Worst Case Unfolding in Afghanistan?

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.