Afghanistan 'at a crossroads', US warned

Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the “forgotten war” because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency, according to an independent US study.

The report was co-chaired by retired US Marine Corps General James Jones and a former US ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas Pickering and is due to be published today.

“Afghanistan stands at a crossroads,” concludes the study.

“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 makes nearly three dozen recommendations including calls for an increase in NATO force levels and military equipment sent to Afghanistan.

It also suggests the US management of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars should be decoupled and that a special envoy should be appointed to coordinate all US policy on Afghanistan.

It also recommends a unified strategy among partner nations to stabilise the country in five years.

US Defence 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.

The Jones-Pickering assessment, set for public release today, says the United States 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 out, the fragile Afghan government would “likely fall apart,” the report warns.

The study was a voluntary effort coordinated by the Centre for the Study of the Presidency, a non-partisan organisation in Washington, as a follow-on to the Iraq Study Group.

That study group was a congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel, the first major bipartisan assessment on the Iraq war since the 2003 invasion.

According to the report, the centre decided to initiate the study after Iraq Study Group discussions made clear that Afghanistan was at risk of becoming “the forgotten war”.

“Participants and witnesses pointed to the danger of losing the war in Afghanistan unless a reassessment took place of the effort being undertaken in that country by the United States, NATO and the international community,” the study states.