What We Must Do Now; Success is possible. But make no mistake. We are not winning.

Byline: Wesley K. Clark (General Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO and a 2004 U.S. presidential candidate, teaches at the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA.)

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, U.S. forces achieved a rapid, high-tech victory over Afghanistan's terrorist-supporting Taliban government. Five years later, the Taliban is back. But this is a different fight. Not only Afghanistan but NATO itself is at risk.

Fingers are pointing. Washington didn't commit enough forces.

The Europeans are too timid. The central government is weak. All that might be true. But the real problem grows out of how the United States defined its mission to begin with. That was to strike the Taliban but not get stuck in Afghanistan. We don't do "nation-building," American leaders declared, as if that were something to be proud of. Besides, the troops would soon be needed in Iraq.

The fact is that Afghanistan was a tribal country savaged by 20 years of war and further brutalized by the fundamentalist Taliban. Its infrastructure, educational system, agriculture--all was gone. With the Taliban in retreat, traditional warlords reestablished themselves. Vital political and economic assistance never arrived. Neither did a sufficiently strong international security force. Instead, a few thousand U.S. troops were inserted to pursue the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The government of Hamid Karzai, pieced together, was never able to extend its reach much outside Kabul. The results today are a mockery of early optimism. Despite the presence of almost 40,000 NATO troops, security has worsened. Opium has again become a major business, infrastructure redevelopment lags, schools remain closed--and across great swathes of the country the Taliban is resurgent.

It's not as though NATO forces are incapable of fighting the insurgents. By body-count and loss ratios they're doing well, using heavy firepower to clobber the Taliban wherever fighters mass in conventional battle. But the real war isn't military; it's political and economic. Destroying a few Taliban units here and there certainly retards their goal of regaining full control of the country. But it doesn't provide what's essential: continuous security and the chance for political and economic redevelopment to take hold. Ultimately, that's the only thing that can defeat the Taliban. Meanwhile, NATO's own credibility is on the line--yet it hasn't deployed the political, economic and military resources to win.

The Taliban ...