THE CORRUPTION and co-opting of NGOs, the hijacking of grain shipments, and the inability to bring order to a country ravaged by warlords who get their money from smuggling and drug-running: these are the weak underpinnings of Kabul’s new administration. Though Hamid Karzai is de jure head of the new Afghan government and at the moment the understandable toast of Washington, the combination of feudalism, poverty, and lack of a national policing capacity conspire to reduce Karzai to the effective status of mayor of Kabul.

Karzai is an honest, dynamic, and capable man. His first challenge is to project Kabul’s influence to the rest of the land. Aside from the some 500 UN peacekeepers who are under the command of British general John McColl, and the 5000 or so troops pledged to secure Kabul by the end of the summer, Karzai has no way to project authority. Even 5000 peacekeepers will not change the fact that the government’s authority doesn’t extend more than an hour’s drive from the capital. The ministers in the interim cabinet, who are geographically dispersed, fight among themselves and raise private armies. Locals are increasingly unlikely to see Karzai as a leader who can protect them and guarantee order — which is, of course, what brought the Taliban to power in the mid 1990s.

The only leverage Karzai has over the warlords, some of whom are ministers in his new administration, is distribution of aid money. But this forces Karzai into a classic dilemma. If he distributes too much aid to the warlords, he loses his leverage. If he distributes the aid too slowly, the warlords will decide they won’t get the cash they depend on, and he loses his leverage. Finally, even if by some miracle Karzai is able to secure the allegiance of the warlords through judicious aid distribution, keeping the money out of their pockets is an entirely different challenge.

Surrounded by water-stained walls, dirty chandeliers and a company of US Marines at the Royal Palace in Kabul two weeks ago, Colin Powell made no apologies for linking delivery of aid to the elimination of corruption. "If any aid is misappropriated," Powell said, "contributions will disappear," a veiled reference to UN grain shipments. Similar concerns echoed through meetings of donors in Tokyo as they discussed the rebuilding of Afghanistan. When James Wolfsensohn, president of the World Bank, was asked how the government in Kabul would get the money to the right places, he scratched his head and said, "The answer is: with difficulty."

So things must change, and clearly dollars, even a lot of them, will not do the job. Western attitudes toward Afghanistan most certainly pose one of the problems. Although the Bush administration enthusiastically went to war, so far it has shown only skepticism about rebuilding Afghanistan, by setting impossibly high standards for a man who, in the end, is alone in a drafty palace with no glass and who relies on firewood to stay warm. Clearly, we need to exceed even President Truman’s Marshall Plan, under which the US spent one percent of GNP for four years to prevent Western Europe from slipping back into chaos.

But it’s also true that the situation in Afghanistan is different from that of Europe in the 1940s. Germany, Britain, and France all had highly literate, highly skilled populations who enjoyed a high level of political sophistication and a once-well-established market economy. Most Afghans live in conditions not seen in Europe for 600 years. That, coupled with the fact that 70 percent are malnourished, and only slightly fewer are illiterate, creates serious problems for any sort of government, never mind democracy — which is pretty advanced stuff and, in the end, pretty fragile, as demonstrated by the fate of Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early ’30s.

Besides, the most striking difference between post–World War II Europe and Afghanistan is that there are virtually no foreign troops in Afghanistan. After Europeans watched American armies march across the continent to defeat the Nazi Goliath, they didn’t need much persuasion to straighten up and fly right. And to remind them, America left dozens of military bases scattered throughout Europe. No one doubted that if war were to break out again, the US government would be there — and that it would be upset.

The warlords in Afghanistan think that the US and Europe have grown soft in the last 50 years. Despite Bush’s prior statements about ground troops, Afghans believe Americans are only willing to rely on technology to wage war. So far, the minimal commitment of UN peacekeepers to support Karzai has proved them right.

Karzai needs the tools to rebuild his country, and to do that he needs an army to disarm the local tyrants. This is not the time for the West to shy away from its commitment to rebuilding the country for fear of casualties. Terrorists executed 3500 people in the World Trade Center; it seems only appropriate to make sure that they did not die in vain.

