This past Sunday marked six months of U.S. military activity in and above Afghanistan. Time for another quarterly report. Three months ago on Jan. 7, investors (American taxpayers) and other beneficiaries (mainly the Afghan people) reckoned their stock on the rise.

Now there’s less reason to celebrate in Afghanistan … and far more cause for concern worldwide. As in January, let’s evaluate in terms of three factors: sponsorship, momentum and image management. All three are central to buzkashi, the ancient and violent equestrian game of Afghanistan. (Ready to ride the Central Asian plains? New readers may swing into a buzkashi saddle via articles dated Oct. 4, Oct. 17 and Jan. 7 on the Bangor Daily News Web-steppe.)

George W. Bush announced a buzkashi on Oct. 7. That is, he cast himself as sponsor of a risky, public enterprise. Aim: to eradicate Islamist terrorism from Afghanistan and elsewhere. Main targets: first, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida structure; second, Mullah Mohammed Omar and his Taliban movement. By Jan. 7, U.S. forces, while not yet conclusively successful, seemed to have done the hard part. The Taliban had been routed … or at least dismantled as a cohesive force. All main cities were in supposedly friendly hands. A friendly Afghan Interim Authority had been installed in Kabul. Its leader, the excellent Hamid Karzai, was about to embark on what became a celebrity world tour.

Buzkashi sponsors concentrate – hard – on what they’ve sponsored until it’s done. Nothing gets in the way. No distractions. Since Jan. 7 Bush – whose office, admittedly, includes other concerns – has not only been distracted from Afghanistan; he has created the main distraction himself with wild talk of “getting” Saddam Hussein. This notion, in which America would have virtually no international support and much opposition, springs in part from “Axis of Evil,” this year’s featured State of the Union address slogan, of which Iraq is supposedly a part. The slogan makes a great applause line. It signifies, however, nothing … except what we’ve feared all along: that this president of the United States, despite clear talk at the outset, is out of his depth when waters become murky. Yes, Saddam Hussein is as “evil” as tyrants get, but he’s not part of an “axis” and now’s not the time to get him.

Buzkashi sponsors also assume comprehensive responsibility for their enterprise. Here, too, Bush began well. Holier-than-thou humanitarians gnashed their teeth when U.S. planes dropped relief supplies in addition as to bombs as if – gasp – warriors could also be do-gooders, but guess what? Those supplies did some good. In December, Bush people played crucial, positive roles in supporting the Bonn Conference which led to Karzai’s government. In March, U.S. troops helicoptered support to earthquake victims in the once idyllic, now devastated northern town of Nahrin. (Who does what after natural disasters is closely observed in the Muslim world. 1990s earthquake victims in both Egypt and Turkey received quicker support from Islamist groups that from their governments which, accordingly, lost credit.)

Well done, Bush, on all these Afghan counts, but badly done – in fact, not done at all – in terms of the broader, ultimately crucial task of peacekeeping. While U.S. military action in Afghanistan continues full tilt, Bush refuses to involve America directly in the International Security and Assistance Force whose numbers have stalled at 5,000 and who therefore can’t move beyond Kabul.

In this respect Bush fails as a buzkashi sponsor. Typically such leaders stay at home, well clear of the fray themselves, but empower fully their representatives on the field. Bush is good at empowering CENTCOM – and can boast a near-perfect lifetime record of staying at home – but hasn’t provided ISAF with American manpower. As such, he hasn’t empowered Hamid Karzai, the long-term best bet for peace and stability in Afghanistan. That peace and stability is – or should be – our own long-term No. 1 aim for a country which otherwise will revert to warlordism, power vacuum, and breeding ground for Islamist terrorism.

With peacekeeping underpowered for lack of American muscle, this fearful cycle of violence and vacuum has already resumed. Key indicator: the location of Zahir Shah, exiled in Rome for the past three decades. The former king was famously scheduled to return in time for Afghanistan’s New Year on March 21. Then it was March 23. Then April 2. At 87, Zahir Shah’s no fool. He’s seen it all. He’s still in Rome.

The reason for royal hesitation is fear for his life. Two recent events highlight the reality of that concern and also indicate the pressures – literally from North and South – on Hamid Karzai. First, the late February murder of Abdul Rahman, chief of tourism and civil aviation, at his own main airport. Accusations still fly in various directions, but the most likely culprits were Northerners angered by the perceived ethnic defection of Rahman (non-Pashtun) in support of Karzai and Zahir Shah (Pashtuns).

Second and still more ominous was the plot, hopefully foiled last week, by dissident Pashtuns to topple Karzai and prevent Zahir Shah’s return. Lurking viciously in the background: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, identified early and often in this column as Afghanistan’s prime candidate to join Slobodan Milosovic for a war crime trial at the Hague. (Better yet, eliminate Hekmatyar with James Bond “ultimate prejudice.” There’ll be no peace in Afghanistan as long as this psychopath – and erstwhile darling of the CIA – is on the loose. His analogue is the recently killed Angola “leader” Jonas Savimbi, another CIA Cold War bedmate. Like Hekmatyar, Savimbi kept his own cause going long after peace was otherwise attainable. He was killed in late February; an Angolan cease-fire took effect last week.)

Momentum is the second buzkashi assessment criterion. When things start going well, as for Bush in Afghanistan after the first three months, the buzkashi sponsor makes every effort to maintain a positive trend. Three months later, we’ve lost some of that momentum. Note that sponsor Bush no longer mentions Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Why? Because, in the American vernacular, they’re flat-out, solid Gone. We may still find them. Let’s do so, asap, before events elsewhere turn Osama into a pan-Islamic folk hero (see below).

Despite grandiose CENTCOM claims, our military efforts in crucial southeastern Afghanistan (see “The Wild Side of Life,” March 26) seem to come up empty-handed: lots of talk about enemies killed or captured, but where’s the beef? According to Afghan on-site sources, Gone. Or perhaps re-enlisted as part of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s truly evil empire.

Lastly, image management. Our Afghanistan efforts, when all’s said and done, are about much more than Afghanistan. They’re about eradication of Islamist terrorism – which is also to say, about the image and prestige of the United States in the Islamic world. (Islamist, remember, does not equal Islamic. The former refers to mostly destructive zealotry; the latter to a great and dignified worldwide religious community.)

By our decades of one-sided support for Israel at Palestinian expense – and recently by our going along with the state terrorism of Ariel Sharon – the United States has dangerously (and, for 9/11 victims, fatally) mismanaged its image in the Muslim world. Why do we pursue such self-destructive policy?

Muslims think they know why. The rest of the world, including our closest European allies whose positions are far more even-handed, think they know why. Their answer, politically incorrect in America: “The U.S. Zionist lobby.”

Shortly after Sept. 11, a top State Department official and friend termed that phrase “racist and hateful.” It is nothing of the sort. Zionists use “Zionist” all the time and have done so, sometimes with noble spirit, since 1897 when Theodor Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress. U.S. Zionists use “Zionist” still in recruitment for illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. (Note how many settlers have home-grown American accents.)

If Zionists can use “Zionist,” so can non-Zionists, including people who support Israel’s right to exist and who, like myself, have worked as volunteers on Israel’s farmland. And so also can these friendly critics point to the U.S. Zionist lobby as a factor in the current moral betrayal of Israel’s birthright. If that lobby continues to mold American opinion and policy towards the Middle East – and no matter what happens in Afghanistan – terrorists like Osama bin Laden will be flooded with followers all across the Muslim world.

And Bush – and America – will lose this buzakshi.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. Dr. Azoy will be traveling in Afghanistan for the next several weeks. His column will be printed as circumstances permit.