NATO FACES DAUNTING TEST IN MOVE TO SUBDUE AFGHANISTAN

Taliban, Drug Lords, Poppy Growers All Have Stake In Thwarting Effort
To Bring Rule Of Law

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Southern Afghanistan, homeland of the Taliban
and hub of the global heroin trade, is spinning out of control.

Islamic militants are launching suicide attacks, corrupt authorities
are undermining the central government and a disgruntled population
is hooked on growing opium.

On Monday, fixing Afghanistan's biggest problem area falls to NATO,
the Western military alliance. It promises to be the toughest combat
mission in NATO's 57-year history, and a stern test for a powerful
force with surprisingly little experience in fighting.

"A lot of different forces are coalescing to drive the coalition
out," said Joanna Nathan, an analyst with the International Crisis
Group. "It's not just Taliban. It's a complex alliance of people who
don't want to see the rule of law in Afghanistan."

The future of Afghanistan as a Western-style democracy could ride on
the success or failure of the 8,000 mostly British, Dutch and
Canadian forces that have moved into the southern region. Five years
after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban regime that hosted
al-Qaida, the country is in danger of again becoming an international
terrorist haven.

And with the Arab-Israeli conflict raging and Iraq mired in daily
violence, failure in Afghanistan would leave the West in disarray on
three of its main battlegrounds in the war on terror.

The credibility of the 26-nation Western military alliance,
established in 1949 to deter the Soviet bloc, is also at stake. While
it has engaged in peace missions and aerial bombing campaigns such as
in Kosovo in 1999, NATO has limited experience in ground combat.

Francesc Vendrell, the European Union's special representative for
Afghanistan, said Wednesday that because of the concerns over
Afghanistan's future, NATO must not fail. "We are not going to
tolerate any kind of haven for terrorists in Afghanistan," he said.

The strong rhetoric reflects growing concern that the multinational
effort to bring democracy and stability to Afghanistan is going awry.

Over the past year, Taliban-led militants regained effective control
over large tracts of their southern heartland. They have adopted
destructive terrorist tactics seen in Iraq and have launched major
attacks, this month even managing to briefly control two southern
towns -- unprecedented during the previous four years.

Another pressing concern is the drug trade. Last year, Afghanistan
produced nearly 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw material of
heroin. Much of it is grown by poppy farmers in the south.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in Western anti-narcotics
assistance, diplomats expect opium output to increase this year, and
say provincial government officials and police are still involved in
drug trafficking.

U.N. special representative Tom Koenigs said the insurgency is fueled
by international terrorist networks. Other officials say militants
include a hard core of Taliban, students from religious schools in
neighboring Pakistan, Afghan villagers who are paid to fight and drug militias.

NATO takes over command of the south from the U.S.-led anti-terror
coalition that was deployed in 2001, primarily to hunt down Osama bin
Laden and his al-Qaida associates.

The coalition has made strides in quelling militancy in the east,
where al-Qaida leaders are possibly hiding along the border with
Pakistan. But it has failed to prevent an alarming spike in Taliban
activity in the south.

That appears to be largely because it lacked troops on the ground.

For much of 2005, just one 3,600-strong U.S. brigade was responsible
for security for the whole of southern and western Afghanistan, said
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick.

Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold where nearly a quarter of
Afghanistan's opium is grown, had just 120 U.S. troops last year.
Since this spring, about 4,000 British troops have deployed in
Helmand as part of the shift to NATO control, sparking intense fighting.

"We have moved into areas that previously had no real coalition
forces and as a result, we've rattled cages of Taliban and drug
lords," spokesman Capt. Drew Gibson said by phone from Helmand.

The hope is that a larger NATO force based in the region can
stabilize it enough to allow development and better governance that
will restore the tribes' faith in President Hamid Karzai's administration.

Vendrell said the job of international forces would have been easier
if they had deployed three or four years earlier, but that the
enlarged troop presence offers hope that this new strategy would work.

He said that about 36,000 U.S.-led coalition and NATO forces will be
in Afghanistan: the biggest foreign troop presence during the
post-Taliban period.

An official of NATO's International Security Assistance Force
conceded that the fierce Taliban response came as a surprise as its
18,000-strong force expanded from the relatively stable north and
west to the south in recent months.

"We assumed we would be tested, especially in the run-up to the
hand-over when we were a bit wet behind the ears," said the official,
who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"What we didn't predict was the level of the resistance or the fact
that they (the Taliban) would stand their ground and fight."

Military officials say the Taliban have taken heavy losses. According
to the U.S. military, more than 600 militants have died in the south
in an operation launched June 10 with 10,000 Afghan government and
foreign forces.

But the fighting also has claimed at least a dozen British and
Canadian soldiers, sparking criticism that NATO is being sucked into
an unwinnable battle in a country where the Mujahedeen, or holy
warriors, defeated the might of the Soviet army in the 1980s.

Ultimately, success of the mission lies beyond the power of troops on
the ground.

Rebuilding Afghanistan requires international aid and concerted
action by Karzai's increasingly unpopular administration to fight corruption.

Western and U.N. officials also say for NATO's mission to succeed,
neighboring Pakistan must prevent Taliban commanders and militants
from operating from its soil -- although Pakistan's government, a key
U.S. anti-terror ally, bristles at suggestions that it doesn't do enough.

"The insurgency requires safe havens, and they have got one," the
ISAF official said, referring to Pakistan.