As the war in Iraq recedes and a defeated al-Qaeda removes its surviving assets to Pakistan, the Afghan front is increasingly becoming the top American military priority.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, stated this week more troops and economic aid were needed "as quickly as possible" for the seven-year-old counterinsurgency battle. The core of McKiernan's military aid request is four more combat brigades and helicopters, indicating Afghanistan will have a "surge" of its own.  

"We're in a very tough fight," said McKiernan to reporters at the Pentagon last Wednesday. "The idea that it might get worse before it gets better is certainly a possibility."

But McKiernan's request should not be read to mean that Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are "gaining" in Afghanistan, as one New York Times story indicated. Even though military deaths this year have already exceeded the 117 American dead in 2007 and currently stand at a record 134, this is still low in comparison to Iraq and American casualty figures in Vietnam and World War II – especially considering there are about 50,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

The much-reported 30 percent increase in violence in Afghanistan this year has also been accompanied with very little context. One publication, Strategy Page.com, pointed out that country-wide violence will cause 6,000 deaths in Afghanistan this year, which averages out to 24 dead per 100,000 people. In contrast, South Africa, a country at peace, will see 50 citizens out of every 100,000 die violently in 2008, mostly because of its high crime rate. Other countries, especially failed states like Somalia, probably have an even higher death rate from violence, but are unable to keep proper statistics. So the Afghan situation, while not laudable, is also not dismal.

Moreover, much of Afghanistan's violence is also unrelated to the war. Constant tribal feuding has been a way of life for centuries in Afghanistan's rural areas and accounts for many of the country's killings. The tribesmen are armed, proud of their martial spirit and barely acknowledge the central government. Like most lawless regions, there are also few, if any, law enforcement officials to be found there.  

Afghanistan's drug gangs are also big contributors to the country's lack of security and cause much of the violence. They have their own armed retainers who battle both government forces as well as each other. One American humanitarian aid worker witnessed such Afghan drug violence when he was inadvertently caught in a shootout between two rival groups but escaped unharmed.

But the biggest contribution drug gangs make to Afghanistan's turmoil is the tax money they pay to the Taliban, which then hires fighters and buys weapons to use against Western forces and the Kabul government. Afghanistan now produces about 90 percent of the world's heroin in its southern provinces. And although a poor poppy crop was reported this year, one estimate still puts the Taliban share at about $70 million.   

The drug money has also led to Afghanistan's biggest problem: corruption. Afghan government officials are suspected of being on drug gang payrolls. Even Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, was accused of being involved in the trade. The drug cancer, combined with officials stealing Western aid intended for the poor and dispossessed, has cost the Kabul government much of the people's confidence and support. So like the American experience in Vietnam, the US army may win the military battles, but the country could be lost because of other, non-military factors.      

Nevertheless, McKiernan is correct in asking for more troops at this time. The Taliban and al Qaeda are currently under severe pressure in their Pakistani base areas. The new Zardari government launched an all-out military offensive in August against the two terrorist organizations in their tribal agency strongholds and refuses to negotiate with them, giving them the stark options of either surrendering or leaving.  

McKiernan has called the offensive's initial results "encouraging." About 1,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have been killed in the long overdue attack. A Pakistani newspaper reported that Taliban fighters have even left Afghanistan to confront the Pakistani army, leading to a noticeable lowering of insurgent activity in American-patrolled Kunar province. After years of American complaints about jihadists crossing unhindered into Afghanistan, a senior Paksitani military official ironically commented: "The Pakistan-Afghan border is porous and is now causing trouble for us in Bajaur (tribal agency)." To keep the pressure on the enemy, the American military also announced it will also stage a winter campaign.  

An expansion of the Afghan army will accompany the arrival of more American troops. Currently about 70,000 strong, Afghan forces will number 90,000 by the end of the year and 130,000 soldiers in about three years. General David Petraeus calls this Afghan military expansion a "thickening" of the local forces. An increase in numbers on both sides will, like in Iraq, allow troops to hold areas the Taliban simply reoccupies after allied forces leave.

But besides the top down strategy of meeting the enemy head on militarily, both McKiernan and Petraeus intend to increase their bottom up strategy of increasing humanitarian aid and engaging local Afghan tribal and government leaders. The Taliban also recognizes the value of this strategy, as a UN report released this week stated it had killed 30 aid workers so far this year, attacked 22 food convoys and 59 schools.

But the only hitch to McKiernan's request for the extra brigades is that they may not arrive immediately. As American troops leave Iraq, they will probably need a few months rest at home before being sent to the Afghan-Pakistan theater. Which is probably why Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recently he is prepared to send thousands of troops to Afghanistan in the spring. So, after years of empty Taliban promises to capture Kabul in a spring offensive, it will instead be facing one of its own.

