The immediate target of American wrath lies at 33 degrees north latitude, 65 degrees east, and its official name is the Islamic State of Afghanistan. It is, by virtually any standard, one of the most wretched countries on Earth. And it is a terrible place in which to fight a war. Ask the British. Ask the Russians.

To begin with, Afghanistan is 250,000 square miles, about twice the size of Vietnam. In the wounded Pentagon today, the generals are almost certainly urging great caution upon the civilians who run our government. Colin Powell and Anthony Principi — who heads Veterans Affairs — the only cabinet members who have ever been shot at, must be doing the same.

All military leaders remember that peak American troop strength in Vietnam was roughly 500,000. To match that ratio of troops to land area, the Americans and their allies would need to send in a minimum of a million troops.

The country is landlocked, mountainous and arid, with brutal summers and fierce winters. The tallest peak is Nowshak, at 25,000 feet. The southwestern deserts get less than 9 inches of rain a year. Only 12% of the land is arable, and because of a prolonged drought, overgrazing, the cutting of trees for fuel and soil degradation, even that small percentage of land is turning to dust. Twenty-five percent of the population is on the edge of starvation. Farmers have been converted into nomads, searching for water and grass:

"The herds are often below a sustainable size," said a report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "There are few or no lactating animals, and there are evident signs of dehydration and malnutrition. These nomads are gathering near towns or canals or other potential water sources. The same water is used by animals and by humans for drinking, washing and sanitation."

In the event of a prolonged invasion and occupation (what was called in Algeria and Vietnam a "pacification program"), a communications system would have to be built almost from scratch. According to the CIA's country profile, Afghanistan is a country with only 31,200 telephones to serve 26 million people. The only international telephone link runs from western Afghanistan to Iran. There is no national television network, only sporadic broadcasting by local factions. There are five AM radio stations, no FM stations and two shortwave stations. Newspapers are wretched, controlled by the ruling Taliban, and only 31.5% of the population can read.

There are 14 airports with paved runways and 32 that use dirt and gravel. Even if neighboring Pakistan agreed to open its airports to the military of the U.S. and its allies, any serious invasion force contemplating "a long war" (as President Bush describes it) would need to build at least one huge in-country airport, on the scale of Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay. Many of the existing airports are used to maintain the export trade. There is only one lucrative export (other than terrorism): heroin.

One Huge Cash Crop

Afghanistan is now the world's largest producer of opium, having surpassed Burma in the past few years. It is estimated — by the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. State Department — that in 1999 it produced 1,670 metric tons of opium, up 23% from 1998. Some 51,500 hectares are under cultivation. An intricate shipping network has existed since the time of the 1979-89 war with the Soviet Union, with raw opium base moving into Pakistan for refinement into heroin (and increasingly being refined in Afghanistan itself), and then on to Turkey, Canada and the streets of American cities, including New York.

The misery of the inhabitants is appalling. Since the Soviets invaded to aid a Communist government on Christmas Eve 1979, there has been constant war. The Afghans have been fighting outsiders since the time of Alexander the Great and they seem to enjoy doing it. The Soviets abandoned the place in 1989, and a long civil war followed. Afghan killed Afghan, usually over differing interpretations of the Koran, but also to control the drug trade. The human consequences are only suggested by the statistics.

The average Afghan life expectancy is 45.8 years. Males live a bit longer than females, because so many women die in childbirth. According to United Nations figures, the infant mortality rate is 161 deaths among every 1,000 live births, the absolute worst in the world — in the U.S. the rate in 1999 was 7.1. Even with these dreadful numbers, more than half the population is under 14. Many of them could end up as collateral damage.

Certainly there will be very few human targets. The rich and the nonfundamentalist middle class fled long ago to Pakistan (along with 2 million other Afghans), leaving behind farmers, nomadic herdsmen and the most marginalized citizens of the capital of Kabul and the few other cities. Reuters reported yesterday that the Taliban leaders are also fleeing Kabul, unconcerned about the corpses that might soon appear on its streets, as long as the female corpses wear veils. Kandahar, in the southwest, is also emptying. Everywhere, food supplies are running low. The currency is worthless paper.

Widespread Disease

The gathering of medical statistics has now virtually ceased under the Taliban (just another treacherous habit of the West), but the country is filthy with plague, cholera, diphtheria, malaria, meningitis, amoebic dysentery and typhus. The water system, damaged in the endless wars, has been corrupted. Open toilets are everywhere, unflushed, unclean. Rats prowl the cities. Disease must be worse now, not better, than it was at the time of the war with the Soviets. It is definitely a hazard for anyone who walks into the country, holding a rifle. Possibly more dangerous than armed Afghans. Certainly one major cause of the Soviet defeat was disease.

About 650,000 Soviet soldiers served in Afghanistan. According to a report by Lt. Col. Lester Grau (U.S. Army, retired) and Maj. William Jorgensen (U.S. Army Reserve), 415,932 — an astounding 88.6% — were hospitalized at various times with serious diseases, the most common being infectious hepatitis.

To be sure, most of these wounds were self-inflicted. The Soviets ran a slovenly army. Personal discipline was wretched. Food was vile, usually served cold in the field, ladled from silvery tins that flashed welcome signals to their Afghan opponents. In base camps, the cooks were slobs, helping spread disease. There were shortages of purified water, and soldiers often drank local water (hating the taste of the purified version) and quickly fell down in agony. Troops wore uniforms (including 75-pound field packs) suited for a war on the northern plains of Europe, not the mountains of Afghanistan. Their boots were so heavy that many fought battles wearing sneakers. In the later stages of their war (as in the later stages of Vietnam), drugs and alcohol further weakened the ability to fight. That war was the beginning of the end of the Communist empire called the Soviet Union.

