In its obsession with Iraq, the Bush administration dropped the ball disgracefully in Afghanistan just as the effort to rebuild that violence-wracked nation began in earnest after the ouster of the Taliban regime more than two years ago. Now that fractious nation, once the breeding ground of the al-Qaida terror network, is in danger of reverting to the entropy of tribal warfare and its ruinous economic addiction to the opium poppy trade.

Worse yet, the vanquished Taliban is resurging, mounting ever more daring raids against the sparse and inexperienced Afghan security forces backed by a pathetically small contingent of NATO peacekeepers. What was once a signal victory in the war on terror is teetering on the edge of turning into a lamentable, avoidable failure.

Facing increasingly precarious elections, the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul needs all the help it can get. It's not getting enough of it, either to ensure the minimum security needed to hold a national vote or to rebuild its decrepit infrastructure. Unless the Bush administration makes a stronger commitment to improving security and, above all, persuades its reluctant NATO allies at least to double, if not triple, their almost ludicrous contingent of 6,500 peacekeepers - in a nation of 26 million people - the Kabul government will fall and Afghanistan could once again become a mecca for radical Islamists. (Newsday)