New York - Say what you will about Geert Wilders – and his critics, not least the Islamic clerics who issue near-daily fatwas commanding his death, have made their views plain – there is no gainsaying that the man has guts. Ever since 2004, when the Dutch politician emerged as one of Europe's more forthright foes of Islamic fundamentalism, Wilders, 45, has been the subject of considerable obloquy, both in his native Netherlands, where he is scorned by the political elite, and abroad, where he is the target of untold assassination plots.

But not only has his international infamy not deterred Wilders from declaring against Islamic extremism –and, more controversially, Islam as a whole – but it has actually spurred him to become even more outspoken about what he considers to be its mortal threat to Western civilization. Most recently, he made the point in his provocative 15-minute film, "Fitna" ("challenge" in Arabic), released on the internet last May to much handwringing in Europe's political salons and the obligatory denunciations and death threats in the Muslim world. Agree or disagree with its message, there is no disputing its subtext: Geert Wilders will not be silenced.

This much was apparent during his September 25 stop in New York. Part of an outreach tour by Wilders and several members of his two-year-old political party, the rightist-populist Party for Freedom, the visit was designed to forge links with ideological allies in the U.S. and to explain just how parlous is the state of affairs in a Europe that is, as Wilders sees it, if not yet lost to Islam, nevertheless on the cusp of cultural and political surrender. At a lunch sponsored by the Hudson Institute, the conservative think tank, Wilders – tall, slightly tense and sporting the signature peroxide-blond bouffant that makes him look like a right-wing Mozart – offered an apt demonstration of what it is that has his European colleagues discomfited and his jihadist revilers literally clamoring for his head.

For those who've followed his career, it was vintage Wilders. Whether it was his recommended response to immigrants who refuse to assimilate ("there's the door and there's the shredder for your passport"), or his politically incorrect references to the "so-called prophet" Mohammed ("mass murderer and a sick pedophile") and the Koran (the Muslim "Mein Kampf"), or his nod to the Iranian government ("crazy lunatics"), Wilders could not be accused of excessive diplomacy. And he was never more animated than on the subject that fuels his more health-hazardous tirades. At one point, Wilders presented what he called a lesson in "Islam 101." It went like this: "Islam is not a religion. It's a political ideology. If you want to compare it then the only thing you can compare it to is communism. It's a totalitarian ideology." Lest there be any misunderstanding, Wilders added that there was no such thing as moderate Islam. "Sure, there are moderate Muslims," he said. "But there is no moderate Islam."

Kindred themes feature in his film "Fitna." To say that Wilders does not present Islam as a religion of peace is to put it mildly. "Fitna" juxtaposes graphic footage of Islamic terrorism – including the 9-11 attacks, the Madrid train bombings, and the beheading of Nicholas Berg – with Koranic verses and clips of Islamic clerics preaching murder of non-Muslims and Jews. Low-budget and unabashedly one-sided – Wilders seems uninterested in the possibility that there is more to foundational Islamic texts than murderous calls to arms – it is not exactly a polished work, something Wilders readily concedes. "I'm a lawmaker not a moviemaker," he says. But like its creator, the film is nothing if not direct.   

However one judges its content, the fact that "Fitna" has been released at all is something of an achievement. State-owned Dutch television stations refused to screen it last spring. Meanwhile, Dutch Muslims, unwittingly confirming Wilders's skepticism about the compatibility of Islamic mores and democratic values, called for the film to be banned. The political establishment, too, failed to distinguish itself. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende did nothing to discourage the hotter heads in the Muslim community when he announced that "Fitna" "serves no other purpose than to cause offense." Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen similarly urged Wilders not to show the film because it could "endanger the lives of Dutch nationals" abroad. (Appearances notwithstanding, Verhagen insisted that he was "not trying to meet demands from anti-democratic forces and terrorists in the Middle East.") "It was an absolute disgrace," Wilders recalls of such reactions.

More menacing was the preemptive outrage in the Muslim world. In a grim replay of the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005, Dutch flags were burned, as muftis promised bloodshed if the film were shown. In Indonesia, where protestors brandished banners proclaiming "Kill Geert Wilders," the government appealed to Dutch authorities to outlaw the film and, failing to get its way, permanently barred Wilders from entering the country. The Taliban, after getting word of the film's release, vowed to increase attacks on Dutch troops in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda-linked groups issued internet death threats against Wilders.

