LOSS OF U.S. CONTROL - AFGHANISTAN BACKSLIDING, EXPERTS SAY

Almost five years after a U.S.-led coalition attacked Afghanistan in
response to the Sept. 11 attack, experts warn that the country is
slipping away.

The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban are back, controlling half the
country, by some estimates. Fighting in the south is some of the
fiercest that Western troops have faced in 50 years.

Prospects for more help dimmed yesterday, as NATO nations failed to
agree on calls by military commanders for 2,500 extra troops to help
crush the growing Taliban-led insurgency. At least 50 people were
killed yesterday in widespread violence across Afghanistan.

NATO also announced yesterday that suicide bombings have killed 173
people in the country this year amid an escalation of violence that
has seen at least 40 militants slain and an aid worker gunned down.
Beyond that, opium production has soared almost 60 percent this year,
according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. And extreme poverty
is driving people back into the arms of the Taliban, according to a
European research group.

Many international experts think that the war on terrorism is on the
verge of being lost in Afghanistan while the U.S. forces grapple with
continuing problems in Iraq.

"The U.S. has lost control in Afghanistan and has in many ways
undercut the new democracy in Afghanistan," said Emmanuel Reinert,
executive director of the Senlis Council, a policy research group
with offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Afghanistan.

"I think we can call that a failure, and one with dire consequences
which should concern us all. The U.S. policies in Afghanistan have
re-created the safe haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed
to destroy."

This is a startling reversal from the early heady days. The initial
victory came quickly after the U.S.-led offensive began on Oct. 7,
2001. Kabul, the capital, fell on Nov. 13. A few days later, most of
the country was under the control of the coalition and its Afghan
partners, the Northern Alliance.

But things have begun to go wrong. Violence has flared, particularly
in the southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan and Zabul. In
June, an American-led force of 11,000 troops launched the biggest
offensive against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan since 2001, in a
push named Operation Mountain Thrust.

The result has been fighting that American and British officers have
described as ferocious. An analysis of coalition casualty figures
from May 1 to Aug. 12 by the Royal Statistical Society, based in the
United Kingdom, showed that an average of five coalition soldiers
were killed by the Taliban every week, twice as many as during the
2003 invasion of Iraq.

Afghanistan, a mountainous country of 31 million people that is
slightly smaller than Texas, has long been a graveyard for foreign
troops. In 1989, the Soviet Union pulled out after nine bloody years
of trying to control the country ended in failure.

On Aug. 1 of this year, 8,000 NATO forces took military control in
the south from the U.S.-led coalition. But the situation has not
stabilized. NATO commanders called for up to 2,500 more troops to
augment the 18,500 already there, along with greater air support.

In Brussels, Belgium, allied military experts failed yesterday to
commit more troops, planes and helicopters to the NATO mission,
despite a plea by the alliance's American commander, Gen. James L. Jones.

"No formal offers were made at the table," said NATO spokesman James
Appathurai. He told a news conference some allies had given "positive
indications" on the reinforcements, but suggested decisions may have
to wait until a Sept. 28-29 meeting of NATO defense ministers in Slovenia.

Just as violence has increased, opium cultivation has also reached
record levels. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes reported this
month that about 408,000 acres are being used to grow opium, up 59
percent this year alone. In 2001, during the last year of Taliban
rule, the figure was less than 20,000 acres.

The Taliban cracked down on opium cultivation then, but now may be
thriving on it. Revenue from the harvest is expected to be more than
$3 billion this year, said Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the
Office on Drugs and Crime.

But Reinert, of the Senlis Council, thinks that efforts to eradicate
opium cultivation are part of the reason the U.S.-led coalition has
lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan population.

Farmers whose crops have been forcibly eradicated often have no other
means of feeding their families, he said.

"Afghanistan presently is in crisis," said Paul Risley, spokesman for
the U.N.'s World Food Program.

In southern Helmand province, police killed 16 Taliban in a
mountainous area outside the town of Garmser.

Garmser Police Chief Ghulam Rassoul said the militants were killed in
a four-hour battle that began late Tuesday and continued into yesterday.

Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces also killed between 20 and 30
Taliban yesterday in raids on three villages in central Ghazni
province, Afghan officials said.

Information from the Associated Press was included in this story.