A Lingering Threat.

"Before departing Afghanistan, Khalilzad fought a final battle within the administration. It revealed divisions within the American government over Pakistan's role in aiding the Taliban, a delicate subject as the administration tried to coax Pakistan's president...Musharraf to co-operate.

"In an interview on Afghan television, Khalilzad noted that Pakistani journalists had recently interviewed a senior Taliban commander in Pakistan. He questioned Pakistan's claim that it did not know the whereabouts of senior Taliban commanders - a form of skepticism discouraged in Washington, where the administration's line had always been that Musharraf was doing everything he could. 'If a TV station can get in touch with them, how can the intelligence service of a country, which has nuclear bombs, and a lot of security and military forces, not find them?' Khalilzad asked.

"Pakistani officials publicly denounced Khalilzad's comments and denied that they were harboring Taliban leaders. But Khalilzad had also exposed the growing rift between American officials in Kabul and those in Islamabad.

"Grenier said that when he was the CIA station chief in Islamabad the issue of fugitive Taliban leaders was repeatedly raised with senior Pakistani intelligence officials in 2002. 'The results were just not there', he recalled. 'And it was quite clear to me that it wasn't just bad luck'.

"Pakistan had backed the Taliban throughout the 1990s as a counterweight to an alliance of northern Afghan commanders backed by India, Pakistan's bitter rival. Pakistani officials also distrusted Karzai. Deciding that the Pakistanis would not act on the Taliban, Grenier said he had urged them to focus on arresting Qaeda members, who he said were far more of a threat to the United States. 'From our perspective at the time, the Taliban was a spent force', he said, adding, 'We were very much focused on al-Qaeda and didn't want to distract the Pakistanis from that'. But Khalilzad, American military officials and others in the administration argued that the Taliban were crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan and killing American troops and aid workers.

"'Colleagues in Washington at various levels did not recognize that there was the problem of sanctuary and that this was important', Khalilzad said. But it was not until 2006, after ordering a study on Afghanistan's future, that Bush strenuously pressed Musharraf on the Taliban. Later, Bush told his aides he worried that 'old school ties' between Pakistani intelligence and the Taliban endured, despite the general's assurances".

The NYT quoted a senior US commander as saying: The Pakistanis were "hedging their bets. They're not sure that we are staying. And if we are gone, the Taliban is their next best option" to remain influential in Afghanistan. As 2005 ended, the Taliban leaders remained in hiding in Pakistan, waiting for an opportunity to cross the border. Soon, they would find one.

To Afghans, A Fickle Effort: In September 2005, NATO defence ministers gathered in Berlin to complete plans for NATO troops to take over security in Afghanistan's volatile south. It was the most ambitious "out of area" operations in NATO history. Across Europe, leaders were worried about getting support from their countries. Then, US military officials dropped a bombshell, saying the Pentagon was considering withdrawing up to US 3,000 troops from Afghanistan, roughly 20% of total US forces.

The NYT quoted NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as saying he had protested to Rumsfeld that a partial US withdrawal would discourage others from sending troops. In the end, the planned troop reduction was abandoned, but mainly because the US ground commander at the time, Lt Gen Karl Eikenberry, concluded that the Taliban were returning and that he needed to shift troops to the east to try to stop them. But the announcement had sent a signal of a wavering US commitment.

The NYT quoted Eikenberry as saying: "The Afghan people still doubt our staying power. They have seen the world walk away from them before". To sell their new missions at home, British, Dutch and Canadian officials portrayed deployments to Afghanistan as safe, and better than sending troops to Iraq. Germany and Italy prevented their forces from being sent on combat missions in volatile areas. Those regions were to be left to the Americans, Canadians, British and Dutch.

Three months after announcing the proposed troop withdrawal, the White House Office of Management and Budget cut aid to Afghanistan by a third. Rice said much of the money allocated to Afghanistan the previous year had not been spent, adding: "There was an absorption problem".

