All eyes are on Iraq today as the U.S. transfers authority to the new government and NATO leaders commit to training Iraqi security forces.

But behind those important headlines is some deeply troubling news out of Afghanistan:

• On Sunday, Afghan officials reported that 14 men had been killed by Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan-simply because they were carrying voter registration cards.
• On Saturday, two women were killed when a bus carrying election workers was bombed in Jalalabad.
• Last week militants fired three rocket-propelled grenades at a voter registration center near Kabul.

As NATO heads-of-state gather in Istanbul this week, their most important commitment is not to Iraq, but to Afghanistan. NATO should heed the desperate pleas from Afghan President Hamid Karzai and make good on their promise to supply more peacekeeping troops to Afghanistan in advance of the September elections.

NATO has no excuse for skimping on Afghanistan, a cause its members have always supported. The Bush Administration should not let NATO off the hook because the alliance has agreed to get more involved in Iraq, the administration's higher profile crisis. Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic might be tempted to make that trade; they shouldn't be so short-sighted.

The stakes in this election are extremely high. The international community has invested a lot (though not enough) in transforming Afghanistan from a failed state and terrorist haven to a promising if deeply challenged member of the international community. This election has the potential to consolidate the nascent Afghan democracy and give Karzai the legitimacy he needs to rule more robustly.

But because these developments threaten the enemies of democracy, these spoilers have kicked off their own campaign to disrupt the election.

The lack of any real international security presence outside of Kabul has limited the activities of humanitarian groups, slowed reconstruction projects, allowed continued fighting between rival factions, and stifled the organic growth of local political movements. Now it threatens to derail free and fair elections.

NATO's dithering needs to stop. It's time for the allies with resources-France, Germany, Spain, Turkey-to demonstrate their commitment to peace and security in the 21st century and commit more troops to Afghanistan. Former ISAF deputy commander Gen. Andrew Leslie, a Canadian, estimates that another 5,000 soldiers would do the trick . In the early hours of the summit, NATO reiterated its intention to expand its presence in Afghanistan, but that's not enough: member countries should commit to specific troop contributions and a timeline in Istanbul.

NATO's assumption of command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in August 2003 was historic: never before had the alliance embarked on a mission outside the Euro-Atlantic area. In the fall of 2003, NATO and then the U.N. Security Council responded to repeated calls for a bigger, stronger international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan by authorizing an expansion ISAF outside of Kabul. This was an important step toward stabilizing the country's provincial hotspots.

That arrangement seemed like a decent distribution of labor. The Americans could pursue their top priorities-hunting Al Qaeda along the Afghan-Pakistani border and removing Saddam in Iraq-while the Europeans did their part in the war on terror by keeping the peace in Afghanistan. But as the situation in Afghanistan has worsened, NATO member states have yet to fulfill their pledges with actual boots on the ground.

As important as Afghan security is, there is really more at stake here for NATO: its own prestige and value as a military alliance.

How so?

NATO is playing a very limited role in Iraq. Some key NATO members were opposed to the invasion of Iraq from the start and their non-participation should be expected. But if the alliance's members want to demonstrate that they are committed to a war on terrorism—as they all claim to be—and they want to continue to be a relevant strategic partner to the United States, they need to fulfill the pledge they made to Afghanistan in October.

As Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan pointed out recently in the Washington Post, "If some of the strongest NATO powers refuse to participate in vital security missions, such as that in Iraq, then it should hardly be surprising when Americans and their leaders begin to dismiss those nations as serious strategic partners ."

Iraq is a tough request to make of NATO for a variety of reasons, but Afghanistan presents an easy vehicle for the alliance to make a much-needed contribution to global security in the post 9/11 world.

For progress in Afghanistan and for NATO's own prestige, the alliance's heads of state need to make good on their promises and commit troops in Istanbul.

Jeremy Barnicle is a program officer at The Century Foundation.