US INTELLIGENCE agencies believe the war in Afghanistan is in "a downward spiral", sparking an urgent strategy rethink by the Bush administration as it enters its last three months in office, it was reported yesterday.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan, a joint report by America's 16 spy agencies, is not due to be published until after next month's presidential election, but a draft version was leaked to US newspapers calling into question the coherence of US and Nato policy.
The document also places considerable blame on Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, for failing to control corruption in his government. It also points to the destabilising impact of the booming opium trade, which now accounts for at least half the national economy.
The White House has ordered a review of its policy and sent a team to Kabul led by Lieut Gen Douglas Lute, the president's military adviser on Afghanistan, to assess the situation. "We have had a tough summer. There is no doubt about it," a Nato source said.
"There are concerns, and we would share concerns the NIE has identified, for better Afghan governance. We have said for some time the solution is political and not military." The Afghan government has been reported to be holding talks with the Taliban, hosted by Saudi Arabia, but it is unclear whether those contacts would lead to comprehensive peace talks.
Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has argued that Nato troops must confront Afghanistan's drug traffickers directly. The job has been left to Afghanistan's poorly trained and under-equipped police force. "Part of the problem that we face is that the Taliban make somewhere between $60 million and $80 million or more a year from the drug trafficking," Mr Gates said at a Nato meeting in Budapest yesterday.
"If we have the opportunity to go after drug lords and drug laboratories and try to interrupt this flow of cash to the Taliban, that seems to me like a legitimate security endeavour."
A proposed counter-narcotics mandate for Nato in Afghanistan divides opinion in London, putting the Foreign Office at odds with the ministry of defence.
The NIE on Afghanistan appears destined to become an election issue in the US.
The Pentagon plans to send another three brigades, up to 14,000 troops, to bolster the 33,000-strong US force there now, but in Budapest yesterday, US officials were urging their allies not to pull out when the American reinforcements arrive.