KABUL, Afghanistan - More than 14 months ago, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan produced swift and stunning results.
Small teams of Special Forces soldiers and CIA paramilitary officers targeted the enemy for U.S. warplanes while giving millions of dollars in cash and weapons to proxy forces headed by commanders of the Northern Alliance resistance. In a matter of weeks, the Taliban and al-Qaida were routed and a pro-American government was installed. It was an improvised strategy that hitched U.S. combat technology to Afghan boots on the ground.
Today, the postwar phase of Operation Enduring Freedom is still being improvised, but with less-dramatic results and with long-term success far from certain.
As U.S. policy-makers lay plans for a possible invasion of Iraq, the Afghan experience is a reminder that the toughest war is often waged long after the fiercest combat ends. Even with the enemy defeated on the battlefield, the fight to stabilize and rebuild a fractured nation can be as draining as any battle fought with infantry and warplanes.
U.S. commanders in Afghanistan are being asked to direct an ambitious effort at nation building - the ambiguous and taxing Clinton-era policy ridiculed by candidate George W. Bush. The United States is doubling the number of civil affairs officers assigned to help build schools and clinics, dig wells and provide humanitarian aid in a country where most people are illiterate and live in mud huts.
American combat units, meanwhile, are harassed almost daily by haphazard rocket fire and hit-and-run attacks. Taliban and al-Qaida fighters enjoy freedom of movement in the lawless tribal highlands of Pakistan, aided by sympathizers in Afghanistan's rugged eastern border regions. Though several top al-Qaida leaders have been killed or captured, Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are at large.
Like U.S. troops in Vietnam, American soldiers here find it difficult to distinguish ordinary villagers from enemy operatives. Lt. Col. Martin Schweitzer, a battalion commander in eastern Afghanistan, said the enemy hides among civilians and spies on American troop movements and methods from villages across the border in Pakistan.
They use cell phones, walkie-talkies, whistles and even mirrors to warn confederates of U.S. combat patrols, he said.
Throughout the country, security is tenuous. Two Afghan government ministers have been assassinated; their killers remain free. President Hamid Karzai, who has survived an assassination attempt, is guarded by an American security detail. His government has yet to extend its authority beyond the capital.
The U.S. military commitment is open-ended. Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of coalition forces here, said it will probably be another 18 months to two years before U.S. troop levels, now at about 8,000, can be reduced. He said he expected American forces to remain in Afghanistan, at gradually diminishing levels, for years to come.
From reporting across Afghanistan for a year, a portrait emerges of an American effort that has produced profound changes in the lives of ordinary Afghans but also has left a residue of bitterness and mistrust.
A military campaign that began with a flourish has evolved into a sometimes intrusive police action in a nation with a tradition of fierce resistance to outsiders and a virtually endless supply of weaponry. U.S. forces are seizing and destroying weapons caches - 1.5 million pounds so far - but warlords' militias continue to rule by the gun in the absence of government authority.
In part because of airstrikes last fall that killed, by various estimates, several hundred to a few thousand civilians, there is lingering resentment of Americans - especially in Pashtun areas in the east and south. While Afghans express gratitude to the United States for ridding the country of the Taliban and al-Qaida, some say they fear U.S. troops will become a long-term occupying army like the Soviet forces that invaded more than 20 years ago and remained for a decade.
Those misgivings have been compounded by American military support for warlords, most of them Tajiks from the Northern Alliance who helped defeat the Pashtun-dominated Taliban. The Karzai government is dominated by Tajiks from the Panjsher Valley, stirring further skepticism among Pashtuns about its commitment to the stated U.S. goal of a democratic, multiethnic government.
For now, the warlords enjoy robust American support. U.S. Special Forces teams conduct operations accompanied by warlords' militiamen and live in compounds guarded by them. Because many warlords serve as provincial governors, U.S. military civil affairs teams must work with them to set up reconstruction and humanitarian projects - burnishing their images among the local population.
McNeill said the warlords back the central government and have promised to disband their private armies or integrate them into the evolving national army - though they have collected an estimated $300 million in taxes and duties that should have gone to the Karzai government they claim to support. The government is so strapped for cash that workers are paid only sporadically.
"They each have interests that are particular to their regions, but they are also interested in seeing this country move forward," McNeill said of the warlords. "They realize that a centrally controlled army will likely bring more security and stability than anything they've seen in the last 23 years. ... They're simply waiting for the central government to show how this will work."
Four battalions of the nascent national army, representing 300 to 400 men each, have been trained by U.S. Special Forces since summer last year, and two more battalions are in training. Units have been posted outside the capital for the first time.
In interviews, army trainees reject tribal and ethnic ties and express loyalty to the national government. "This is our homeland, and I want to defend it," said Farhid Sharzai, 26, an ethnic Pashtun recruit. Abdul Hanan Mufakir, 32, a Tajik, said: "The country is like a mother who must be protected by all her children."
As the army slowly develops, the civilian population remains mired in poverty. At least 1.3 million Afghans will need food aid to survive the winter, according to the World Food Program. The nation of about 21 million has been overwhelmed by 1.9 million returning refugees, many of whose homes were destroyed.
Col. Roger King, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, described the current mission as "to kill or capture al-Qaida and those who support them, train the [national army] and deny the use of Afghanistan as a sanctuary by the terrorists. In support of this mission, we work to provide an environment where Afghanistan can rebuild."
Against this backdrop, U.S. combat forces - assisted by 4,700 troops from the International Security Assistance Force of peacekeepers - are trying to hold the country together until the central government can step in.
Most of the American military focus is in the east, where al-Qaida and Taliban holdouts slip back and forth across the Pakistani border, moving weapons, money and bomb-making materials.
U.S. infantry units mount combat sweeps through the same border areas again and again. Villagers say al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, assisted by local sympathizers, return as soon as the American forces leave - though the senior military official said that "each time we go back, the conditions improve."
The enemy's refusal to fight the superior American forces face-to-face has left troops frustrated. Capt. Clay Novak, who has led an airborne company on sweeps along the Pakistani border, said he once assumed that Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts would challenge the Americans.
"They preach a good game about dying for their cause, but the fact is they've run away every time," Novak said after a mission in which his men found weapons but no enemy fighters.
Since Operation Enduring Freedom began, the United States has suffered 26 combat deaths and 137 wounded. Another 28 soldiers have died and 114 have been injured in aircraft crashes and other accidents.
During a visit to Afghanistan last month, Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, said that threats remain despite the decisive American military victory more than a year ago.
"While things seem to be OK for Afghanistan ... we still see a lot of problems," Franks said. "The truth of it is that while a lot has been done, this is Afghanistan. We're going to have to stay with it for as long as it takes."
David Zucchino is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.