Doesn't some of that responsibility fall to Hamid Karzai's government?

I think the interim government is very frustrated because it's not being able to extend its power around the country. It can't do it on its own. It needs money and reconstruction; it needs security forces. It's a vicious circle. When I was in Kabul, I spent a lot of time with Hamid Karzai, and it was very clear that the only people who have any power or influence are the U.S. military. It's not the diplomats, it's the generals. What I'm saying is that the war was over basically by December; you should have brought other agencies of government into the decision-making milieu. But I think the same group of people who were making the decisions back in September and October are still making decisions.

Do you have any insight, on the American end, as to why that might be the case?

Yeah, I've had a lot of people coming to me from other agencies of the U.S. government who are extremely frustrated by their own policy, because they're not involved. I think the State Department is quite frustrated, because they do have expertise on Afghanistan and what should be done. I think AID is very frustrated, and American NGOs [nongovernmental agencies] that should be in there in a big way.

How dangerous is this for the United States and the world to allow this to continue?

It's extremely dangerous. In June, the Loya Jirga is going to meet. It means that for at least the next two months there has to be able to be a political process whereby people will choose [their representatives], through a kind of indirect election around the country. They need to do that in an atmosphere where they have security, where they're free to choose their representatives. Now at the moment, in many parts of the country, the warlords are dominating, there's little security, and the Loya Jirga is going to be the make-or-break. The whole credibility of the political process rests on the fact that the Loya Jirga has to be credibly representative of the Afghan people, because it's going to set up a new government. It's going to set up a transition government for two years, it's going to choose a head of state, it's going to set up a constitution-making committee. It's very important. These next two months are make-or-break.

The current government is not pretending to be representative. This was a U.N.-composed government. That will be an Afghan government. So it's very important that this whole process succeed. But at the moment, with this kind of emphasis on the war, as if that's the only thing going on, it's putting it all in jeopardy. The king has not even come back, basically because of the Americans. He was going to come back on the 23rd, but the Americans were saying there was a security situation. Well, look, he doesn't have trained bodyguards, and doesn't have neutral guys, but we knew the king was going back, back in December. We knew there was a problem; we should have addressed it three months ago.

Is the king's return really that important for the future of Afghanistan?

Oh, yes. There's an attempt to kind of control the environment. The king's return would unleash a whole, very emotional reaction by the Afghans that could speed up the whole political process. The king is an important symbol of unity. There's an enormous sense of nostalgia about the king. I wouldn't call him a political player, but it symbolizes a time when Afghanistan was at peace. I'm worried that the Americans are trying to control the environment to the detriment of the political process and the interim government.

How much of that is based on a fear of a Balkan-like situation, of unleashing ethnic rivalries in Afghanistan, and having those rivalries dominate the political process? Is that what the Americans are trying to keep a lid on?

I think so, but my assessment of the warlords right now outside Kabul is that there are two types of warlords. The warlords in the north and the west are former warlords who've come back, helped defeat the Taliban, but they don't have the power and loyalty that they had in the past. First of all, they were all defeated by the Taliban, they all fled the country. They've come back under the American umbrella, but they don't have that power and credibility. And I think it would be relatively easy to diminish their influence with all these other things I've talked about.

The other bunch of warlords are the ones in the south who've been armed and funded by the Americans directly, who have been used as the ground troops against al-Qaida. They're showing little loyalty to the interim government. They're unable to provide security to the U.N. and the NGOs in the south and east of the country, so people are asking what in the hell the Americans are doing. These are the American warlords. If the Americans are the ones who are going to provide security, at least a warlord in Kandahar should be bloody well told to behave. Control your troops from criminal activity in the city, and create an environment where NGOs and aid agencies can come. But there has been no effort to do that. Not even in areas like Kandahar where American troops are based, where American warlords are based, where these warlords owe their existence to the Americans.

This only emphasizes what I'm saying, that what is lacking at the moment is any kind of political and economic strategy. You can't have that if you have purely a war strategy which is based purely on threats from al-Qaida and Taliban.

So, essentially, it's the lack of nation-building that is the most dangerous factor in Afghanistan now?

The Bonn agreement, which set up the interim government, was essentially a partnership between, on the one hand, the international community, and on the other, the interim government. Both had several obligations. I was in Kabul 10 days ago, and what I'm seeing now is that the international community has not fulfilled its obligations, which were essentially to provide security for the political process and the reconstruction process. Although there are 4,800 European peacekeeping troops in Kabul, they have not been expanded to the five other major cities, and the Americans have basically said no. I think all the Europeans were clearly waiting for an American lead, or American permission, because Americans are running the war.

Now I'm not saying that Americans should be part of the peacekeeping, but they need to encourage the Europeans to go to the other cities. Now everybody's chickened out because the Americans are not on board.

But much of the U.S. reluctance to increase the peacekeeping force is coming from the hesitation of Turkey to take over control of ISAF. Isn't it important to appease the concerns of the only NATO country with a Muslim majority population which has peacekeepers on the ground in Afghanistan?

Well, I think the American reluctance is that they fear that these European peacekeepers in other cities will interfere with the war effort, the mopping up of al-Qaida, and secondly, my own sense is that they don't want interference. They have a kind of monopoly of power in Afghanistan, and they don't want interference from peacekeepers.

Is this a deal the Karzai government has made with the Americans?

No, the interim government has been pushing for peacekeepers all along. The peacekeepers will play an important role in the other cities. They will diminish the power of the warlords. They would allow the political process to pick up speed; they would allow reconstruction, the NGOs and the U.N. agencies to come. The problem is that outside Kabul, the security is not good enough for large-scale development and reconstruction. I think that's the first failure.

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