Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing,” gushed our secretary of defense on Aug. 9, “if Iraq were similar to Afghanistan, if a bad regime was thrown out, people were liberated, food could come in, borders could be opened, repression could stop, prisons could be opened? I mean, it would be fabulous.”

Despite grandfatherly charm reminiscent of Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld prides himself on no-nonsense talk. “Wonderful” and then “fabulous” sound odd on hard-liner lips. Has SecDef lost his bearings en route to Baghdad? Is his Predator in a hover pattern over Disneyland?

Rummy’s surveillance is fantasy-prone on two levels. First, his peppy description of Afghanistan does not, except in one case, describe actual conditions there. Second, while similar on the surface, Iraq and Afghanistan represent different political dynamics.

First the Afghanistan fantasy: That things there are hunky-dory and worthy of emulation elsewhere. Yes, the Taliban are gone … at least from power, and at least for now. Trouble is, “regime change” – whether in Afghanistan or Iraq – is a three part process: 1) getting rid of the bad guys, 2) installing some good guys, and 3) ensuring the good guys’ viability.

The first part worked in Afghanistan, and Secretary Rumsfeld earned this column’s MVP honors (see “Three Month Buzkashi Score Card,” Jan. 7) for skillful co-ordination of our military effort. Bad guys skedaddled, or at least faded into the adobe woodwork. Overwhelmingly, Afghans hope they’ll stay gone.

Note, however, that the other two-thirds of regime change – installing good guys, and ensuring their viability – is beset by growing problems in Afghanistan. “Liberated” from the Taliban, Afghans remain imprisoned by physical insecurity. “Food could come in,” as Rumsfeld claims, but only if transportation and distribution facilities were secure…which they’re not. Open borders, another of his wishes for Iraq, have allowed Taliban and al-Qaida to escape Afghanistan. And without proper U.S. support for institution building, some Afghans now argue that repression and prisons have simply switched ownership.

Hamid Karzai, our good guy replacement as national leader, is now President of part of Kabul. It’s not his fault that central authority remains restricted. It’s because our Afghanistan efforts still foreground combat at the expense of security. Without physical security – obtainable only by the International Security and Assistance Force expanded by American leadership and active participation – Karzai’s own leadership will not be viable.

And if Karzai fails? Get set for what Saddam Hussein would call “The Mother of All Power Vacuums.” Likely result: an Afghanistan once again in the hands of anti-Western Islamist extremists. Bush Two’s failure to focus could bring us Taliban Two.

Now for Rumsfeld’s second range of fantasies, awkwardly positioned atop the first. Wishful assumption: That regime change will work in Baghdad as well as in Kabul. Truth is, it will work (even) less well.

Afghanistan and Iraq do bear superficial resemblance. Both are Muslim. Both are ethnically diverse. Both were shaped by European imperialism. Both have suffered in recent decades from abominable leadership.

But their political cultures differ in key respects (see “Two bad hands played differently” BDN, Oct. 27-28, 2001). However war-torn the Afghan concept of national identity, that sentiment still exists among ordinary people of all ethnic groups. Reason: “Afghanistan” was not altogether an invention of outsiders. Afghans themselves had much to do with it, albeit frequently at each other’s expense. Over more than two centuries, an Afghan nation slowly grew from the inside out. Just as there were no warlords for decades prior to the anti-Soviet jihad, nor were there any separatist movements. And Aug. 17 marks the anniversary of Afghan independence – won from the British, totally and finally, in 1919.

Iraq has no such national history and identity. Rather than winning its independence from the British, “Iraq” was invented by them – from scratch and less than century ago. Rather than fulfillment, the creation of Iraq as separate country marked betrayal of a greater dream: a post-Ottoman Empire, pan-Arab state. “Betrayal” because Britain, in need of World War I allies against the Ottoman Turks, had promised the Arabs such a state in return.

What happened? War over, Europe partitioned the Arab nation into a hodge-podge of artificial states. Bad for the Arabs, but good for Big Oil.

