Assessing Afghanistan's security a growing concern

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An explosion jolts the U.S. Embassy grounds and Marines who rush to investigate find a land mine lying nearby. A few nights later, another blast roars at the embassy and it turns out to be only a cat setting off a warning device.

Nerves are on edge in Afghanistan, but as with this month's embassy incidents, it's often hard to tell whether unsettling incidents are sinister or innocuous.

Assessing Afghanistan's security needs is an issue of growing concern as interim leader Hamid Karzai presses the United States and the United Nations for an expanded international military presence.

The United States has promised not to desert Afghanistan, pledging it will help the country stabilize after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban and routed its al-Qaida allies. Other nations vow they'll help.

But, apparently mindful of "mission creep" and the bloody and humiliating experience of the United States in Somalia, the Americans and their allies hesitate at overcommitment.

The Bush administration has resisted U.S. involvement in the British-led international security assistance force which is operating in Kabul.

Major European countries believe their own armed forces are overstretched by peacekeeping missions in the Balkans to shoulder a major role here.

Britain insists it wants to hand over the lead role in the Afghan security mission after three months. German officials said Monday that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will discuss with President Bush this week whether Germany could take over the leadership of the international security force in Afghanistan.

However, Schroeder's spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye said German peacekeeping commitments in the Balkans were an obstacle to a greater role here.

Skirmishes for a while

Meanwhile, Karzai himself sends conflicting signals on Afghanistan's needs.

"The people I've met over the past month, ... almost all of them have asked me to ask the international security forces to go to the other parts of the country," he said Monday on American television.

But last week, when asked by journalists about reports of new fighting in the wild north, he dismissed the incidents as "disputes" and "skirmishes."

"Afghanistan will have skirmishes for a long time to come," he said.

Gen. Atta Mohammed, who commanded a northern alliance contingent in the fight against the Taliban in the Mazar-e-Sharif region, summed up the paradox.

"When security comes to Afghanistan, then there is no reason for an international force to stay," he said. But what constitutes security is undefined.

In Kabul, patrols by a 2,500-strong British-led international force lends a sense of security unfamiliar to most of the rest of the country, where banditry is widespread and warlords compete for turf and influence.

Yet Kabul still shuts down under a 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew and in those pitch-black hours the streets sprout checkpoints run by armed men of uncertain affiliation.

"Everybody's got at least an AK-47," said Lt. Col. Thomas Loebbering, a spokesman for the German troops taking part in the force.

In daily briefings, the international force's spokesmen routinely report two things: no "incidents of concern" and no apparent reduction in armed men on the street.

Aid agencies, which work in the parts of Afghanistan regarded as the most dangerous, also present a mixed picture of whether security is increasing or declining. The World Food Program has reported warehouse lootings accompanied by beatings of local staff.

Facts instead of rumors

But the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, last week said his contacts indicate that poor security is less fact than rumor.

In recent meetings with non-governmental organizations about security, "I said, 'I don't want you to tell me about rumors from other institutions ... Tell me what you experienced in your own NGO from direct reports and don't tell me what you anticipate happening. Tell me what is happening itself.' Very few of the NGOs actually had security incidents."

The most vociferous supporter of an expanded international force in Afghanistan is Francesc Vendrell, who stepped down this month as deputy U.N. envoy. Shortly before leaving his post, he called for a force of 30,000 -- some six times the planned maximum of the Kabul force.

The coming weeks and months are a critical time for the country, he said, amid preparations for a traditional council made up of different ethnic and regional groups that will select a transitional government. The mandate of the interim government led by Hamid Karzai expires in mid-June and the council, or loya jirga, is to convene in the spring.

"I think the period leading up to the loya jirga is particularly essential for a force that would have a strong mandate," Vendrell said.

Others, even among the peacekeepers themselves, suggest that an expanded force may not be the best way to calm Afghanistan and that improving social conditions is a better security move.

"Maybe we ought to give them jobs first, then take the weapons," said Maj. Neal Peckham, a British spokesman for the force.