The latest price that America is paying for the Bush administration's blunder in going to war in Iraq is Afghanistan's falling back into the hands of the Taliban, who host al-Qaida.

After careful study, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the government set up by the United States in Afghanistan, after U.S. forces collaborated with the Northern Alliance to drive out the Taliban, is now on the ropes. According to New York Times reporters who have talked with U.S. government officials, the not-yet-released National Intelligence Estimate is very clear on that.

Although the NIE is finished, it will not be released until after the Nov. 4 election, obviously to delay embarrassment for the Republican administration on another piece of foreign-policy and national-security mismanagement. This is as opposed to making Congress and the American public aware of what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded on a sensitive subject requiring urgent attention.

The rot in Afghanistan is multifaceted. The country has returned to its pre-Taliban reliance on heroin as the core of its economy. (Afghanistan is judged to be the origin of most of the world's heroin.) The Taliban changed that when they were in power, but are now taking advantage of the revenues from the trade to bankroll their widespread offensive against the government of President Hamid Karzai.

Another problem is the general alienation of the Karzai government, although it was democratically elected, from the overall Afghan population. It is considered to be corrupt by Western terms, although not so by Afghan standards.

The second basis of the government's lack of popularity is the fact that its struggle to save itself from a resurgent Taliban is being waged to a great degree by 52,000 foreign troops -- 33,000 of them American -- in alliance with Afghan forces. The foreign troops are bombing to try to defeat the Taliban and are killing Afghan civilians in the process, including women and children, all of which enrages the local population.

The United States plans to add another 8,500 troops. Senior American officials are also putting pressure on NATO allies to increase their boots on the ground. Nobody really believes that either the modest U.S. increase or whatever forces can be extracted from other NATO countries will do the trick. To bring stability to Afghanistan could require up to several hundred thousand troops.

What should have been done -- with 20/20 hindsight -- is the Taliban should have been driven out in 2001, followed by establishment of the Karzai government and the launch of economic development. By concentrating U.S. forces there instead of running off to Iraq, a satisfactory outcome could have been achieved five years ago, followed by the departure of foreign troops. It is way too late for that now, and Washington doesn't have available the number of troops needed to retrieve Afghanistan, given the commitment in Iraq.

So now the United States is likely to be driven out, and quite soon, as the British were in 1919 and the Soviet Union was in 1989.