IF YOU THINK THE IRAQ `PEACE' IS BAD, YOU SHOULD SEE AFGHANISTAN

Here's a foreign affairs quiz:

1. In the two years since the war in Afghanistan, opium production
has:

(A) virtually been eliminated by Hamid Karzai's government and
American forces.

(B) declined 30 percent, but eradication is not expected until
2008.

(C) soared nineteenfold and become the major source of the world's
heroin.

2. In Paktika and Zabul, two religiously conservative parts of
Afghanistan, the number of children going to school:

(A) has quintupled, with most girls at least finishing third
grade.

(B) has risen 40 percent, although few girls go to
school.

(C) has plummeted as poor security has closed nearly all
schools.

The correct answer to both questions, alas, is (C).

With the White House finally acknowledging that the challenge in Iraq
runs deeper than gloomy journalism, the talk of what to do next is
sounding rather like Afghanistan. And that's alarming, because we have
flubbed the peace in Afghanistan even more egregiously than in Iraq.

``There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a
failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and
narco-terrorists,'' Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, writes in a grim new report on
Afghanistan.

I strongly supported President Bush's war in Afghanistan, and I was
there in Kabul and saw firsthand the excitement and relief of ordinary
Afghans, who were immensely grateful to the United States for freeing
them (a crucial distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan, to anyone
who covered both wars, is that you never saw the same adulation among
Iraqis). Bush oversaw a smart war in Afghanistan, and two years ago
the crisp mountain air there was full of hope -- along with pleas for
more security.

One day back then when I was thinking of driving to the southeast, six
Afghans arrived from there -- minus their noses. Taliban guerrillas
had stopped their vehicle at gunpoint and chopped off their noses
because they had trimmed their beards. I stroked my chin and decided
not to drive on that road.

Every foreign and local official said then that Afghanistan
desperately needed security on roads like that one. But the Pentagon
made the same misjudgment about Afghanistan that it did about Iraq:
It fatally underestimated the importance of ensuring security. The
big winner was the Taliban, which is mounting a resurgence.

In at least three districts in the southeast, there is no central
government representation, and the Taliban has de facto control. In
Paktika and Zabul, not only have most schools closed, but the
conservative madrasas are regaining strength.

``We've operated in Afghanistan for about 15 years,'' said Nancy
Lindborg of Mercy Corps, the American aid group, ``and we've never had
the insecurity that we have now.'' She noted that the Taliban used to
accept aid agencies but that the Taliban had turned decisively against
all foreigners.

``Separate yourself from Jews and the Christian community,'' a recent
open letter from the Taliban warned. It ordered Afghans to avoid
music, funerals for aid workers and ``un-Islamic education'' -- or
face a ``bad result.''

An analyst in the U.S. intelligence community, who seeks more
attention to the way narco-trafficking is destabilizing the region,
says Afghanistan now accounts for 75 percent of the poppies grown for
narcotics worldwide.

``The issue is not a high priority for the Bush administration,'' he
said.

If Afghanistan is a White House model for Iraq, heaven help
us.