Until such time as the West finds its spine, Afghan desperation, combined with a cynicism born of 20 years of war, may end up turning the Bonn agreement into a mere scrap of paper. According to Faizullah Jalal, a professor of international relations at Kabul University, "It is very difficult to keep these groups united for a long time, because they are always working for their self-interest. If it benefits them they’ll unite, but if they have nothing to gain, they will start more bloodshed and war in Afghanistan."

MAZAR-E-SHARIF provides a good example of Afghanistan’s problems with food distribution in the hinterlands. Here stands out in bold relief Karzai’s need for peacekeepers who can help him project federal influence before the rising tensions between local warlords explode into overt warfare.

Like Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif is divided among three competing warlords: General Dostum, who represents the Uzbeks; Commander Mohaqaq, who represents the Hazara tribes; and Commander Uftad Ata, who represents the Tajiks and supports the Rabbani faction. The three can trace their rivalry back to the early 1990s. According to one IRC official who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, "It is absolutely the same situation as before, except they have not yet launched a full-scale attack for fear of the US."

Since there are no peacekeepers on the roads, and there’s no fear of reprisal from Kabul, one hears constant concern that grain shipments from Mazar to neighboring villages will be hijacked. One local warlord, Dr. Hekmat of Haza-e-wahdat, has twice "liberated" major grain shipments for his faction, first in early December and a second time this week. Hekmat, who goes by only one name, sent men-at-arms to meet the IRC convoy, removed the drivers at gunpoint, and stole 130 tons of wheat last Monday.

Reached by satellite phone from an undisclosed location, Hekmat revealed through an interpreter that "many receive this grain — we do not. Dostum, Mohaqiq, and [General] Ata all benefit from distributions, why should we not?"

Unlike Jalalabad, Mazar is further destabilized by the presence of 120,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). Driven from their villages by a combination of three years of drought and US-led coalition bombing, these Afghans have surrounded the city in about 30 makeshift camps.

Since Dostum had been warned by American advisors to disarm Mazar-e-Sharif, he has found another way to project his power. About a month ago, Dostum started arming ethnic Uzbeks in the IDP camps outside of Mazar. His two rivals quickly followed suit, essentially creating three standing armies just a few kilometers outside the city.

The Sakhi installation outside Mazar-e-Sharif is the only planned camp. Formed about seven months ago by the IRC, the 15,000 person camp has recently been armed by each of the three factions competing for power in Mazar. Those with the guns get the rations, which they distribute to their supporters. Competition between Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Tajiks has forced other minorities out of the camp and created a siege mentality. As one aid worker working in Sakhi put it, "In a way, we are kept hostage by the refugees: if we leave, thousands of innocents die, and if we stay, we support a situation which invites abuse by the violent."

And the violent are running rampant. At least 40 women have been raped in the past three months. Because of the extreme social stigma attached to such victimization, only those women who actually had to receive medical care admitted the crime. The real figure could be five times as high.

Iruma was one of those who admitted to being raped. "I went to get our grain for the day," she says. "One of the gunmen said to my husband, ‘You have a nice wife.’ Then 10 other men came. They took me into a tent nearby and took turns." The men brutally sodomized and raped her over 13 hours. Iruma spent more than eight days in the hospital. "I can’t sleep at night anymore," she says, "they come to me in my dreams." When asked about her husband, she could only cry.

Aid workers who try to intervene are threatened at gunpoint. All ask the same question, "When will the peacekeepers come?" Two female aid workers admitted to being threatened by local gunmen armed by Dostum. They say that only the threat of Western reprisals will save them. In the meantime, about 10 children die of starvation each day only a few miles away from storehouses full of grain held by local warlords.

Pleas for demilitarization of the IDP camps go unheeded, as aid workers are threatened at gunpoint. Haneef Ata, the frustration apparent in his deliberate Oxbridge pronunciation, says, "Unless America listens there will be no difference between the Afghanistan of 10 years ago and the Afghanistan of today." And unless the coalition forces and donor nations put their troops where their money is, they risk not only wasting billions of dollars, but of proving Haneef Ata right.

Andrew Bushell reports from Central Asia for a number of publications, including the Economist.