Garden, who has advised the British Ministry of Defense and U.S. Department of Defense on military affairs, delivers his assessment of the current and looming problems threatening global security and how best to approach them.

In this second installment, Garden discusses the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and security in the Middle East as a whole.

Garden: In all this region we've got very fuzzy objectives. We've gone in and intervened, and now, four and half years after 9/11, we've actually managed to make life more difficult for ourselves, because we've got an Afghanistan that is potentially still bad from the terrorist camp point of view, is absolutely worse in terms of the drug and international crime route to us, so it's a security threat to us. We've got an Iraq which is absorbing our military effort at an almost unsustainable rate with no clear way forward, we've got an Iran which is potentially wanting to go nuclear.

You've got that problem, and then you've got the original running sore of the region which is Israel-Palestine, the road map is almost meaningless now, the elimination of the corrupt Palestinian government and replacement with a government that is democratically elected in a fair election but which you don't like. Again, how do you tackle that? The absolutist says you can't recognize a government that has one of its written aims the elimination of the state that it's immediately next to, which is true, but on the other hand Hamas has actually kept the violence down and had the ceasefire going for a year now, and if you paint it into a corner, take the money away, the violence will certainly increase. So it's a lack of strategy to connect all these different problems together in the region that is the great difficulty.

UPI: Turning to Iraq, what do you think are the prospects for any phased withdrawal of coalition troops beginning this year, particularly given the recent escalation in violence?

Garden: Everything depends on the United States, they're the only player in this really and the U.K. will do whatever the United States does. The United States is feeling the strain. It is obviously hoping that in the summer when the rotation of troops goes, it can do a reduction then. As I understand it the latest Pentagon report shows that the number of Iraqi army formations that can operate without U.S. assistance has actually fallen from three to zero, so things are getting worse, although the number of trained people is increasing, the number that can actually operate in the more difficult circumstances has reduced.

So you can make a purely military case which says that if you want to be able to protect the current government you have to have the level of force you have got now, and perhaps even more, but that's a political decision. . If the Americans say, we're more concerned about the president's poll ratings and we need to show we're winning, they'll hype it up to show that everything is going well and we'll reduce, and the Iraqis'll have to sort it out, then they might do that. It's impossible to predict.

But the level of American casualties still remains pretty high, it's two or three a day, the level of Iraqi casualties gets higher and higher. Part of the problem is that this is all run by the military. Military action is only one aspect, and arguably not the most important. Giving the Iraqis some sense that things are getting better, that is that they get more electricity, they get some fresh water, hospital treatment, all those things, then you'll give them some reason to think that their government is useful, which they don't at the moment. If you're living in an environment where you're liable to get shot, electricity's down to a couple of hours a day, you haven't got fresh water on tap, then what you do is support the local militia, a bit like Hamas. Hamas got support in Gaza because it provided the services the state couldn't provide, and it's an alternative system. So the continually slow process of trying to get a government of unity -- I think the Americans are right that a government of unity is what's required -- but it may be that the Shias are getting so impatient now that they'll say, we don't care. And the Kurds of course have their own agenda totally, which is that they'll watch all this but they expect to end up with a pretty independent segment of the country.

So for all these reasons...we've probably got to a stage where it's going to be pretty bad if we stay and pretty bad if we don't.

UPI: Do you consider the recent rise in violence to be simply a phase or the beginning of a more long-term, factional struggle?

Garden: There have been odd blips but you can plot it pretty progressively that it has been getting steadily worse, since April 2003 really. At the end of the initial war, there was a period, probably only nine months where it could have been sorted out. The level of violence now is extraordinary, not everywhere, but just in terms of numbers of Iraqi casualties. There's ethnic cleansing going on, that is clear, they're trying to segment themselves into Sunnis and Shias, and that's causing some of the upsurge. I suppose when each of them have moved out it will decline a bit but then you've got a fractured state, and if you don't get a political solution then the violence will continue and get worse.

UPI: Are we seeing a similarly worsening trend in Afghanistan?

Garden: Afghanistan is different. In some ways the aspirations of the average Afghan are somewhat lower than the Iraqis, who were living maybe under a horrific regime but women had education, and the services, subject to the problems that the sanctions brought, were still there. Afghanistan is a much more primitive country with much more primitive governance systems, used to being run by local authoritarian control, and also more tribal, in the old fashioned sense rather than the clannish sense of Iraq. It has got worse in this period because we have not put enough effort into it, which is really since we have focused on Iraq. Now there seems to be a determination to put more effort into it. In the north and the west, the provincial reconstruction teams have allowed NGOs to do some work, and bring some improvements there, and the violence is not as bad as it might be, it has improved. But the south and the east remains bandit territory. I think there is an enormous problem as to how we are going to wean the people off growing poppies, which the West then buys as drugs. It's all very well having great schemes for planting other things, but they won't produce enough money, and they will be more difficult to transport to market. The thing about an illegal crop is not only does it produce money, but everybody facilitates it to be taken to market. I think we've got a real problem there, and given that international crime will be involved in trying to preserve the supply of opium, there'll be some real hostility to actions that are trying to stop that.

But I think the strategy there is much better put together, it is more one which is led by the desire to stabilize the infrastructure, to improve the rule of law, it's all the good governance and economic infrastructure aspects for which the military provides support, and that's the right way round. We're doing it the right way in Afghanistan, whether we are capable of doing it is another question.

We're beginning, in the approach that's being taken in Afghanistan, to be much more realistic. The British are sending quite a large force to a relatively small part of Afghanistan, because they feel that in order to do something they've got to have that intensity of capability available, and they're doing it bit by bit with other nations and I think that's the right approach. I still remain concerned as to whether it's achievable, but I think it's worth trying. I support the Afghanistan operation, I just wish we'd carried on doing it from when we first went there and bombed.

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