Neumann, then the ambassador to Kabul, said he had argued against the decision. Even so, US assistance to Afghanistan dropped 38%, from $4.3 bn in fiscal 2005 to $3.1 bn in fiscal 2006, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service. By February 2006, Neumann had come to the conclusion that the Taliban were planning a spring offensive, and he sent a cable to his superiors. The NYT quoted Neumann, who retired from the State Department in June, as recalling: "I had a feeling that the view was too rosy in Washington. I was concerned".

The NYT said: "Neumann's cable proved prophetic. In the spring of 2006, the Taliban carried out their largest offensive since [late] 2001, attacking British, Canadian and Dutch troops in southern Afghanistan. Hundreds of Taliban swarmed into the south, setting up checkpoints, assassinating officials and burning schools. Suicide bombings quintupled to 136. Roadside bombings doubled".

A total of 191 US and NATO troops died in 2006, a 20% increase over the 2005 toll. For the first time, it became nearly as dangerous, statistically, to serve as an American in Afghanistan as in Iraq. Neumann said while suicide bombers came from Pakistan, most Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan were Afghans. Captured insurgents said they had taken up arms because a local governor favoured a rival tribe, corrupt officials provided no services or their families needed money.

After cutting assistance in 2006, the US plans to provide $9 bn in aid to Afghanistan in 2007, twice the amount of any year since 2001. Despite warnings about the Taliban's resurgence from Neumann, Khalilzad and military officials, Rice said: "there was no doubt that people were surprised that the Taliban was able to regroup and come back in a large, well-organized force".

Divisions Over Strategy: In July 2006, NATO formally took responsibility for security throughout Afghanistan. To Americans and Europeans, NATO is the vaunted alliance that won the cold war. To Afghans it is little more than a strange, new acronym. And NATO and the US are divided over strategy. The disagreement is evident on the wall of the office of Gen Dan McNeill, the commander of the 35,000 NATO forces in Afghanistan, where he keeps a chart which is a sea of yellow and red blocks.

Each block shows the restrictions which national governments have placed on their forces under his command. Red blocks represent tasks a country will not do, like hunting Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Yellow blocks indicate missions they are willing to consider after asking their capitals for approval.

In Washington, officials lament that NATO states are unwilling to take the kinds of risks and casualties necessary to confront the Taliban. Across Europe, officials complain the US never focused on reconstruction, and they blame US forces for mounting air attacks on the Taliban which cause large civilian casualties, turning Afghans against the West. The debate over how the 2001 victory in Afghanistan turned into the current struggle is well under way.

The NYT quoted Robert Blackwill, who was in charge of both Afghanistan and Iraq policy at the National Security Council, as saying: "Destroying the al-Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan was an extraordinary strategic accomplishment, but where we find ourselves now may have been close to inevitable, whether the US went into Iraq or not. We were going to face this long war in Afghanistan as long as we and the Afghan government couldn't bring serious economic reconstruction to the countryside, and eliminate the Taliban's safe havens in Pakistan".

The NYT quoted Henry Crumpton, a former CIA officer who played a key role in ousting the Taliban and became the State Department's counter-terrorism chief, as saying winning a war like the one in Afghanistan required US personnel to "get in at a local level and respond to people's needs so that enemy forces cannot come in and take advantage. These are the fundamentals of counterinsurgency, and somehow we forgot them or never learned them". He noted that the US had 11 carrier battle groups, adding: "but we still don't have expeditionary non-military forces of the kind you need to win this sort of war. We're living in the past".

The NYT said: "Among some current and former officials, a consensus is emerging that a more consistent, forceful American effort could have helped to keep the Taliban and al-Qaeda's leadership from regrouping. General James Jones, a retired American officer and a former NATO supreme commander, said Iraq caused the United States to 'take its eye off the ball' in Afghanistan".

Jones warned that the consequences of failure "are just as serious in Afghanistan as they are in Iraq", adding: "Symbolically, it's more the epicenter of terrorism than Iraq. If we don't succeed in Afghanistan, you're sending a very clear message to the terrorist organizations that the US, the UN and the 37 countries with troops on the ground can be defeated".