U.S. Military Runs into Afghan Tribal Politics

U.S. Military Runs into Afghan Tribal Politics after Deal with Pashtuns – Joshua Partlow and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

U.S. military officials in eastern Afghanistan thought they had come up with a novel way to stem the anger and disillusionment about government corruption that fuels the Taliban insurgency here. Instead, their plan to empower a large Pashtun tribe angered a local power broker, provoked a backlash from the Afghan government and was disavowed by the U.S. Embassy.

The struggling U.S. military effort to give the Shinwari tribe more voice in its affairs shows the massive challenges the United States will face this summer in Kandahar province, as it prepares to launch what is being touted as one of the largest and most important military campaigns of the nine-year-old war. One of the main U.S. goals in Kandahar is to reduce the influence of local power brokers, widely seen as corrupt, and to give tribal alliances a stake in how the province is governed and how development contracts are parceled out…

More at The Washington Post.