But for the rest of the world, and now most particularly for New York, the most devastating consequence of the war with the invading Soviets was the rise of the fanatical Islamic fundamentalists. Almost all the radical Muslims now planning and executing terrorism are veterans of the Afghan campaigns. All benefited from the CIA's massive intervention in the war, led by Ronald Reagan's CIA director, William Casey. The plan was simple: Find and enlist as many Muslim zealots as possible. Train them. Arm them. Fund them. And send them against the Russians.

Starting Small

One of those zealots was the now-famous Saudi Arabian rich boy, Osama Bin Laden, who began as a dilettante of war. His story is well-known. But he wasn't a major figure in Afghanistan. He was a relatively minor player in the very loose resistance called the mujahedeen. The radicals who joined up with the mujahedeen benefited from the $3.5 billion contributed by the CIA, and hundreds of millions in Saudi funds channeled through a CIA account in Switzerland. The British Secret Intelligence Service was also heavily involved in training and dispersing. The control centers were in Cairo and in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. Many of the camps now operated by Bin Laden and other radicals, including the Taliban, were built with American money.

Most of the radicals were drawn to the fierce Afghan fundamentalism of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose group was called Herzb-I-Islam (according to one 1994 report, the CIA/SIS-trained fundamentalists included 2,800 Algerians, 370 Iraqis, 2,000 Egyptians, 300 Yemenis, 200 Libyans). They were tough, ferocious fighters, as motivated as the foreigners who fought for the Spanish Republic in the 1930s. When they received their American-made Stinger missiles, they began hammering Soviet helicopters out of the sky. The war was soon over.

They did not all give up the gun when the last Soviet tank rolled over the northern border. Many saw the war as the first stage of a triumphant Islamic jihad against modernity (with its skepticism and doubt), liberalism (with its tolerance and generosity) and all things secular, from dancing to card-playing. In addition to Bin Laden, there were other veterans of the Afghan war who vowed to keep fighting. They went off to other countries, hardened in battle, burning with faith.

Civil War Rages

Afghan veterans unleashed the revolt in Algeria in 1992, after the army threw out the results of an election that was an apparent victory for Muslim fundamentalists. That war goes on, and has cost at least 100,000 lives, including seven on Friday. Afghan veterans shaped the Armed Islamic Group, started by killing scores of Westerners, murdering Muslim moderates, and over the past year have specialized in massacring Algerian villagers, usually by slitting the throats of men, women and children. Some Afghan veterans have been killed by the army; the war goes on.

In Egypt, Afghan veterans started their own campaign, forming a group called Gamat Ismailia. A man named Mohammed Shawky al-Istrambouli was one of the leaders. His brother led the group that murdered Anwar Sadat in 1981. He made contacts with the mujahedeen in 1983, at a forward base in Pakistan, raised funds there, and in Iran, and soon began killing Egyptians. The object was to destroy the government of Hosni Mubarak and create a fundamentalist Islamic regime. After being sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt, Istrambouli found safety in, of course, Afghanistan. His organization agreed to a truce in 1998, but most members are believed to have joined Bin Laden's umbrella group, Al Qaeda (the Base).

Istrambouli had many contacts. In 1990, in Pakistan, he met with Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric. The man later convicted of setting up the 1993 assault on the World Trade Center and planning other atrocities in the New York area. Two of the sheik's sons served in the Afghanistan war. At least two of the 1993 bombers had served in Afghanistan. In Israel, Palestinian areas and Syria, Afghan veterans are believed to be active in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

Those contacts made in the mountains of Afghanistan most likely remain essential to the various networks of which Bin Laden is at once a part, and through Al Qaeda, a leader. People who were shot at together form personal bonds that almost never break. These surviving groups are well-funded, most likely in devious ways — with Arab oil states, including Saudi Arabia, bribing them to leave their own countries alone. Some experts fear that a radical Muslim trap is being set, that Pakistan will succumb to the carrot-and-stick pressure and allow the Americans to use it as a base, then a massive rising of fundamentalists would overthrow that government and bring radical fundamentalism to a country that has the atom bomb.

"The Pakistani people would never accept an American presence on their soil," said Gen. Hameed Gul, former head of Pakistani military intelligence, in an interview in Paris with Reuters. "The price to pay would be high for everybody. Pakistan would be completely destabilized, and that would have grave repercussions, especially for the United States."

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine agrees. He supports the Americans in their need for justice after the slaughter at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But he warned Sunday against making this too wide and ruthless a campaign.

"We have to avoid a clash of civilizations at all cost," he said. "One has to avoid falling into this huge trap, this monstrous trap, even if this was the calculated intention of some."

Where's Bin Laden?

Nobody is certain about the whereabouts of Bin Laden today. He might have slipped out of his camps around Khost, which survived Soviet missiles, 500-pound bombs and artillery. He might be across the border in Pakistan. It is unlikely that he is where intelligence services think he is. If he is found, and killed, his movement will likely go on, waving the banners of his martyrdom.

In this great surge of Islamic fundamentalism, with its longing for the certainties of the 11th century and the lost Islamic kingdoms, there is, alas, no Mr. Big. For too many people, death is a mere step into paradise.

But one thing we do know: There in Afghanistan, waiting for the bombs to fall, live some of the most miserable human beings on the planet. For them, dying might be as meaningless as living.