No less important than the sheer quantity of such projects is the fact that Afghans figure prominently in nearly all of them. Thus, PRTs are overseen by a council chaired by Minister of Interior Jalali. The Afghan government is organizing local councils to guide development in the country's 20,000 villages. Women figure prominently in those already functioning. All this activity is developing a normal market-based economy in a country that has not known one for two generations.

Despite the naysayers, military, social, political and economic stabilization is well underway in Afghanistan. Increasingly, the country's security is protected by Afghans themselves. New institutions are reviving and strengthening the unitary state that existed in Afghanistan prior to the Soviet invasion. Elective principles are gaining adherents. Declining levels of political violence enable Afghans to focus attention on the economy, which grew by 30 percent in 2003 and will reach 24 percent this year. When donor countries this March raised their earlier commitment of $4.5 billion over three to five years to the same amount for a single year, they did so as investors, encouraged by the fledgling enterprise's progress. Afghanistan now has a reasonable chance of becoming, over time, a normal and prosperous country.

To be sure, Afghanistan is still a land of misery, the world's poorest country after Sierra Leone. It is still a dangerous place, where rockets can still be launched against senior officials and where even a walk in one's apricot orchard can end in bloodshed caused by an exploding landmine.

Nor can one ignore the drug trade. Afghanistan is again the world's chief producer of opium and heroin, with fully half of its GDP deriving from these products. But it is unwarranted to ascribe this problem to the "failure" of U.S. policy. There has been no policy to fail, and precious little money. In 2002 the United States allocated a mere $23 million and nothing in 2003 for the struggle against narco-business in Afghanistan. Only now is the U.S. government drafting an action program for eradicating drugs.

Opium production, however, is not driven by domestic demand. Afghans produce heroin because of unquenchable demand in Europe. Nor are Afghans wallowing in the profits of this illegal traffic: Less than one twelfth of profits on Afghan heroin ends up in Afghan hands; the rest goes to drug barons in Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Balkans and western Europe itself.

Despite all this, prospects for reducing production in Afghanistan are good. Opium production in Afghanistan was insignificant prior to the Soviet invasion and definitely not an accepted part of the local culture. Even today, barely 5 to 10 percent of Afghans derive their income from drugs. Many development projects that will affect the environment in which drugs now flourish are only now underway. The extension of trade deeper into the countryside, the renewal of irrigation systems, the improvement of internationally marketable crops, the economic empowerment of women, and improved local governance and police all hold promise for narcotics reduction.

Most Afghans are optimistic about the future. This is affirmed by the decision of two million Afghans to return to their homes from Pakistan and another 1.2 million from Iran. These Afghans have concluded that their prospects are better in Afghanistan today than in any other place open to them.

The cost to the United States has been significant. By late spring 2003, 121 American soldiers had lost their lives in Afghanistan, 53 of them in combat. The cost in money is also considerable. The price tag for a year's operations is $12.4 billion, of which $2.4 billion is for "Accelerating Success." And while it is true that other countries have contributed to reconstruction, the United States is still providing more than 31 of the other donors combined.

What does the United States get from "Accelerating Success"? First, by destroying the Taliban and working with the UN to build a solid new state on Afghan soil, the United States is removing that country from the list of "weak states" that provide safe havens for Al-Qaeda. Besides lifting a horrific burden from 25 million Afghans, this sends a clear signal to countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that their support for brutal Islamist regimes will no longer be tolerated.

Second, the United States is attacking in Afghanistan the soil in which extremist regimes germinate, namely poverty. Many Islamist leaders come from the upper middle and upper classes, but they pitch their appeal to the desperate poor. Poverty is especially prevalent in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. The alleviation of poverty there shows the path to progress in other embattled mountain zones like Kashmir, Chechnya, Karabakh, Nepal, the Balkans and Colombia.

Third, what happens in Afghanistan affects the entire region. To its east lies Pakistan, long isolated from the larger world by wars in Afghanistan and neglected by the United States. To the north lie the new states of Central Asia, for whom the Taliban posed a serious threat that Russia could easily exploit. For both, the transformations wrought by American initiatives in Afghanistan constitute the greatest opportunity for positive change since they gained independence.

This actually understates the achievement. The transformation of Afghanistan is calling back into being an important world region: the true, larger Central Asia. Split by the czarist Russian and later Soviet border and then wracked by fighting for a generation, this ancient cultural and economic region long vanished from the world's consciousness. Now, for the first time since the 19th century, Afghans and the peoples of Central Asia are all independent.

By re-opening ancient east-west and north-south trade routes, the United States and its partners are creating a great new Eurasian economic zone. Afghan trade with Pakistan has grown sixfold in three years and has quadrupled across Iran to the Middle East and Turkey. If the Asia Development Bank succeeds in its $2 billion plan to link India, Pakistan and Afghanistan by roads and railroads, this new economic zone will extend even to South Asia.

What does the United States gain from its investment in Afghanistan? Besides immediate benefits, it improves its own long-term security. This occurs as it turns a battle-torn and economically stagnant zone into a peaceful, stable and economically dynamic region ruled by governments that have seen the dangers of extremism and have chosen moderation instead. These moderate states with predominantly Muslim populations view America as a loyal friend. To the rest of the world they present a viable alternative to what has prevailed across most of the Arab Middle East.

Finally, success in Afghanistan underscores the importance of the distinction between nation-building and state-building. It is surely all but impossible for the United States artificially to create political communities at the national level where none exists. But it can enhance the ability of political communities to govern themselves; help secure the borders and gain international acceptance of their new states; promote a reasonable ethnic or regional balance within governmental institutions; work to enable central governments to collect taxes and deliver essential services across the national territory; help in the introduction of national currencies and promote macroeconomic stabilization; and assist in the creation of local institutions and security arrangements that will give citizens the confidence to rebuild the economy from the bottom up. These basic notions, which transcend the usual fractiousness of U.S. domestic politics, can and should become the guiding principles of future efforts in Iraq and elsewhere.

Essay Types: Essay