Nation building, redoubled

Driving their Toyota pickups into an open area between high mud-walled homes in the village of Ghar-e Kale, Captain Beau Baggett and his men settle down with local elders under the shade of a mulberry tree to shoot the breeze.

The meeting feels like a neighborhood association. The villagers tell of their concerns: Russian land mines on a local mountaintop and earthshaking explosions at the nearby US military base, where soldiers are destroying confiscated weapons.

The Americans then tell of their concerns. Somebody fired rockets from a nearby hilltop a few months ago. The village elder, Abdul Malik, promises to capture and throttle anybody who fires on the Americans.

"During the holy war with Russia, our village was destroyed," Mr. Malik says. "We don't want any trouble. We just want to build our homes, our country."

Two years ago, American soldiers wouldn't have thought twice about the day-to-day gripes of a distant Afghan village. But today, nearly two years after the fateful Sept. 11 attacks, Afghanistan remains a centerpiece in America's war on terrorism. Not only has the US Army set up Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) like the one here in Gardez, but American experts are now being selected to advise regional governors and top Afghan ministers. US aid to Afghanistan is expected to double this year as well.

It's all part of what some diplomats here are calling the Bremerization of Afghanistan, adopting the pro-active management style of America's administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, to an Afghan context. And US officials and Afghan officials say it's a sign that America's involvement in Afghanistan is deepening and expanding beyond a narrow task of hunting for Al Qaeda remnants to a broader task of shaping a nation.

The question many Afghan officials and foreign aid workers are asking now is whether this renewed US attention is coming too late.

"There's a reason we're here: We don't want 9/11 to happen again," says Col. Anthony Hunter, head of the US Army's PRT in Gardez, which started operations last January. "And the US government is committed to maintaining the security in Afghanistan, so they will commit the resources to do that."

"Every villager we meet tells us they don't want us to leave this country as we did after the Soviet withdrawal" from Afghanistan, Colonel Hunter adds. "But my response is that you can't rebuild a country in two years that was destroyed for 25 years. We've got a long way to go, but we're going to stay the course."

If the American military and diplomatic corps are working hard to prove their sincerity, there is a good reason. Afghans remember how quickly American support evaporated after the withdrawal of Soviet occupation troops in 1989. And as US troops were airlifted to yet another war in Iraq last spring, many Afghan officials openly complained that America seemed ready to abandon their country yet again, just as Taliban attacks are increasing and international aid money slows to a trickle.

While the war in Iraq struck doubt in many Afghan hearts, there has been a slew of recent steps that seemed to be aimed at restoring that trust.

Last month, President Bush appointed his personal envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, to be US ambassador to Afghanistan, and gave him sweeping new powers to oversee the reconstruction process. In addition, Bush officials reportedly are planning to double the planned US reconstruction budget for Afghanistan to nearly $1.8 billion, and to place up to 100 Americans in key positions in Afghan ministries to speed up the reconstruction process.

In addition, they plan to double the number of PRTs, a US official told Reuters, as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld kicked off a visit to Afghanistan Sunday.

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