THE BUSH administration's failure to help Afghans rehabilitate their war-blasted land makes the United States appear either incompetent at the work of nation-building abroad or deceitful about its interest in the welfare of peoples Washington has claimed to liberate.

Twice in the past 23 years, US governments have intervened in Afghanistan. After the Soviet invasion of December 1979, the CIA cooperated with Pakistan's military intelligence and Saudi financial backers to support Afghan and foreign mujahideen waging guerrilla war against the Red Army. Soon after the Soviets left in 1989, however, US concern for Afghanistan - and for Pakistan - lapsed.

What ensued was horrific internecine warfare. Warlords and their militias made life unlivable for Afghan civilians. So intolerable did existence become under the reign of the warlords that when the Taliban seized power in 1996 - using Osama bin Laden's millions to buy off the warlords between Kandahar and Kabul - those fanatics were initially welcomed as enforcers of order and protectors of security.

This history is crucial insofar as it illuminates the scope of American responsibility for the successive calamities suffered by Afghans.

During the worst of the Taliban depredations, US officials were describing that regime as a stabilizing force and US energy companies were seeking to reach agreements with the Taliban for a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. It was only in response to Sept. 11, 2001, and with the aim of depriving bin Laden's terrorist gang of its base of operations in Afghanistan that the Bush administration invaded and, coincidentally, freed Afghans from the tyranny of the Taliban.

Today, partly as a consequence of the administration's doctrinal enmity toward foreign policy as social welfare, warlords are in the saddle again in many Afghan provinces. Poppy production and the heroin trade are flourishing. Roads and irrigation works are yet to be rebuilt. Worst of all, neither the American soldiers hunting Al Qaeda nor the International Security Assistance Force in the country have provided basic security. As a result, vengeful Taliban forces are staging raids in the south while militias of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek commanders in the north attack each other.

Washington has both an ethical responsibility and a deep geopolitical interest in helping Afghans build a flourishing, stable nation. This will mean extending security beyond Kabul and pushing countries that pledged billions of dollars to deliver the funds on time for major job-creating construction projects run by President Hamid Karzai's central government. And it will mean helping Karzai unseat corrupt and violent provincial warlords. If Afghanistan once again becomes a failed state, it will be America's failure.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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