It was a small, dangerous and critical assignment. And it will almost certainly not be last involving risk as NATO's mission in the vast, mountainous Central Asian country grows.

When most Czechs think of their loved ones serving in Afghanistan, they register worry, but take comfort in knowing that most of those just sent over in a new deployment of 47 troops are taking command of the Kabul airport — their first such responsibility in the multinational force known as ISAF.

After four months, Czechs will hand off the airport to another member of the force and return home. But before they do, under the leadership of Colonel Bohuslav Dvořák, they will oversee 500 soldiers and specialists from Afghanistan and about 20 members of NATO.

The Czech Kabul unit includes specialists in air-traffic control, logistics and other fields. The group is part of a 150-troop Czech deployment in the country, with most of the others in the area of Feyzabad in northern Afghanistan, some 320 kilometers (200 miles) to the northeast of Kabul, where conditions are considered stable and secure. These units include military police, the famously capable Czech chemical weapons protection unit and soldiers defending construction projects.

It's in the south and west of the vast Central Asian nation that the drug barons cultivate poppies in order to supply, by some estimates, 90 percent of the world's heroin. Well-armed and -financed private militias protect and patrol these valuable properties, working for the clans who own and profit from them. The fear that the Taliban extremists who hosted bin Laden will return to power is based in large part on the concern that they will put aside the strictures of Islam against drugs and other impurities and form alliances with these powerful criminal overlords.

NATO commanders have realized that if they are to prevent this, they will soon have to move farther west in order to gain some control. Kabul is still far enough east to be considered in little immediate danger — though, as a capital and primary airport, it's clearly a key logistical stronghold.

Just which countries will have to face the growing threat of Afghan insurgents, so far just a shadow of their counterparts in Iraq (some 49 troops have been killed this year in Afghanistan), is being decided in Riga, Latvia, this week at a NATO summit. More than likely, these hazardous duties, for both the troops and any civilians caught in the crossfire, will fall largely to the 11,000 NATO troops supplied by the United States to the command of British General David Richards.

But Czechs, in facing up to their responsibilities as relatively new NATO members, may well see casualties themselves before their work is done. If they do, the reactions at home will be telling.

Much of Europe has a schizoid relationship with NATO: Its nations enjoy the security and protections against threats of hostile nations wanting to cross their borders — but when it comes to deployments abroad to ensure global security, limitations on their availability and commitments often begin to crop up.