Dashboard

By MARK THOMPSON

Even as the U.S. military slowly withdraws from Iraq, the flow of additional U.S. forces into Afghanistan--to what many in the U.S. military call the "forgotten war"--is on the rise. By late this summer, 32,000 American troops are scheduled to be in Afghanistan, the most in more than six years of combat. Beyond highlighting the resilience of the U.S. military, it also showcases the increasing irrelevance of NATO, which is supposed to be leading the fight. Some key alliance members--France, Germany, Italy and Spain--are refusing to send troops to battle the Taliban or placing "caveats" limiting their deployment to peaceful regions and missions. "Someone needs to read the riot act to NATO," says Anthony Zinni, a retired U.S. general who oversaw U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2000. "They don't get points just for attendance."

Although the Bush Administration insists things are getting better in Afghanistan, suicide bombings and U.S. casualties are mounting. And the Taliban has just threatened Afghanistan's cell-phone companies with attacks unless they shut down at night so that cell-phone-carrying insurgents can't be tracked electronically. In addition to its military woes, Washington has spent months vainly seeking an international envoy to lead reconstruction efforts inside the country.

The Bush Administration's shift in U.S. troop strength echoes what many Democrats have been calling for since the Iraq war began. "We're paying a terrible price for diverting our forces and resources to Iraq from Afghanistan," says Senator Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. And it could get worse: if the Taliban insurgency prevails, Zinni and others fear that Pakistan, Afghanistan's nuclear-armed neighbor, could descend into chaos and NATO itself could collapse.