Even “Tribes With Flags,” the evocative title of a 1990 book by Charles Glass, overestimates the legitimacy of current arrangements. Many international Middle East borders cross tribal lines – or (Iraq’s case) lump together ancient ethnic enemies. Only Egypt, of all current Arab countries, makes territorial sense. All the others, to varying degrees, began as figments of European cartographic imagination. As such, they are political time-bombs, at risk of exploding in each other’s face … or in the face of their own rulers. Hence those rulers’ penchant for tyranny.

Iraq, in these respects, is the very worst, a “state” consisting of three mutually hostile nations: 1) the North populated by Kurdish Sunnis, 2) the South populated by Arab Shi’as, and 3) the Middle populated by Arab Sunnis. The Middle is also the Center because Baghdad, the capital, happens to be there. So does Saddam Hussein, who comes (with the core of his gang of thugs) from the central town of Tankrit.

In Ottoman times – for several centuries until the 20th – these three ethno-sectarian nations had their own separate political identities: autonomous provinces of the Ottoman Empire based in far-away Istanbul. “Iraq” represents the spectacularly unsuccessful and potentially disastrous attempt to lump them together. “Potentially disastrous” – in 2002 – for the United States unless we separate fact from fantasy.

Back to Rumsfeldian rhetoric of “wonderful” and “fabulous.” His gushing was prompted, quite simply, by the fantasy of “Iraq.” And by the dreamy belief that, once removed (never mind how), Saddam’s regime can be replaced by another which will – in some kinder, gentler way – maintain “national unity.” Rumsfeld’s audience was a Washington assembly of Iraqi opposition bigwigs, all of whom save one absentee (see below) assured him that, as victors, they’d cooperate selflessly in the name of a unified, peaceful “Iraq.”

We’ve been there and heard that. Exactly such palaver issued from Afghan opposition bigwigs during the anti-Soviet jihad, analogous to the anti-Saddam struggle now underway. The Afghan leaders half meant it … just as Afghanistan had a half-developed, home-grown national identity. And yet, when the Soviets left, these same leaders turned on each other. Ordinary Afghans, in sheer desperation, turned to the Taliban.

The gaggle of would-be Iraqi leaders has far less potential for cooperation than their Afghan analogs, precisely because “Iraq” is even less a real nation-state. What holds Iraq together now? Only the barbarism of Saddam Hussein, armed mostly by the West and, not so long ago, embraced by America. These are facts.

But Rumsfeld and his nominal boss seem to prefer fantasies. One quick quote (The New York Times, Aug. 15) illustrates this Administration’s capacity for self-deception. A Bush official, mercifully unnamed, lamented the absence of one key figure – Kurdish super-bigwig Masood Barzani – from the Washington shindig. Apparently we tried everything to get him there. Citing “broken promises” – which ones? which decade? broken by which Western power? – Barzani stayed home, somehow resisting even the inducement of (gasp!) a meeting with George W. Bush.

Here’s the Bush official’s take: “Barzani really more so than anyone is the elder statesman of the Iraqi opposition and we did try to arrange for him to be here, and obviously we did not succeed.”

Memo to unnamed official: “Elder statesman of the Iraqi opposition”? Get real. Barzani, like his father before him, is a Kurdish nationalist, dedicated (in addition to his own enrichment) to the maximization of Kurdish independence. He cares not a fig for “Iraq” – unless he can rule the whole thing, a bloody prospect given Arab-Kurd hostility.

But Bush Two – unlike his father before him – continues to proceed from ignorance and deal in fantasy. Bush One had good reasons to stop short of regime change in Baghdad. Admittedly, the dangers posed by Saddam may be greater now. Even so, we need realism – supposedly their strong suit – from Bush One veterans like Rumsfeld. This vaunted “team,” for lack of an able captain, is all we have … until 2004 and the next chance for a regime change of our own.

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.