US report says Afghanistan conflict rapidly worsening

Fears over the Afghanistan conflict rose another notch Thursday, amid reports of a bleak draft US intelligence assessment detailing its slide into corruption, drugs and insurgent violence.

"The trends across the board are not going in the right direction," Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters at a breakfast.

"It will be tougher next year unless we get at all these challenges."

The New York Times said the draft National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) casts doubts on the ability of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to stem the resurgence of the Taliban Islamic militia.

A spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence would not acknowledge the existence of such an NIE on Afghanistan.

And a US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the assessment process was still in its early stages and "its conclusions are premature."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she expected to be briefed soon on the classified assessment, which represents the consensus view of 16 US intelligence agencies.

"We have asked for the intelligence community to take a look, it's important that it do so," Rice told reporters during a meeting in Washington with Maris Riekstins, Latvia's foreign minister.

"I would just cite that Afghanistan is a difficult place. It has made progress since 2001. We have all talked about new circumstances that have arisen there, and we are doing a review to see what more we can do," she added.

A US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the downbeat "tone and direction" of the intelligence assessment was not unexpected.

"We heard about this for several weeks, and (were) not surprised by the tone it conveyed -- that the situation in Afghanistan was getting worse, certainly not better, and that a lot more attention was needed to try to remedy what is going on," said the official.

The White House has already launched an urgent strategy review led by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, a deputy national security adviser and coordinator of the US war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Defense Department, State Department, Treasury and other key government agencies are taking part in the review, US officials have said.

Rice said the State Department was reviewing its operations, including those involving the Provincial Reconstruction Teams where civilian experts travel with military protection to remote parts of the country to help rebuild it.

So far, the administration has promised one combat brigade by February, citing constraints imposed by the war in Iraq.

Military commanders have warned that a political solution is needed, but that corruption and a flourishing narcotics trade are undermining public support for the central government.

The draft intelligence estimate concludes that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the Karzai government and by increasingly sophisticated insurgent attacks from safe havens in Pakistan, the Times said.

The report says the heroin trade by some estimates accounts for 50 percent of Afghanistan's economy, it said.

Militant networks operating from Pakistan, meanwhile, have coalesced into a more complex insurgency capable of more sophisticated military operations, US military officials have said.

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