A crash course in diplomacy

WHEN A U.S. MILITARY TRUCK plowed into a dozen civilian vehicles near Kabul on Monday, killing at least five people, the response was in-theroad rage: fierce rioting in Afghanistan’s capital that left up to 20 dead and scores wounded. On Thursday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the U.S. military for using gunfire to quell the rioters. An investigation is underway to determine whether U.S. troops fired into or over the crowd.

Most Afghans want foreign help, but they do not want to become “collateral damage” of foreign occupiers -- whether from the United States, the United Nations or even relief agencies. As Washington struggles with how best to support Karzai, the U.S. and NATO need to redouble their efforts to defeat the resurgent Taliban while also protecting the civilian population. And to do that, they must improve living standards -- ultimately the only way to end 25 years of bloodshed, violence and chaos in Afghanistan.

Anti-Americanism was by no means the only cause of the Kabul rioting. It may have been instigated or encouraged by Karzai’s political opponents from the Northern Alliance, whose remaining militias were told three weeks ago that they had to disband by Tuesday, or by Taliban sympathizers. There also is an inevitable gap between Afghans’ expectations of help from the international community and the lagging relief effort. Angry, poor and unemployed Afghans need someone to blame.

But the deeper problem is that Afghanistan, like Iraq, cannot be rebuilt cheaply or quickly while an insurgency rages. The Taliban appears to be targeting aid and reconstruction workers; on Tuesday, terrorists on motorcycles attacked and killed four humanitarian workers driving in northern Afghanistan, which has generally been calmer than the Taliban strongholds along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Crushing the insurgency won’t be easy. The international community must immediately focus on building roads and providing electricity to blacked-out Kabul, whose economy cannot grow without transportation and power. Arab and Persian Gulf states, flush with oil wealth, have made meager pledges to Afghanistan. They should give the $90 million that will be needed for diesel fuel to keep Kabul electrified for the next two years while transmission lines are being built to bring power from Central Asia.

The U.S. and NATO also will have to invest the military resources to crush the Taliban decisively -- and insist that Pakistan do the same. Without security, aid and reconstruction cannot proceed in rural areas. President Pervez Musharraf’s pleadings notwithstanding, Pakistan isn’t doing all it can to stop Taliban infiltration across the Afghanistan border.

Finally, the United States must begin to treat Afghanistan as a sovereign state whose citizens’ lives have to be protected. A start would be for Washington to sign a “status of forces agreement” to govern the behavior of U.S. military forces there. Lessons in driving and crowd control wouldn’t hurt, either.