Sadly, I think too many in the USA have any perspective on addressing the Afghan problem. Or understand what the Afghan people need. Or really understand that we have the same basic problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, namely an issue of governmentance in war time.
What we are really fighting, in both Iraq and Afghanistan is anarchy, anarchy, and anarchy. Something that its hard for the USA to relate to, even during our revolutionary war, our war of 1812, our civil war, we never had to deal with those problems. Because the rule of law basically went on during those conflicts in our case.
But both the Iraqi and Afghan case is somewhat analogous to what happened to much of Europe after Rome and the Roman armies that kept the rule of law fell in the 4'th century AD. And what happened was anarchy followed by the locale populace rally around various strong men. Leading to governance by feudalism that lasted about a thousand years. Going through many stages that finally led to the formations of Modern States.
Iraq as a country has a fairly short history of less than a century, as a country that never should have been, cobbled together out of the left over bits of the failed Ottoman empire, with three large ethic groups who did not have compatible interests. And the Saddam Hussein Government was basically the longest lasting government of any of the many governments Iraq had in its brief history. Of course, the Saddam formula
was a brutal police State based on divide and conquer, the decidedly minority Sunnis made out better than most, but Saddam was not above assassinating any Sunni that could become powerful enough to be a rival. And as a result, Iraq had a stable government, certainly not a fair one, but it still functioned fairly effectively, and most Iraqis, when asked, say it worked better and more fairly than what they have today.
When the US invaded in 2003, I think what GWB&co envisioned was a Mr. Potato Head effect, where the existing government stayed basically in tact, and all that was needed was a new head. And instead, the whole government fell along with Saddam. Resulting in instant anarchy with far too few occupying troops to maintain any order. As a result, this empowered all kinds of locals to form thousands of individual power bases and they did. Al-Quida was Jonney come lately and never formed more than 15% of the total Iraqi insurgencies. And now, only in the past year or so, a government under Maliki is finally trying to take the steps to militarily unify Iraq while the insurgents, better armed and supplied than before are gleefully looting the Iraqi and US treasury in an uneasy truce. Since there is little political progress, the prospect of a civil war always lies under the surface.
Afghanistan has almost the opposite but same problem, much of it is little changed since Alexander the Great, and has not had any real stable government in living memory. Nor is it much different than the tribal areas of Pakistan, although the latter, up until now, have been largely spared the anarchy Afghanistan has endured since the Soviets invaded. Of course what followed the Soviet invasion was a the USA training terrorists, we called them freedom fighters, they chased the Russians out, and then those same freedom fighters, started fighting each other as Afghanistan sunk into a civil war that basically empowered various strongmen, war lords, and thugs. Finally, using vicious tactics, the Taliban rose to power, and they at least had a Sharia law based formula that did ensure some sort of fairness in governance. Yes, horrible by Western standards, but still infinitely better than the former governance by warlords and thugs. Then basically unknown to the Taliban, Al-Quida hatched 911.
And Afghanistan is now back to the same conditions that prevailed after the Russians left. And with some 500,000 troops short of enough, Nato has done nothing to provide any effective governance, and after seven years, the Afghan people have lost all faith in the US or Nato to ever do anything. Which is why the Taliban is coming back, because they can at least provide a fair government and stop the thieves and thugs.
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