AFGHANISTAN - Moving On The Warlords.

Security in Afghanistan remains tenuous and "has shown no signs of improvement. The explosive situation might soon turn out to be as bad as Iraq - but on a smaller scale. The similarities are striking, though. As in Iraq, insurgents in Afghanistan have not only been attacking the multinational military force but also local police and foreign aid workers. Karzai must first move to neutralise the warlords.

Unlike Iraq, however, potential destabilisation in Afghanistan has taken added momentum following a recent announcement of possible US troop withdrawals from the politically troubled country. During a visit to Kabul, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted that Washington might gradually reduce its 15,500 troops immediately after the September elections.

Any such action, say Afghan analysts, would be a recipe for political and military disaster. If the United States cuts the number of troops after the Afghan elections, it would be the clearest confirmation of what many have feared - that the US main interest in Afghanistan is not stabilising the country or improving people's lives, but getting Karzai elected president and making Afghanistan look like a "war on terror success" in time for the US presidential elections in November.

James Ingalls of the California Institute of Technology and a founding director of the Afghan Women's Mission, is skeptical about the ability of the Karzai government to hold "fair and free elections". His main worry are the country's warlords, and Ingalls says: "The US-backed warlords continue to control parts of the country with impunity. If allowed to participate in the political process, they will likely bully and buy their way into parliamentary positions, as they have in the past. Those who don't get their way will resort to force. They have little incentive to do otherwise".

"At best", Ingalls predicts, "the elections will be meaningless because the people have no real choices - who are Karzai's challenger(s)? - at worst, the elections could spark a new civil war". He and local analysts fear that a significant reduction of US troops in Afghanistan would send a very negative signal to the Afghan people. It would fuel the growing perception among Afghans that the US and the international community are once again turning their backs on the country - as they did after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989, after a ten-year occupation.

While insurgent groups such as the Taliban and their allies are not in a position to overthrow the central government, they still pose a potent security risk. By focusing their attacks on soft targets such as aid workers and Afghan government employees, they have effectively halted development work in about one-third of the country.

Reconstruction of war-battered Iraq has come to a complete standstill because of the security situation. Both the World Bank and the UN, along with major humanitarian aid groups, have withdrawn all of their international staff because of security fears. Since the killing of a UN aid worker in Afghanistan last November, most international staff working for more than 30 UN agencies have been withdrawn from southern and eastern Afghanistan. As a result, the UN has also suspended aid to refugees returning from neighbouring Pakistan.

Jean Arnault, the UN special representative in Afghanistan, said he was "shocked" by the recent "brutal slayings" of two local aid workers in the southern city of Kandahar. The two worked for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Assistance, an international aid organisation. Arnault told reporters: "This and other recent attacks in Kandahar urgently point towards the need to make more forces available to the provincial authorities in order to enable them to uphold the law and facilitate the expansion of reconstruction".

The Taliban-Qaeda-Hekmatyar alliance, warlordism and the booming opium trade are threats to reconstruction in Afghanistan. The US military presence, while limited compared to Iraq, serves as a powerful deterrent to the outbreak of major hostilities. he US military also provides vital support to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is in the process of expanding outside Kabul. The timing of the potential troop reduction, however, is also disconcerting, for if elections do take place in September, the period immediately following will likely be extremely tense. It is in the immediate aftermath of the polls that one will see whether the country's major powerbrokers will accept its result.