Afghanistan at risk of failing, study says

updated 7:37 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2008

WASHINGTON - Afghanistan risks failing as a nation and becoming the "forgotten war" because of deteriorating international support and a growing, violent insurgency, according to an independent study.

The assessment, co-chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones and former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, serves as a warning to the Bush administration at a time military and congressional officials are debating how best to juggle stretched warfighting resources.

The administration wants to re-energize anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where al-Qaida is regenerating. But the U.S. still remains heavily invested in Iraq, and officials are sending strong signals that troop reductions there will slow or stop altogether this summer.

"Afghanistan stands at a crossroads," concludes the study, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. "The progress achieved after six years of international engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country."

A major issue has been trying to win the war with "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," the study adds.

The group made nearly three dozen recommendations. Among them:

• Increase NATO force levels and military equipment sent to Afghanistan.
• Decouple U.S. management of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
• Establish a special envoy to coordinate all U.S. policy on Afghanistan.
• Champion a unified strategy among partner nations to stabilize the country in five years.

'Situation is good,' Gates says
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was not familiar with the study's findings, but he struck a more optimistic tone on Afghanistan's future.

"I would say that the security situation is good," Gates said. "We want to make sure it gets better, and I think there's still a need to coordinate civil reconstruction, the economic development side of it."

Gates said more troops are needed in Afghanistan but "certainly not ours." When asked how many more NATO troops might be needed, he said that number should be determined by ground commanders.

Sen. John Kerry said that it was "past time for wakeup calls" and that a "comprehensive, thoughtful approach" in Afghanistan was urgently needed.

"The same extremist group which plotted the attacks of 9/11 are reconstituting themselves on the Afghan border and grow more organized by the day, making the stakes higher and higher," said Kerry, D-Mass., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

U.S. urged to rethink military strategy
The Jones-Pickering assessment, slated for public release on Wednesday, says the U.S. should rethink its military and economic strategy in Afghanistan in large part because of deteriorating support among voters in NATO countries.

If international forces are pulled, the fragile Afghan government would "likely fall apart," the report warns.

The study was a voluntary effort coordinated by the Center for the Study of the Presidency, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, as a follow-on to the Iraq Study Group. That study group was a congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel hailed as the first major bipartisan assessment on the Iraq war since the 2003 invasion.

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