A new millennium has dawned, but in some ways, the old one is in full swing. In late December, the UN Security Council once again voted sanctions against Afghanistan as punishment for sponsoring terrorism and harboring Osama Bin Laden. With rare concord -- testing their new century's alliance with old tools against a well-worn foe -- the United States and Russia agreed to isolate Afghanistan in order to halt threatening instabilities from the Caucasus to China. But in a big region marred by stubborn little wars, simple-sounding sanctions promise to turn 2001 into a very complicated year.

Set to begin in a few days, these sanctions initially appear more symbolic than serious. Afghanistan is already among the world's most inaccessible places, crisscrossed by the ebb of emergency aid and the flow of refugees. But it remains a destination for the guns of war, the drugs that buy them, and fighters who soldier for causes often far removed from the ills of this ravaged land. The high finance of narcotics traffic and the low politics of terrorism long ago turned Afghanistan into a breeding ground for the region's political contagions. Exasperated foreign politicians who can't stop burgeoning terrorisms have made Afghanistan into a diplomatic voodoo doll, swapping periodic pinpricks for the difficult work of brokering and sustaining peace.

The US and Russia insist that sanctions will be effective because they target the Taliban but not Afghan civilians. Not likely. Punishing a repressive military movement will inevitably affect those living under it. The direct effects of sanctions will surely affect the Afghan people their insensitivity led UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to admonish the Security Council publicly for victimizing civilians and compromising the UN's persistent, if faltering search for peace. Their indirect effects in Afghanistan -- the loss of life, and the loss of faith in the world's efforts to end its war -- are fatiguing and familiar. The assumptions that motivate the Council's reasoning are at best inaccurate and the consequences for the broader region are likely to be self-defeating.

At the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union's underbelly was mapped as an "arc of crisis." Although times have changed, the mindset has stuck the arc of crisis is now treated like an arc of frustration, and the retaliatory flavor of diplomacy remains constant. Recent reports prepared by the Rand Corporation and the National Intelligence Council shroud all the major regional players in Afghanistan's war in pessimistic colors of ethnic fragmentation, religious militancy and geopolitical instability. Security Council sanctions stand as a monument to a wishful alchemy in which symptoms take precedence over causes, random palliatives replace cures, and the hard-won experience of other wars is simply ignored.

This month's sanctions match an array of faulty assumptions to unproven conclusions. Phrased with righteous indignation, they suggest that isolation will lead recalcitrant Taliban leaders to the bargaining table -- but imply that the same isolation will inspire Afghans to rise spontaneously against the Taliban. They set up a straw man -- that sanctions might lead the Taliban toward multi-party democracy -- but imply that central and southwest Asia can be safe from extremism only if the Taliban disappear. They assume that multiparty negotiations will lure reconstruction funds to save the struggling economies of Afghanistan's neighbors (just as war brought prosperity to Pakistan two decades ago) -- but think little about which of the region's autocrats and meddlers will be empowered if money floods in.

These sharp-tongued sanctions reflect a puzzling ambivalence toward Afghanistan's war. Russia, Iran and central Asia still support Ahmed Shah Massoud's tattered army against the Taliban, but only enough to sustain fighting -- including battlefield victories this week -- and not nearly enough to win a war. A strict arms and fuel embargo, applied to all suppliers and combatants, is desirable, practical and possible -- but endorsed in word only. The US and the European Union profess contempt for Taliban rights abuses, but have mustered little effort to correct them. Diplomatic sticks are occasionally offered as carrots stop drug trading and we'll resume talking, hand over Bin Laden and we'll resume talking, treat aid workers better and we'll resume talking.

Sounds reasonable, but it's dead wrong. Spontaneous combustion, bribery, enlightenment through decree -- these are fantasies, not policies. It's little wonder that the Taliban misinterpret most messages. In fact, there are ways to orient the region toward peace, but no one wants to expend the effort. We know that wars can be stopped when guns, fuel and fighters are in short supply --but no one has stopped the thousand-mile arms bazaar that

radiates from Afghanistan and Pakistan. We know that inequity, inequality and repression feed wars -- but almost no one wants to expend the effort to protect human rights in Afghanistan or its increasingly oppressive neighbors. And we know that preaching peace through punishment can't work if the same states that advocate sanctions continue to participate in war, even if only by proxy.

Could it be that no one really wants war to end? Not exactly -- but while Afghans are fighting one war, the world is fighting another. When there were real chances to end the Afghan war -- in 1989 when Soviet troops withdrew, in 1992 when the communist government fell, and at several junctures since -- no one cared enough, and fighting spread far beyond Afghanistan's boundaries. Today, its borders are more important to large powers than Afghanistan itself. Central Asia worries about its future stability while Pakistan worries about political and economic implosion. Russia, India and Iran worry about energy security and Eurasia's endurance in a highly competitive international economy, and the US is increasingly worried about being blown up by former Afghan fighters. Everyone is worrying about territorial sovereignty and tumbling dominoes; no one, it seems, is worrying about Afghanistan.

That's why new sanctions will fail. It took most of the world far too long to understand that what happens in Afghanistan affects all of its neighbors. But the Security Council learned the wrong lesson from this -- as it has from the conflicts surrounding Sierra Leone and Congo. Rather than try to stop war in Afghanistan by sanctioning the war's suppliers in central and southwest Asia, it has censured the Taliban for its war's nasty spillover. A slap on the wrist might deter the Taliban's drab diplomacy, but it won't fix much else. Only when the focus returns to ending the Afghan war itself will any chance for success emerge.