This week 61 people have been killed in Afghan fighting - its bloodiest week for over a year - underlining the difficulties faced as NATO takes over command of the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul.
The government led by President Hamid Karzai, set up after the Taliban regime was overthrown last year, has to share power with regional warlords and pockets of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces who proved by these attacks that they are still a force to be reckoned with. The United States still has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan pursuing them; but it has opposed repeated efforts by Mr Karzai and the United Nations to extend the ISAF's mandate outside Kabul, where it wants to have maximum leeway itself. NATO's takeover of responsibility for the 5000-strong, 31-nation multilateral force is likely to reopen the question.
This is NATO's first deployment outside Europe. The alliance's future is therefore put in question by the decision: Will it be equipped for such intervention beyond post-Cold War Europe and will it have the capacity to do the kind of nation-building work required in Afghanistan? What UN mandate has it to do so - or is it to be used mainly to mop up after unilateral US operations? These are crucial questions of international order and legitimacy. They have many implications above and beyond Afghanistan - not least in Iraq.
Many NATO states have made it clear they will become involved in such operations only if they have a UN mandate, as ISAF does. But NATO is a military alliance, with only limited experience of peacekeeping, developed largely in Bosnia and Kosovo recently. It has had little to do with building institutions and states, which have been the preserve of the United Nations, the European Union and such regional groups as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
There is no prospect that most NATO allies of the United States, or sympathetic non-aligned or neutral states such as Ireland, would be willing to operate in these traditional or new roles without UN mandate, nor should there be. Precedents set in Afghanistan and Iraq will set a pattern in future conflicts. The US is coming full square up against the realisation that while it has the military power to intervene it does not have the capacity to police and rebuild without the help of its allies. They are not willing to help if satisfactory UN authority is not in place. These issues are becoming more pressing in Iraq, as resistance continues against the US-British occupation there. A German is commanding officer in the Afghan force, which may herald change in Iraq.