Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, which is a village in Somerset, withdrew formally on Jan. 27, from being the top candidate for the new post of United Nations “superenvoy” in Afghanistan. The impression has been given that, after many months of consideration, he is now seen as too powerful a figure for the job.

He is best known in the United Kingdom as a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, but subsequently he was a courageous and successful High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia. After Bedford School, a private one, he became an officer in the Royal Marines and commanded their Far East Special Boat Section (similar to the Special Air Service). He then joined the Diplomatic Service. In 1983 he won Yeovil, a former safe West Country Conservative seat, for the Liberals. The writer of several books, he has become a popular public speaker. He is now regarded as a much-respected senior statesman.

Last July he took part in a debate in the House of Lords on Afghanistan. Shortly afterward he repeated his views in an interview with The Obsever (July 15):

“The consequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq. If we fail in Afghanistan then Pakistan goes down. The security problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I think you could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off with warlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end between Sunnis and Shiites right across the Middle East.”

He went on: “Mao Zedong (the Chinese ruler) used to refer to the first and second world wars as the European Civil Wars. You can have a regional civil war. That is what you might begin to see. It will be catastrophic for NATO. The damage done to NATO in Afghanistan would be as great as the damage done to the UN in Bosnia.”

Like many other observers of the scene in Afghanistan, Paddy Ashdown feared the NATO International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was losing the struggle for hearts and minds:

“The battle for this is the battle of public opinion. The polls are slipping. Once they go in the slide it is almost impossible to win it back ... There is a very short shelf life for an occupation force.”

Iraq supports that last sentence.

Before Paddy Ashdown withdrew has name The Times (Jan. 17) described his likely role, which had been carefully considered at the United Nations and elsewhere:

“He is expected to be charged with coordinating the Western reconstruction and aid effort, pulling together international agencies, foreign donors, the Afghan government and NATO military forces. The task is unlikely to be easy, as much of the effort is duplicated, ineffective and short term, while ordinary Afghans are increasingly angry that they are seeing so little of the billions of pounds that have been donated to the country.”

By last year reconstruction in Afghanistan is thought to have cost $8 billion!

It is all too easy to describe what has been going wrong since the swift removal of the Taleban in 2001. The United States and the United Kingdom looked away — to Iraq in 2003 — and in 2005 the Taleban returned in strength. Today military experts consider there is an extraordinary lack of a unitary system of command on the pro-government side. There have been serious disagreements between the United Nations and the United States, especially over the high number of civilian casualties. On Jan. 14 a Taleban suicide squad attacked Kabul’s one major luxury hotel and eight guests and hotel workers were killed. 32 nations are contributing to Isaf, but many are not pulling their weight.

Paddy Ashdown had talks in Kuwait with President Hamid Karzai. The latter has charmed the Western world but is in deep trouble at home. Afghans are disillusioned with his performance, and his writ does not run in large parts of the country.

After four months of negotiations by the United Nations the powers that Paddy Ashdown would be granted appeared to have been agreed. It is thought that some in President Karzai’s circle then decided his powers would be too great and too much at the expense of the government in Kabul. It is even suggested some in the government, including former warlords and those involved in massive corruption, feared that Paddy Ashdown might put some members of the government before the courts. Realizing the president was going to change his mind for internal political reasons, Paddy Ashdown sensibly withdrew his name.

This is a great shame and it could mark a dangerous watershed. The government in Kabul at this stage relies almost totally on the international community to support it. If the differences between the two grow too great the West will have failed totally in Afghanistan.