Worst Case Unfolding in Afghanistan? - Greg Grant, DoD Buzz.
What if the entire US strategy in Afghanistan is based on a flawed premise? A counterinsurgency campaign is waged to defeat insurgents who are trying to supplant a central government with some version of their own. In Afghanistan, the US military has been trying to defeat a largely Pashtun insurgency that doesn't care much for our man in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai.
That goal never appeared easy; the Pashtun are an extremely war like bunch and they don't like foreign armies on their soil either. Now things have gotten even worse as the insurgency has spread far beyond the Pashtun community, driven in large measure by the illegitimacy of the Karzai regime. It was hoped that national elections would serve to unify the country. Widespread accusations of voter fraud have dashed those hopes.
Last month, speaking at the US Institute of Peace, Tuft University's Andrew Wilder, who has spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan, said the "fundamental flaw" in the US counterinsurgency strategy there was trying to extend the reach of the central government when the local people view the central government as the number one cause of insecurity...
More at DoD Buzz.
Comments
Okay, so let me see if we have this straight: For the first 5-6 years of the war in Afghanistan, we subverted Karzai, by financing and otherwise empowering these criminal thug warlords and by-passing the Karzai/central government.
Now, that Karzai has no choice but to work with the same scum that we supported, and in some cases actually invented, it is his fault?
Blaming Karzai for US failures is bad. The current tendency for wannabe COIN experts to "pile on" Karzai for things that are fundamentally beyond his control (thanks the US policy, of course) is worse.
Please. Enough with the "get rid of Karzai, Karzai is the problem" stuff. It's the US' problem, because we contributed to/caused it.