NARCO-FEUDALISM STILL RULES

General Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan, came to
Moscow last week to pay a courtesy visit. Franks commands the war via
satellite from his central command staff complex in Tampa, Florida, but he
told reporters in Moscow that he and his wife were on the move for a week,
going to Africa, visiting troops in Afghanistan and finally coming to Russia.

Of course, Moscow is not directly involved in military operations in
Afghanistan. Still, Moscow is the main sponsor of the Tajik faction of the
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance that is the backbone of the interim Afghan
government's rag-tag army. Without basic Russian support, the allied
mission would be that much harder to accomplish.

Last fall, as the United States was pounding the Taliban to bits from the
air, Iran also strongly supported the effort. But after the Taliban and
al-Qaida fighters melted into the Afghan wilderness, the short-lived
alliance ended and the Iranians are today, according to U.S. officials,
trying to flush the Westerners down the same drain as the Taliban.

Moscow is not yet turning its coat, and Franks got a warm reception.
Contentious issues, like the planned U.S. military personnel arrival in
Georgia or the coming invasion of Iraq, were not discussed. Iraq is a
political matter, not fit for a general to elaborate on, while Washington
has not made its final decision. Georgia, Franks told me, is the
responsibility of the U.S. European command and nothing to do with him.

In Moscow, the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan are
still considered to be potentially deadly opponents. Officials mostly wish
Franks good luck in rooting them out, though many generals that fought in
Afghanistan in the 1980s truly believe that the United States is getting
itself into the same quagmire they found themselves in. Franks came to
Moscow after handing out medals to U.S. servicemen who had just finished a
major operation against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters remaining in
southeastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan. Franks insists
that Operation Anaconda was a resounding success: It was announced that up
to 800 fighters were slain, and the Shah-i-Kot region was captured and
cleared of opposing forces.

However, less than 50 bodies were actually found. U.S. officers allege that
Afghan allied soldiers told the Taliban and al-Qaida of the operation well
beforehand. Afghan soldiers, led by General Zia Lodin, should have done the
main job in Operation Anaconda, with U.S. forces in support. But the
Afghans swiftly retreated after meeting resistance, and U.S. soldiers were
rushed to the front, sustaining serious casualties.

The weather in the Afghan mountains was bad during the 11 days of Operation
Anaconda. Transport helicopters often could not land or evacuate troops on
time. Strategically important hilltops were captured with losses, only to
be soon abandoned. And in the end, apparently, the Taliban and al-Qaida
fighters slipped away in large numbers.

Such stories tend to elicit a smile from Russian veterans of the 1980s
Afghan. They had exactly the same experiences. (The Afghan allies always
slip away if their is any serious trouble, helicopters are never on time,
enemy body counts are always falsified and so on.) After almost 10 years of
combat in Afghanistan, the total number of enemy fighters killed, as
reported by commanders over the years, exceeded the entire official
population of the country -- a fact often joked about in Russian military
and intelligence communities.

Franks himself did a stint in Vietnam in 1967, where the body count became
virtually the only measure of military success. The United States won the
count, losing some 60,000 men, to Vietnam's estimated 2 million lives lost.
But the war was lost.

The Afghan economy and society is based on two pillars: tribal warlordism
and the heroin trade. These two pillars are intertwined and mutually
reinforcing. The Taliban and al-Qaida tried without much success to
dismantle this narco-feudalist system, so when the United States attacked
the heroin traders of the Northern Alliance and the Pashtun traditional
tribal chiefs, all joined the fight for freedom.

But now it's the U.S.-led coalition that is the main potential threat to
narco-warlordism. Franks insists: "We will find and destroy the pockets of
resistance." However, while Americans poke around and disrupt
drug-trafficking, the Afghan two-pillar system will produce and support
anti-Western rogues -- many more than Franks' men can ever hope to kill.