U.S. Says It Won't Forget Afghanistan

"We are not going to forget our responsibilities here," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a gathering in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Armitage said he had come to Afghanistan to "dramatically illustrate that we are able to do two things at the same time," according to a statement issued Friday by the State Department in Washington.

Armitage is visiting the South Asian region as part of the U.S. campaign to address global terrorism and its underlying causes.

Although the ongoing U.S. effort to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan has drawn much of the media's attention, reassuring Afghanistan of continued U.S. support is as important to Armitage's South Asian mission as making peace between the region's two nuclear rivals.

Since the beginning of the war in Iraq more than a month ago, the U.S.-backed rulers of Afghanistan have felt increasingly vulnerable, fearing that Washington may lose interest in Kabul because of its engagements in Baghdad.

Although in power since December 2001, the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul still depends heavily on U.S. economic and military assistance. It has been able to maintain peace in Kabul with the help of an International Security Assistance Force and is raising a national army with U.S. support to extend its jurisdiction to other areas.

Armitage assured his Afghan hosts that the United States is going to be a worthy partner "in terms of supporting political development and supporting the economic and social redevelopment of Afghanistan."

The U.S. reconstruction and redevelopment efforts in the country, he said, are continuing "in things large and small." He mentioned the installation of a water pumping station in Kabul that has "dramatically bettered the lives of 406,000 citizens of this city," a medical facility's women's dormitory, and the Kabul-Kandahar highway, which the Bush administration is trying to finish by the end of 2004 -- six months ahead of schedule.

When asked about the need to extend ISAF beyond Kabul, Armitage said the United States preferred having provincial reconstruction teams expand across the country instead.

The teams -- which include U.S. troops, Afghan soldiers and soldiers of the local tribal chiefs -- are working to provide economic and social support to far-flung areas besides assisting Afghan authorities in restoring security to the war-torn country.

"We think this is a very effective way of providing both security and extending the reach of the central government," he said.

The U.S. forces, he said, will be withdrawn "once we are sure that the government of Afghanistan feels perfectly secure," and "the people of Afghanistan have found the necessary stability."

But observers say that the Afghan government needs more than mere assurance to expand its control over the country. They say that the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, ousted from Kabul in December 2001 by U.S. forces, have increased their activities since the United States launched its military offensive in Iraq. They believe that the United States is too involved in Iraq to refocus on Afghanistan, the observers said.

Recently, guerillas launched a series of attacks on U.S. and official Afghan troops along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, fleeing to their hideouts in Pakistan's tribal areas when chased.

Earlier on Friday, Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah issued a stern warning to elements attempting to destabilize the Afghan government to desist from deepening Afghanistan's ethnic divide.

"We hope this kind of activity will cease, that this kind of support for the Taliban remnants is stopped," the Afghan minister told reporters in Dubai.

He said the pro-Taliban elements in the region were characterizing the rise of the Taliban as a coming together of the majority Pashtuns against Afghanistan's ethnic minorities -- the Tajiks and Hazaras -- seen as the dominant force in the Karzai government.

"Any country that seeks to prey on our ethnic diversity should be warned that this time, any attempt will be dealt with severely," Abdullah told the Dubai newspaper Gulf News.

He refused to name the country he believes was encouraging insurgency in Afghanistan, but other Afghan officials have blamed Pakistan in the past.

Pakistan denies the charge. Last week, Karzai, the Afghan president, visited Islamabad and signed an agreement with Pakistan to jointly combat the Taliban and al-Qaida forces along the border.

U.N. officials also have warned that neighboring nations were engaged in a proxy war in the unfortunate country, where external support for warring factions during more than 20 years of civil war and factional fighting have already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Late last month, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to Iraq and Afghanistan, had to pause in his crucial negotiations in Baghdad to visit Afghanistan, where he publicly warned that any attempt to destabilize Karzai would be seen as an attack on U.S. interests.

And on Tuesday, the U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, told the U.N. Security Council that "the issue of security casts a long shadow over the whole peace process ... the whole future of Afghanistan."

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

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