Staying the course.

Byline: The Register-Guard

As the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq prepares to hand over formal political power to the new Iraqi government next week, President Bush has vowed to "stay the course" in Iraq, regardless of the cost, to ensure that the fledging democracy survives and prospers.

For Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, Bush's promise must have a grimly familiar ring. After U.S. forces drove the brutal Taliban regime from power in late 2001, Bush pledged that the United States and other nations of the world would do whatever was necessary to help Afghanistan rebuild and to help it on the path to self-government.

Three years later, that promise has not been fulfilled.

The charismatic Karzai and his fellow Afghans have done their part. With the nation's infrastructure shattered by decades of war, they formed an interim government and then held a "loya jirga" to establish a more legitimate and representative leadership. They also crafted a constitution that laid the groundwork for presidential and parliamentary elections this fall.

Yet the United States, massively diverted by the war in Iraq, and other nations have fallen short on their end of the deal - and that failure has taken a heavy toll on the Afghan people and has placed the struggling government's future at risk.

Afghanistan has the world's second-highest infant and maternal mortality rates and has yet to see much of the $4.4 billion in reconstruction funds pledged by donor nations. The government needs $100 million to hold elections, but has less than a third of that amount in hand.

A far greater problem has been a shortage of military assistance, which has left most of the country outside Kabul vulnerable to attacks by resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. More than 400 people, including foreign relief workers, have died in violence already this year.

There are an estimated 20,000 coalition troops, mostly U.S. forces, still in Afghanistan, but their energies are devoted largely to finding Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda leadership along the border with Pakistan.

That has left the daunting job of securing the rest of the nation to a paltry force of 6,500 troops that operates under under NATO leadership. With minor exceptions, those troops remain in the Afghan capital, leaving the rest of the nation in the hands of corrupt, violent regional warlords whose unimpeded opium production produces the bulk of the world's heroin supply.

As a result of such widespread lawlessness and violence, there has been a steady exodus of aid organizations from much of Afghanistan. The growing influence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in outlying areas has prevented government officials from laying essential groundwork for the upcoming elections. With September rapidly approaching, it's estimated that only a third of the nation's eligible voters have been registered, making it likely that the long-anticipated elections will have to be delayed.

The obvious solution is for NATO to increase its forces in Afghanistan and to fulfill its agreement to extend its presence outside the capital. But so far, NATO members have refused to do so, even though the organization originally embraced the Afghanistan assignment as an opportunity to prove its relevance in a post-Cold War world.

The United States and other members of the alliance that drove the Taliban from power have a responsibility to fulfill their promises of three years ago that they would not walk away from Afghanistan. Failure to provide the troops and assistance necessary for reconstruction, for securing the countryside and for conducting timely elections not only places the future of Afghanistan in peril, it raises serious questions about the promises now being made to "stay the course" in Iraq.