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A Times Editorial
This week's U.S. casualties are evidence of the war's remaining dangers, but the formation of an interim government is an important step toward peace.
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 7, 2001
Complete victory in Afghanistan is only a matter of time, but the conflict has entered a more treacherous phase, diplomatically as well as militarily.
Wednesday's American casualties as a result of a friendly fire accident were sad evidence of the dangers our ground troops face as they go about the dirty work of mopping up the remaining resistance from Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. In the past decade, the American public has seen U.S. forces conduct successful military operations in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans and Haiti while sustaining remarkably few casualties. However, even our superior forces cannot always insulate us from the realities of combat. Thousands of American civilians died in the terrorist attacks that led to this war; it is all but inevitable that more Americans, in and out of uniform, will die before the war against terrorism is won.
The war won't end in Afghanistan, and our mission there won't be finished until we help to build a post-Taliban government that effectively represents the country's major factions and offers no sanctuary to terrorists. Negotiations toward that end in Germany made more progress than many expected, but that process, too, is fraught with complications.
U.S. authorities deserve great credit for persuading the Northern Alliance, whose military successes left it in control of the bulk of the country, to make the painful concessions needed to forge a power-sharing agreement with historic adversaries. Alliance negotiators finally dropped their opposition to the establishment of an international peacekeeping force. They also accepted Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai as the head of a provisional government that will include representatives from all major political and ethnic blocs other than the Taliban. The old-guard Islamists even consented to the inclusion of two women in the 30-member interim council.
No one will be surprised if this broad coalition begins to unravel before a permanent governing structure is ready to take its place. Some warlords who feel they are not properly represented already are threatening to oppose the interim government. Still, the negotiations served several important purposes. They created conditions in which Afghan and American forces can carry out their remaining military and humanitarian tasks more securely. They gave assurance to Pakistan and other concerned governments that U.S.-sponsored Afghan forces would not use their military gains to claim undue political control. And, against all odds, they established a framework in which a fractious people with no real history of representative government can begin to build a better society from the ashes of the Taliban's experiment in 14th century oppression. That is the surest way for the United States to gain reliable friends in the region.