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Britain’s Afghan Wisdom

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09.24.2009 at 11:23am

Britain’s Afghan Wisdom – David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

When it comes to Afghanistan, the British have a special perspective: Every mistake the United States has made recently, they made 150 years ago. So it’s worth listening to British experts in the debate over Afghan strategy. Afghanistan drove the British bonkers for much of the 19th century. They couldn’t control the place, but they couldn’t walk away from it, either. They found that there wasn’t a military solution, but there wasn’t a non-military solution. It was a question of managing chaos. Sound familiar?

The best answer the British came up with was working with tribal leaders in the border regions – paying them subsidies, wooing them away from the baddies who genuinely threatened British interests, but otherwise letting them run their own affairs. That was a cynical approach and it left Afghanistan a poor, backward country. But it worked adequately, especially compared with the alternative, which was unending bloodshed in a faraway country that refused to be colonized. A modern version of this “work with the tribes” approach is still the best answer. And it seems to be an important part of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy that was leaked this week. It’s dressed up in the language of counterinsurgency – he speaks of “population-centric” operations, and he uses the word “community” 44 times, by my count. But his assessment is basically a discussion of how to stabilize the country without just shooting people…

More at The Washington Post.

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