Afghanistan Task to Take Years

Dismissing any possibility of an early exit by American troops, a top U.S. official said Wednesday that the military presence in Afghanistan will last “not weeks or months but years.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said several years will be required to complete the job of snuffing out the Al Qaeda terror apparatus and training the new Afghan national army so that the war-torn nation “stands on its own two feet.”

“We made a mistake in the 1990s by disengaging,” he said, a reference to Washington’s neglect of Afghanistan once the local resistance, aided covertly by the United States, had forced the Soviet Union to abandon its occupation of the country. “If we were doing then what we are doing now, things would be different.”

Although the Bush administration has not tried to hide the fact that getting rid of Al Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan will take time, the official’s blunt admission that troops will be here for at least a couple of years more was one of the clearest expressions yet of the time frame involved.

The Pentagon has not publicly mentioned any timetable for withdrawal, but it has become increasingly clear that U.S. troops’ peacekeeping and training missions will keep them here for a prolonged period.

U.S. military officials said Wednesday that Special Forces troops plan to remain in Kabul, the Afghan capital, at least 18 more months, training the nascent Afghan army and building the network of roads, schools, bridges, communications and other infrastructure the nation needs to get by on its own.

“Without building that up, it’s going to be hard for us to leave it to the Afghans,” said Gunnery Sgt. Charles Portman, a spokesman for the Central Command in Tampa, Fla. “I don’t think anyone is talking about many years into the future, but ... there’s a lot of work to do.”

Asked whether the Afghan public would support a prolonged stay by U.S. and other foreign soldiers, the American official in Afghanistan said it was his sense that President Hamid Karzai would prefer that the Western presence “broaden in mission and mandate.”

A Karzai spokesman was not available for comment late Wednesday.

But some observers have said U.S. troops might overstay their welcome with an open-ended campaign. American forces make up about 8,000 of the 17,000 foreign troops here.

With Karzai seated at his side Tuesday at the presidential palace in Kabul, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami criticized the U.S. military campaign here and said that the only justifiable reason for foreign presence in Afghanistan is for reconstruction and that continued violence would only breed more of the same.

The U.S. official said a top priority of the Afghan government is that reconstruction of the country’s basic infrastructure should start immediately to make a peace dividend visible. He called on foreign governments to make good on their pledges of aid.

Of the $1.8 billion in 2002 aid promised at the Tokyo summit on Afghanistan in January, only $660 million has been delivered thus far.

The official said that interdepartmental rivalries and the lack of a clear rule of law have “held hostage hundreds of foreign and domestic investments.”

A plan to integrate the various Afghan militias ruled by local warlords into the national army is being prepared and will soon be presented to a government commission, the official said. The existence of such militias has weakened the central government and posed a security threat.

“If Afghanistan becomes stable--institutions become strong enough that the threat of Al Qaeda and Taliban returning is gone--then we will not need to be here,” the official said.

*

Times staff writer Esther Schrader in Washington contributed to this report.