U.S. studies fear Afghan decline to terrorist haven

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Afghanistan risks reverting to a failed state and a haven for global terrorism without new U.S. and international efforts to win the war and deliver economic development, two studies said on Wednesday.

Afghanistan's failure would deal a strategic defeat to the U.S. fight against Islamic extremism that would destabilize neighboring Pakistan and threaten the future of NATO, the studies warned.

"Urgent changes are required now to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failing or failed state," said a report by the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

"If Afghanistan fails, the possible strategic consequences will worsen regional instability, do great harm to the fight against Jihadist and religious extremism, and put in grave jeopardy NATO's future as a credible, cohesive and relevant military alliance," it said.

NATO has taken over a large part of the fight against the radical Islamic Taliban, which was ousted from power by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 for giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. But it has fought back strongly beginning last year.

Separately, the Afghanistan Study Group warned that "the mission to stabilize Afghanistan is faltering" amid renewed violence, rising opium production and falling Afghan confidence in their government and its international partners.

"The prospect of again losing significant parts of Afghanistan to the forces of Islamic extremists has moved from the improbable to the possible," the group said in a report produced by non-governmental experts and published by the Washington-based Center for the Study of the Presidency.

DECOUPLE IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN