The current month is not yet over and is already proving to be the most deadly since an international expedition overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. This resurgence in the power of the Islamists, even though they are despised by the majority of the population, is the direct consequence of a comedy of errors.

    So then, the prediction formulated last spring by the American brass has become reality: the Taliban waited until summer to start a tougher and more extended offensive than those observed since the beginning of 2002. Invited to comment on this resurgence, the new boss of the American contingent in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, mentioned a coordination deficiency and the safe havens in Pakistan. But most particularly, he said this: "We are grappling with five regional battles. We are not involved in a war." As far as I know, that's the first time a personage of his rank has winked in the direction of the anthropological variable. A wink, an evocation that deserves, even demands, a retrospective analysis.

    Once upon a time, there was an Afghan people who, to the surprise of the Americans and their allies, as well as to that of their Taliban adversaries, did not engage in resistance once the Taliban were forced to retreat. For the first time in the history of this country that has been confronted with the colonial ambitions of more than one nation - notably during the Great Game that pitted the Russians and the British, among others, against one another - its citizens graciously agreed to foreigners occupying their soil. The engine for this unheard-of change in attitude? Between the departure of the last Soviet soldier and the arrival of the first American, the 33 million Afghans had endured the dictatorship of the Taliban. Anyway, the Taliban's obscurantism, their feudal behavior, allowed the Americans to enjoy a certain goodwill. So, what did they do with it? Or, more specifically, what did President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney do? They compiled an ode to military, political and economic stupidity.

    After the departure of the Taliban, Bush and company, rather than applying themselves to providing security for a population ground down by thirty years of civil war, rather than assuring essential services such as water distribution, rather than rebuilding infrastructure, whether for transport or medical care, Bush and his buddies buckled down to delivering a new state by forceps. Consequently, they acted so as to organize elections after having supervised the writing of a Constitution that borrowed from the Afghan Constitutions of 1923 and 1964. Well then? Those last two Constitutions had been concocted while the country was a kingdom. That being the case, Hamid Karzai, victor of the election, inherited, like the king in his time, the power to nominate regional governors as well as responsibility for teachers' salaries.

    With that, Karzai and Bush alienated all tribal officials in no time at all. One down. And two down, when the White House left to attack Iraq in the spring of 2003 and reduced the number of soldiers in Afghanistan to practically nil: 7,000. By way of comparison, we note that during the conflict in Bosnia in 1996, NATO deployed 54,000 soldiers while the surface area of that country is a twelfth that of Afghanistan and its population one-sixth. Let us also mention that between budgetary compressions due to the engagement in Iraq and Europeans' avarice, the financial aid bestowed per Afghan in 2005 was $66, while it was $237 per person in Serbia and Montenegro. In short, Washington settled for the absolute minimum in every aspect.

    Obviously aware of all that, the Taliban first of all allied themselves with the drug lords. It is estimated that the precious and loyal services they accord drug traffickers allow them to pocket between $60 million and $100 million a year. That is much more than the entire budget planned for the Kandahar region and the Helmand valley. In short, God's crazies surged into the gaping breach the Bush administration offered them on a silver platter. That being the case, one will understand how the Afghan mood should be at low tide these days.

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    Translation: Truthout French Language Editor Leslie Thatcher.