This past Sunday marked nine months of U.S. overt involvement in the new Afghanistan. Our first bombs fell, to good effect, on Oct. 7, 2001. It’s been America’s show, far more than anyone else’s, ever since. Time again for a (third) quarterly report. How’s our stock doing in Afghanistan?

How’s your stock doing on Wall Street?

Our 1990s market boom had its Afghan analogue during the first three months of Operation Enduring Freedom. “Boom” went the bombs, and the Taliban went away – or so it seemed. Bombers in the sky and Special Forces on the ground cleared the way for December’s Bonn Agreement. Brokered by the United Nations but empowered by the United States, Bonn promised great things. Analysts’ advice: Buy Afghan. More to the point: Buy stock in America’s sponsorship of the new Afghanistan.

March 2000 marked the peak of our Wall Street holdings. That moment in Afghanistan came around March 2002 – during the second quarter of our investment – with a series of muted realizations. First, despite CENTCOM assurances, we realized that most of the key Taliban and al-Qaida leaders had indeed done more than go away. They had flat-out gotten away, mostly across the border from Tora Bora into Pakistan.

Second, we realized that Pakistan would prove a complicated ally. Trusting President Musharraf was an act of faith and necessity. Under much pressure from Washington, he’s done his best but failed, thus far, to neutralize Islamist extremism. Attacks on Westerners continue. Posters of Osama bin Laden remain on sale in the Peshawar bazaar. (Osama himself may also be there, but so far, remarkably, he’s not for sale – not even for $25 million. Think about it. How many CEOs have recently sold out their stockholders [you and me] for less?)

And third, during the winter, we gradually realized that adulation of Hamid Karzai, so chic-ecstatic overseas, was less evident at home. Not his fault. Karzai is an honest, well-intentioned, essentially selfless patriot whose natural capabilities dwarf those of his White House patron. It’s simply that State of the Union accolades from George W. Bush don’t amount to much in Afghan politics. Ordinary Afghans still have great hopes for Karzai. Too many warlords still ask, “Hamid Who?” Until American policy changes (see below), they’ll keep asking.

Now for the spring quarterly report. As before (this column, Jan. 7 and April 7), we score success and failure by the criteria of buzkashi, Afghanistan’s famous equestrian game and all-too-apt political metaphor. Arguably – and in keeping with Afghan politics – buzkashi is the wildest game in the world, but the real issues have to do not with mayhem on horseback but with ultimate control of the total undertaking. To repeat:

The key role in any buzkashi is that of overall sponsor: the man who announces the game, invites the guests, organizes the extensive hospitality, supplies the vast sums of prize money, and – acid test – proves himself able to restrict three or four days of equestrian mayhem to the actual game itself. Significantly, this overall sponsor is seldom himself on horseback. Rather he sits to one side, powerful in apparent repose. A nod here, a raised finger there, and his will is done

The man who can manage a buzkashi successfully gains enormous prestige. People speak for years of his achievement. Henceforth he is known as someone who can order events, achieve his ends, and impose his purpose on chaos – the sort of man to support in real world struggles for concrete spoils.

But sponsorship entails risk. Some games go wrong and turn into brawls beyond sponsor control. Such management collapse leads to image ruin. The sponsor is…disgraced in this public arena. His initiative has failed, his name “falls,” and then – worst of all – his supporters abandon him. They ride away, literally and figuratively, in search of some other patron, now in the ascendancy, who is more likely to provide them with political rewards.

By analogy and personified by President Bush, America is sponsor of the brave, new Afghanistan. Three events highlight what’s happened to Afghanistan – and to perceptions of our sponsorship – this past quarter.

First came some good news in the form of a jittery but mostly constructive Loya Jirga (national council). More ambitious than any in Afghan history, it experienced some burps and spasms, but the baby government of Hamid Karzai survived. His “interim” authority became “transitional,” and Karzai advanced from Chairman to President. Give credit to him, the 1600-plus delegates, and the expatriate advisers (again, primarily U.N. and U.S.). We rejoiced like proud godparents. Observers everywhere felt relief, rather like Dow and Nasdaq investors who saw their stocks recover, briefly, after a safe 4th of July.

There followed, however, two tragedies, each of which was both awful in itself and indicative of ongoing difficulty. Each has the potential to push an already volatile situation over the edge and beyond U.S. sponsorship control.

On July 1, while in search of Osama’s fellow escapee Mullah Omar, our planes bombed a wedding party. Exactly what happened remains unclear, at least in Pentagon versions, but the Pashtun celebratory custom of skyward rifle fire seems to have attracted massive response from U.S. pilots. Result: Nearly 50 dead and more than 100 wounded.

Mistakes happen. Increasingly, however, it seems to many Afghans – and especially to many Pashtuns in whose territory this war will ultimately be won or lost – that U.S. mistakes are more painful than our successes are beneficial. Another Pashtun group was bombed in early June en route to the Loya Jirga. Rumors swirl of tribal chieftains invoking air raids against each other, and this explanation (among others) has been advanced for the wedding killing. Whatever the cause, however, the weapons and those who fired them were American.

The Karzai-appointed provincial governor, Jan Mohammed Khan, warned at first that his people were ready to launch a new anti-American jihad. Karzai’s foreign minister correctly demanded an American explanation. Both men later expressed support of American objectives. But neither man – and not even Karzai – can sustain many more such mistakes.

The July 6 killing of Vice-President Haji Qadir was no mistake. Nor were Americans involved – except in the sense of our non-participation as peacekeepers. But everything that happens in Afghanistan is now understood, worldwide, as a measure of U.S. sponsorship, as a leading indicator of U.S. will and power. And this noon-time downtown Kabul murder sent investor confidence reeling.

Much – positive and negative – is being written post-mortem on Haji Qadir. Here’s what’s important: Good guy or bad guy, he was a lead guy – the top Pashtun (apart from Karzai himself) in the U.S.-supported government. His own power base in Jalalabad was more substantial than Karzai’s in Kandahar. And yet he supported Karzai and even got along with non-Pashtuns from northern Afghanistan. His violent death leaves an enormous void.

Worse, it poses this question: Who’s safe in Afghanistan? Answer: apparently no one, not even at midday in the capital city. Wall Street analogue question: What corporation’s earnings statement can now be believed? You tell me.

Only remedy: Re-dedicated and re-directed intervention by the world’s sole military and financial superpower. In Afghanistan, it means U.S. expansion of the International Security and Assistance Force, reassertion of ISAF’s presence in Kabul, and extension of its mandate to the key provincial centers – as Afghans dearly desire. On Wall Street it means expansion of controls and sanctions far beyond what Bush proposed this past Tuesday – as investors dearly need.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.