UNITED NATIONS: The growing instability in Afghanistan - a country under virtual military occupation by US and other western forces - has been overshadowed by news of the escalating violence, torture and killings in US-administered Iraq.

But analysts who closely monitor the region say security in Afghanistan remains "tenuous" and "has shown no signs of improvement". And they predict the explosive situation there might soon turn out to be as bad as Iraq - but on a smaller scale.

The similarities are striking. As in Iraq, insurgents in Afghanistan have not only been attacking the multinational military force but also local police and foreign aid workers.

The Pentagon, responding to charges of torture by US soldiers, said on Wednesday that at least 25 prisoners have died in US custody, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But unlike Iraq, the potential destabilization of Afghanistan has taken added momentum following last week's announcement of possible US troop withdrawals from the politically troubled country.

During a visit to the Afghan capital Kabul, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted that Washington might gradually reduce its 15,500 troops immediately after nation-wide elections scheduled for September.

Any such action, say Afghan analysts, would be a recipe for political and military disaster. "If the United States cuts the number of troops after the Afghan elections, it would be the clearest confirmation of what many have feared - that the US' main interest in Afghanistan is not stabilizing the country or improving people's lives, but getting Hamid Karzai elected president and making Afghanistan look like a 'war on terror' success in time for US (presidential) elections in November," says James Ingalls of the California Institute of Technology.

Ingalls, a founding director of the Afghan Women's Mission, also remains sceptical about the ability of the Karzai government to hold "fair and free elections", postponed till September from the original June timetable.

"The US-backed warlords continue to control parts of the country with impunity," he told IPS. "If allowed to participate in the political process, they will likely bully and buy their way into parliamentary positions, as they have in the past.

"Those who don't get their way will resort to force. They have little incentive to do otherwise," he added. "At best," Ingalls predicted, "the elections will be meaningless because the people have no real choices - who are Karzai's challenger(s)? - at worst, the elections could spark a new civil war."

Mark Sedra, a research associate at the Bonn International Centre for Conversion, where he leads a project that monitors and analyses security in Afghanistan, is equally pessimistic about the future.

"A significant reduction of US troops in Afghanistan would send a very negative signal to the Afghan people," Sedra told IPS. "It would fuel the growing perception among Afghans that the United States and the international community are once again turning their backs on the country - as they did after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union," he added.

The Soviets, who militarily occupied Afghanistan for over a decade, pulled out in 1989. The Taliban government that followed was ousted by US military forces in late 2001. Washington then installed Karzai, described by many as a US puppet, as the new president.

While insurgent groups such as the Taliban are not in a position to overthrow the central government, says Sedra, they still pose a potent security risk.

"By focusing their attacks on 'soft targets' such as aid workers and Afghan government employees, they have effectively halted development work in approximately one-third of the country," added Sedra, who recently returned from Afghanistan where he managed, on behalf of the United Nations, the security section of the Afghan government study tabled at last month's donor conference in Berlin.

Reconstruction of war-battered Iraq has come to a complete standstill because of the security situation. Both the World Bank and the United Nations, along with major humanitarian aid groups, have withdrawn all of their international staff because of security fears.

Since the killing of a UN aid worker in Afghanistan last November, most international staff working for more than 30 UN agencies have been withdrawn from southern and eastern Afghanistan. -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.