A Plan for Afghanistan; It is shameful that we've only built one stretch of highway since the Taliban.(Viewpoint essay)

Byline: Anatol Lieven is senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. Rajan Menon is a fellow at the foundation and Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University.

On his recent trip to Kabul, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pledged that America was not disengaging from Afghanistan, where the Taliban have staged a bloody resurgence in several southern provinces. But the more telling comment may have come from the man standing beside him at the time, Afghan President Hamid Karzai. When asked whether he would request more U.S. troops to quell the insurgency, he replied, "Yes, much more, and we'll keep asking for more, and we will never stop asking."

The danger is not that revived Taliban forces will defeat NATO or U.S. forces on the battlefield; there is no chance of that. But if the Taliban's resurgence and Afghans' economic misery are not ended, a government capable of surviving if Western troops withdraw will never emerge in Afghanistan. And that means that the West will have to fight in Afghanistan indefinitely. Is that something the U.S. electorate will tolerate? The Taliban and Al Qaeda are betting not.

More troops and more money will not solve the problem. What's also needed is imaginative thinking. To begin with, it is facile to treat Afghanistan as a geographical and economic island. The only hope of developing the country is to spur growth in its surrounding region. One way to do this is to create new transport links through Afghanistan from Central Asia to Pakistan and India. It is shameful that we have succeeded in rebuilding only one stretch of highway since toppling the Taliban. We ought to have finished a road network and to be well into the creation of a railway linking the South Asian and former Soviet rail systems, not least because by far the greater part of the track would traverse regions secure from Taliban attack.

A regional strategy should also involve a new approach to Iran. Up to now, the Bush administration has put massive pressure on Karzai's government not to develop economic and other ties to Tehran. Yet, like it or not, Iran has influenced (indeed, often ruled) Afghanistan for some 2,500 years. It has the capacity to act as a spoiler, and has good reason to do so as the war of words between Washington and Tehran heats up. There is a basis for cooperation in Afghanistan, however, because key Iranian interests there are congruent with those of the United States--above all when it comes to fighting the heroin trade and preventing a return of the savagely anti-Shiite Taliban.

Within Afghanistan, we need a development program that brings tangible benefits to ordinary people. True, sustained programs to promote development are well-nigh impossible in areas--Helmand, ...