Afghan Vote a Bright Spot Amid Shadows

Millions of Afghans will vote in the country’s first presidential election Saturday, offering the rest of the world one of the most hopeful images from a land struggling to emerge from decades of war and privation.

Yet voters will be surrounded by scenes that cast the new Afghanistan in a different light: buildings flattened in insurgent attacks and factional fighting; mountain valleys carpeted with opium poppies; newly opened schools filled with children who are eager to learn, yet undersized from the malnourishment that continues everywhere.

Nearly three years after the U.S. military and its Afghan allies ousted the repressive Taliban regime, Afghanistan has made some progress. Despite claims by President Bush, however, Afghanistan’s bright future -- or even basic stability -- remains a distant hope. In many ways, security threats are more serious now than a year ago, posing a continuing concern in what remains a key front in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

The Afghan elections “are a relative bright spot,” said James Dobbins, who was Bush’s envoy to Afghanistan. “But they have to be understood in a picture that has some very serious dark sides.

“The security situation is not getting better. And I don’t know if it can be reversed.”

Although Afghanistan has taken steps toward democracy and has improved public health and education, the new government remains weak and violence is on the rise. Some of the regional warlords who have challenged the government have grown stronger, enriched by cash from the swelling opium economy. Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants have regrouped and stepped up their attacks on relief and reconstruction workers and public officials.

Afghanistan’s deepening difficulties have raised questions about U.S. policy toward the country since the war’s end. Although Bush has proclaimed his “ironclad commitment” to the country, many experts, including former U.S. officials, believe that his administration allowed Afghanistan’s security problems to take hold by failing to move earlier to see that order was imposed.

These critics contend that the administration should have pushed to mobilize an international force of peacekeepers throughout the country, rather than focusing solely on the effort to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants.

“Afghanistan is not on the kind of fast track to stability and democracy that it could have been, and it’s because of policy failures,” said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, an international conflict prevention organization based in Brussels.

Some observers have called the American investment too low. The 18,000 troops of the U.S. contingent in Afghanistan are far fewer than the 138,000 in Iraq. The U.S. government is spending $2.2 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan this year, up from about $1 billion in 2003. That puts the Central Asian country near the top of the list of foreign aid recipients, but the amount is dwarfed by the $18.4 billion appropriated for the reconstruction of Iraq, a country with roughly as many people.

Former U.S. envoy Dobbins said he believed the United States had devoted far less than needed and would continue a “low input, low output” approach.

“If you invest low, you get low levels of security and low levels of economic growth,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”

The differing views on Afghanistan have cropped up in the U.S. presidential campaign. In describing the nation as a success story, Bush cites the 4.3 million children who now attend schools, compared with about 300,000 under the Taliban. He has said that millions of children have been immunized against disease, and that 10 million adults, including 4 million women, have been registered to vote.

His Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry, points to faltering security and the resurgent drug industry in arguing that Bush’s invasion of Iraq detracted from the war on terrorism, which he contends is centered in Afghanistan.

Although the number of voters is probably inflated by multiple registrations, surveys show that ordinary Afghans are enthusiastic about their new democratic choices. A large majority believes that the country is on the right track, and interim President Hamid Karzai has wide support.

Even so, it is easy to exaggerate improvements in the lives of Afghans. Afghan women still suffer the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths in the world, according to the World Bank. Less than 20% of Afghans have access to safe drinking water, only 6% have electricity, and half suffer from chronic malnutrition.

By one measure of prosperity, gross domestic product per person, Afghans are doing twice as well as they were when the U.S. invasion took place. But that $246 per person compares with $1,600 in economically depressed Iraq. And most of the economic growth is because of the opium industry, which accounts for 75% of world consumption and is set to break all records. Robert B. Charles, assistant U.S. secretary of State for international narcotics and law enforcement, recently called the drug threat “a dark shadow” over the country.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has warned that the drug boom raises the risk Afghanistan will become a “narco state,” as some have called Colombia, where leftist rebels and right-wing militias have traded in drugs to support their fight against each other and the government.

In 2002 and 2003, drugs poured $4.8 billion into the Afghan economy, 70% more than the $2.8 billion from foreign aid, said Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. With the huge new surge, “the economy will be entirely dominated by it,” he said.

A vivid illustration of drugs’ effects on the rebuilding came Wednesday, when attackers identified by the government as opium traffickers detonated a roadside bomb targeting one of Karzai’s two vice presidential running mates.

The candidate, Ahmed Zia Masoud, was not injured, but one person was killed and several others hurt.

On Thursday, a rocket struck near the U.S. military compound in Kabul, which houses the U.S. Embassy. There were no reports of casualties from the attack, which came as the nation braced for disruptive action by the Taliban.

Earlier, two rockets were fired near a base used by Italian troops deployed in Afghanistan.

In confronting the problems of drugs and insurgency, the Karzai government is hampered by having limited influence outside Kabul, the capital. The government has been trying since the war ended to disarm the militias, which Karzai has called the gravest threat facing the country. Yet only about 16,000 of at least 60,000 militiamen have surrendered their weapons.

The national army is seeking to reach a strength of 70,000 troops by next year, but so far has only about 16,000 recruits; at the current rate of growth, it will remain reliant on foreign troops for years.

Attacks by the Taliban and members of the Al Qaeda network have increased. This year, the number of relief and United Nations workers who have been killed has roughly doubled, to 23, according to the relief organization CARE International. The number of U.S. troops killed has increased, according to Pentagon figures. In July, after five members of its staff were killed, the aid group Doctors Without Borders withdrew, the first time it has left a country because of physical dangers.

“The security situation is clearly deteriorating month by month, compounded by the delay in dealing with the warlords,” Paul Barker, Afghanistan country director for CARE, said in a telephone interview. “More than anything, we need to see them ... brought under control.”

In addition to the 18,000 U.S. troops, NATO allies have fielded 8,000 for the International Security Assistance Force, which has increasingly sought to expand its reach through the deployment of smaller contingents around the country.

But the NATO force has been repeatedly hampered by the reluctance of member countries to provide the troops and equipment, such as helicopters, that North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders believe they need for the mission.

Yet in light of the growing dangers, NATO members have repeatedly declined to send more troops.

On reconstruction, international contributions also have come slowly. Of a total of $9.7 billion pledged by international donors, only $947 million had been disbursed as of last summer, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported.

Many experts believe that a critical turning point came for the United States in 2002, when American officials discouraged proposals for international peacekeeping forces. Experts said the decision left militia commanders in a strong position. Money and arms the U.S. commanders gave the warlords for their help against the Taliban enabled the fighting groups to gain even greater independence from the new government.

“A clear decision was made, and we’re left with a country where the militias are very deeply entrenched ... and deeply entwined with the opium trade,” said J. Alexander Thier, a former advisor to the Afghan government and a fellow at the Hoover Institution.

The resulting security concerns are problems “that we’ve allowed to fester, and they will cost the Afghans and the international community dearly for years to come.”

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Richter reported from Washington and Watson from Afghanistan. Times staff writer Peter Wallsten contributed to this report.