While some of the threats proved empty, others were all-too credible. Indeed, today Wilders is in more danger than ever – no small feat for a man who just a few years ago was forced to spend nights in high-security prison cells and safe houses to avoid the gruesome fate of another Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh, who was savagely murdered by Moroccan Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri in November 2004. In the past two months in particular, the threats have multiplied. "It's embarrassing even to talk about it," Wilders says when I ask him about his security arrangements. For obvious reasons, he doesn't want to divulge the size of his security detail, but he does say that "they would have to clear the street" in Amsterdam to accommodate them all. Even in the relative safety of Manhattan, Wilders takes no chances. As he spoke, two tall men in black suits and crew cuts sat watchfully by the door.

Safety concerns have limited Wilders's public presence, but they have not diminished his political stature. Just the opposite: His Party for Freedom (PVV) now has nine members in the 150-member Dutch parliament, where it continues to press for its Wilders-inspired platform of restricting immigration from Muslim countries; for more aggressively monitoring domestic extremism, including radical mosques; and for reducing an indulgent welfare state that allows immigrants to live comfortably without assimilating. To be sure, these remain minority views in Dutch politics. "We vote every Tuesday and it's always the same," says Martin Bosma, a PVV MP. "Nine people raise their hands and the other 141 stare at their shoes." Nonetheless, Bosma says that "we have a lot of reasons to be optimistic." The PVV currently has around 10 percent support in national polls, he notes. Double what it attracted when it first stood for election in 2006, this would translate into 15 seats in the parliament in the next general election in 2010.

The PVV also has another thing going for it: Its animating anxiety about the dangers of Islamic extremism is now shared by large parts of the Dutch electorate. In a 2004 poll, 47 percent of the Dutch admitted to fearing that they would have to live according to Islamic rules in the Netherlands at some point. Similarly, in a May 2005 poll, 43 percent of the Dutch said Islam was incompatible with Western society, results that were more than matched the following year, when a poll found that the majority of native Dutch found Islam intolerant (52 percent), violent (40 percent), and hostile to women (70 percent). Increasingly, it seems, Wilders is preaching to the choir.  

To his political adversaries, these polls are proof of Wilders's malign influence on Dutch politics. In this exegesis, it is only Wilders and the PVV's "racism" and "xenophobia," bolstered by "an alarmist presentation of Muslim immigration to the Netherlands and Europe," that is causing the Dutch to doubt the model of all-tolerant multiculturalism that has prevailed for so long.

The reality, though, is more complex. Although, at around one million, the Dutch Muslim community still is only about 5.8 percent of the population, it is increasingly a majority in some neighborhoods – and a hostile one at that. Overtoomse Veld, the west Amsterdam neighborhood of Theo Van Gogh's killer Mohammed Bouyeri, is by some estimates 80 to 90 percent Muslim. Major Dutch cities like Rotterdam, now home to the Islamic University of Rotterdam, are nearly half Muslim. On their face, such statistics may seem unobjectionable. But it has not escaped notice that these cities, with their restive and unassimilated immigrant populations, boast some of the highest crime rates in the Netherlands and serve as havens for religious radicalism. Nor do Dutch voters need Wilders to wonder about some Muslims' capacity for tolerance. A spate of attacks on gay men by young Muslim thugs in Amsterdam, once the self-styled "gay capital of Europe," has convincingly made the case for him. 

Among those disinclined to debate him, it's fashionable to dismiss Wilders as a populist vulgarian who revels in giving offense. The writer Ian Baruma, writing in the New Yorker, has quipped that Wilders sees "delicacy as a sign of fraudulence." But this is something of a misconception. Despite his exuberantly confrontational rhetoric, Wilders himself is thoughtful, personable, and hard to mistake for the Muslim-hating bigot that some imagine him to be. For instance, as he was doing an interview in New York, a man tapped him on the shoulder. It was Ebby Moussazadeh, a board member at the Hudson Institute. Pointing to his nametag, Moussazadeh said, faux-menacingly, "It's a Muslim name." Wilders brightened. "Iranian," he said. "I recognize it." Wilders explained that he had travelled to Iran a number of times before his recent notoriety and said that he would one day like to return to the country when it is politically free.

Still, it's true that Wilders comes across as too hard-edged for some. Even as he recognizes that, he is not about to moderate his take-no-prisoners style. On the contrary, he sees it as a way of injecting urgency into the European debate about Islam and multiculturalism. "In Europe, we have consensus in our veins," Wilders told me. "What we did for the last 30 years is compromise all the time; it was all carrots and no sticks. All we have to show for it is a lot of orange and a lot of trouble." No more, he says. "You have to be heard. Right now, people are speaking without really saying what they mean. It's not enough to talk about immigration. You have to get to the core of the issue, which is that Islam is incompatible with democracy."

