It is too early to say that Afghanistan has been a failure, but not too early to say that it has not been a success. The government of Hamid Karzai is corrupt, muddled, and weak. It is losing authority both in the Pashtun regions of the country, where most of the armed opposition to the Kabul authorities and the coalition forces is to be found, and in the still relatively peaceful non-Pashtun areas.
Drugs drive the economy, not the agricultural and industrial projects which donors agreed to fund in the confident days after the Taliban were overthrown in 2001. Some of the aid which Afghanistan was promised has never been delivered, and some of what has been delivered has been wasted. The unity of the Nato forces tasked to defeat or at least contain the Taliban is a sham. Most contingents lurk in uncontested parts of the country, allowing their governments to demonstrate support for the United States without paying any real price, either in casualties or cash.
For those more seriously committed, the blood price is potentially high, as President Nicolas Sarkozy discovered when newly arrived French troops were cut down in ambush last year. The money price is also high, as recent British figures indicate. Two and half billion pounds is a lot of money to find in a struggling economy at a time of recession. The tactics employed by American forces, and depended upon by most of their Nato allies, are open to moral question, particularly the use of an air arm that too often seems unable to distinguish between insurgents gathering for an attack and ordinary people gathering for a wedding.
To make matters worse, the crisis has expanded across frontiers. It is no longer just a question of al-Qaida and the Taliban finding sanctuary in Pakistani territory, but of the erosion of Islamabad's control of the tribal areas and the possible defeat, or at least the retreat, of Pakistani armed forces in their own country.
The geopolitical context has also changed. Attacks on American supply lines through Pakistan make routes through Central Asia more important just at the moment when Russia has squeezed the Americans out of their base in Kyrgyzstan. A gracious announcement by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, that US supplies will be able to move through Russian territory if the relationship between Moscow and the Nato countries improves carries more than a hint of veto.
Dennis Blair, the new director of national intelligence in the United States, was only reflecting the general mood when he described the outlook in both Afghanistan and Pakistan last week as dispiriting. It is one of the toughest parts of President Obama's difficult inheritance. Neither General David Petraeus, the smart soldier who now heads US central command, nor Richard Holbrooke, Obama's very able special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, have denied those difficulties. Holbrooke crafted an imperfect but necessary peace deal for Bosnia at Dayton, while Petraeus turned round a deteriorating security situation in Iraq.
But they have both made a point of saying that the successes upon which their reputations have been built can hardly be simply replicated in their new area of responsibility. As with Iraq, to present the problem just as one of whether to stay or leave is distorting. It is the manner of staying or leaving, indeed of both, which matters. The diplomatic effort must be to defuse the antagonisms which complicate the search for solutions, whether they are between Iran and the US, Russia and the US, or Pakistan and India. In the affected countries themselves, the way forward is through more modest ambitions, more discriminating military operations, more openness to negotiations, and a strategy which strives to create the conditions for withdrawal while ruling out a panicky dash for the exit.
