stronger pressure on those regimes, the region's gross political and economic imbalances could worsen.
Young people in the region have grown more frustrated as reforms and incomes have stagnated. The Arab and Muslim world have been decidedly unimpressed with the United States' lack of resolve in Afghanistan. The Muslim world's rejection of Bush's promise to overthrow Saddam Hussein connect to fears that Washington has no long-term strategy for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or for stabilizing Iraq.
Looking at Central Asia, many Muslims see a belligerent United States, unwilling to rebuild countries or exert influence over dictators allied to Washington. To effectively make war on terrorism, the United States must develop and then earn a new image in the region.
Editor's note:
Ahmed Rashid is a journalist and author of the books "Taliban: Militant Islam and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" and "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia."
