Afghanistan, Six Years Later

October 5, 2007

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• Read the plan from Lawrence Korb and Caroline Wadhams for success in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration may be funneling more and more money into Iraq, but Afghanistan—yes, the same Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda used as a safe haven to plan the September 11th attacks—has fallen by the wayside.

Sunday marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. The goals: to oust the Taliban and Al Qaeda and build a stable, secure Afghanistan.

Six years later, the situation looks bleak. Al Qaeda is resurgent and has set up shop along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Osama bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have not been captured. Suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices have been introduced and used with increasing frequency in the Afghan theater, and 750 civilians have been killed in 2007 alone. Opium production is booming and 93 percent of the world’s opium is coming from Afghanistan. And according to the Center for American Progress-Foreign Policy’s Terrorism Index, 84 percent of foreign policy experts believe the United States is not winning the war on terror.

But Afghanistan is not Iraq. There has been some important, fundamental headway in strengthening the Afghan state: a legitimate government is in place that is representative of the people, the U.N. and NATO are contributing to the mission, Afghan security forces are loyal to the Afghan government, and the public supports an international troop presence. These factors make stability in Afghanistan achievable.

This success hinges on a change in U.S. Middle East policy. Resources should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan; operations in Afghanistan need increased funds, attention, and military and civilian manpower.

This means increasing international troop levels and equipment, augmenting reconstruction assistance and providing better oversight for the process, strengthening and shifting counter-narcotics efforts, addressing Al Qaeda's new safe haven in Pakistan, and bolstering Afghanistan's democratic government.

A more comprehensive outline for how to deny sanctuary to Al Qaeda and its affiliates and build a stable, secure Afghanistan will be provided in a report to be released later this month from the Center for American Progress.