The burgeoning alliance between Russia and Venezuela has just gone nuclear. On Sunday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that he had accepted an offer from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to help Venezuela develop nuclear energy – "for peaceful ends of course." The Russian nuclear power construction company Atomstroyexport, which is currently building Iran's new plant, will coordinate the project.

Nuclear cooperation is only the most recent – and, arguably, the most alarming – testament to the ties between Venezuela and its Russian patron. For example, later this year Russia and Venezuela are planning to hold joint military exercises, a deployment that represents the largest Russian naval maneuver in the Caribbean since the Cold War. On top of that, Chavez has purchased Russian anti-aircraft systems worth over $4.5 billion, and has been promised a $1 billion dollar "loan" from Russia as part of a "military cooperation program."

In the economic realm, too, the Kremlin and Caracas are closer than ever. In July, Russian energy giants LUKoil and Gazprom announced plans to invest up to $30 billion in Venezuela's oil-rich Orinoco basin, a deal that Chavez hailed as "a colossus being born." Moreover, trade between Russia and Venezuela more than doubled between 2006 and 2007.

The two countries have made no secret of their strategic partnership. Chavez boasts that he has developed a "profound friendship" with Putin. Returning the compliment, Putin declared that Russia and Venezuela are developing "our ties in all spheres," with "new possibilities in energy, high-tech, machine construction and chemicals" and "cooperation in [the] military and technical spheres."

Fueling this cooperation is a shared antagonism toward the United States. Both Chavez and Putin have described the relationship as "multi-polar" – a term that describes their opposition to "U.S. global domination." For instance, Putin declared that, "Latin America has become an important chain-link in creating a multipolar world, and we will pay more attention to this vector." More recently, Chavez was one of the few world leaders to echo the Kremlin propaganda line that the United States was to blame for Russia's recent invasion of South Ossetia – a clear sign that Venezuela had come under Russia's sphere of influence.

For Russia, the advantages of having a prominent anti-American ally are obvious. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was forced to prop up teetering fellow communist governments. In contrast, modern Russia, no longer constrained by communist ideology, is "free to shift [its] focus to creating wholesale chaos in Latin America," according to a Stratfor analysis. "Where once massive state subsidies were necessary for creating a threat on the U.S. periphery, now Russia (which, for the moment, has the cash to spare) need only send a few extra shipments of light arms to spark a little extra destabilization in a region already rife with strife. For the Russians, a billion dollars to empower a country already working to undermine U.S. influence is money well spent. And if the influx of arms destabilizes Venezuela itself? Well, Venezuela is a major oil supplier to the United States. Either way it goes, Russia wins."

More broadly, Russia's alliances in the Caribbean help it "get payback for U.S. policies in Europe," says Ray Walser, a Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America for the Heritage Foundation. Walser points out that Putin is especially angered by American support for Georgia, and its new missile defense deal with Poland.

At the same time, Walser notes that courting Venezuela carries its own risks. "The nuclear side of the relationship remains very uncertain." Walser observes that oil rich Venezuela is an unlikely location for a nuclear power plant, which has "the potential to become a white elephant." If the Russians and Venezuelans are actually planning to develop nuclear weapons, that would violate the 1969 Treaty of Tlateloco. Otherwise known as the "Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean," it has been ratified by all 33 nations in the region. A violation of the treaty, Walser says, "would really get the U.S. angry." In that case, Walser says, the political consequences for Russia would be serious. Russia risks further isolation from the U.S. and the rest of the world, while "for Chavez, invoking the Russians may not sit will with either the Venezuelan people or Venezuela's neighbors, who have enjoyed relatively low defense costs."

Perhaps mindful of such perils, Russia isn't placing all its eggs into a Venezuelan basket. Nicaragua's military has been promised Russian replacement helicopters and missiles, while Cuba gets "a new space-based communication station and new aerial espionage capacities." Together, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba form a strategic Caribbean triangle of anti-American nations and vital sea-lanes that Russia is eager to control. According to Investors Business Daily, "America imports 60% of its energy from overseas, and 64% of that must cross the Caribbean to reach Gulf refineries, ports and pipelines. Another portion must cross the Panama Canal. Russian communications operations, submarines and naval ships hanging around with little to do are a problem, even if a shot is never fired."

With its military commitments in the Middle East, America will be hard-pressed to patrol the Caribbean at the same time. Instead, says Ray Walser, Washington should "work to expose Venezuelan misdeeds such as narcotics trafficking and support of FARC" terrorists. America's political leadership, meanwhile, must keep a close watch on Russia's campaign to reignite the Cold War, one Latin American country at a time. Russia is already helping Iran build "its first nuclear power plant in the southern port of Bushehr" -- and now appears to be betting that a many-headed nuclear hydra will be simply too much for the West to handle.