Keeping American Promises

From the icy summits of the Hindu Kush to the flat sands stretching southwest from Herat, betrayal is a theme of Afghan history. Tribes lie to other tribes to get the upper hand and tattletale to exact revenge or win favor with a protector. Now it’s the United States that threatens to leave promises unfulfilled.

Residents of the village of Dara-i-Suf told Times correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman of a U.S. military advisor who appeared in their midst last October and vowed to give them food and rugs for their dirt floors. He said his nation would build a clinic, a school and roads if they helped in the campaign against the Taliban. The villagers fought hard in the campaign for Mazar-i-Sharif, the first major victory in the war against Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. But the villagers, so short of food they eat a soup of boiled grass, so frightened of land mines that fields go unplowed, still wait for the rewards the American promised.

Dara-i-Suf has sharp memories of the man who introduced himself as “Baba John.” Lending credence to villagers’ accounts of guiding and fighting for Special Forces troops is a U.S. Army officer’s statement that he assumed that the American soldiers would say “whatever they needed to, to win cooperation from locals.” In an echo of what was probably said the last time the U.S. left its Afghan allies in the lurch, after they had driven out the Soviets, the officer added, “That doesn’t mean we’re going down there.”

No? Then why should other Afghans believe the honeyed tongues of Americans? What faith should Iraqis, whose assistance is needed to topple Saddam Hussein, put in promises?

Besides orchestrating an international force of peacekeepers--and many more of those are needed--the United States has begun an effort involving military personnel to rebuild schools, fire stations and other facilities in reconstructing a shattered nation. But most of these projects are in the cities. Now the Bush administration should send soldiers or civilians--send someone--to help the people who helped us in Dara-i-Suf and anywhere else that Americans made promises.

Rebuilding Afghanistan will not be quick, easy or cheap. But neither will the war on terrorism, in which U.S. troops are already counting on villagers in other nations for support. So it is for reasons of pragmatism as well as honor that the United States must stand by its promises as well as its threats.