Tempting Chaos

The international peacekeepers in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, have enabled people to leave their homes without fear. The streets are becoming crowded again. More and more markets are open. Kidnappings, car thefts and assaults are fewer.

What’s good for Kabul would be just as good for Kandahar and Herat and Jalalabad, where the warlords of old are back in power or trying to get there.

History gives reason to fear this development.

After Russian occupiers were forced out in 1989, the warlords took control and wreaked so much havoc on Afghanistan that the Taliban were welcomed for ending the violence. That started the march to Al Qaeda and last September’s terror.

The United States has resisted pleas by Afghanistan’s interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, and some U.N. officials to increase the number of peacekeepers and send them to other cities. Currently they number only 4,000 and patrol only in Kabul.

Washington has declined to put its own troops into the international peacekeeping force. That’s reasonable. Other nations have sent soldiers, and U.S. forces are still fighting a war, searching for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces.

The U.S. should take the lead at the United Nations to persuade the Security Council to expand the peacekeeping force and push other countries to help pay. President Bush told Karzai during his visit to Washington last month that the U.S. will help train an Afghan army, but that task may well take a year or longer.

By the time the new soldiers are ready, and a German-trained civilian police force is on the streets, the warlords may well be operating regional fiefdoms outside the reach of the central government.

Britain has taken the lead in supplying the peacekeepers, but it says it wants to relinquish command of the force to Turkey next month. Fair enough, but Britain should join Washington in pushing other nations to supply troops. The British foreign secretary said Karzai made “a very strong case” for thousands more peacekeepers when they met.

By way of comparison, there are now 60,000 peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia.

The Afghanistan peacekeepers are not seen as an occupying army. They have proven popular, and why shouldn’t they be? Who doesn’t want the freedom to walk the streets, talk with neighbors, shop and work or attend school without fearing thugs?

Additional peacekeepers will be a barrier against Afghanistan slipping back into chaos. They are needed now.