Winning the War in Afghanistan

[Entropy]

During a search for the posts on the Dutch role I found this thread: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ighlight=dutch


I have just finished reading those two pages of posts and linked-in articles. Stunning...just plain stunning, when one looks at the proclamations five years ago, and what has transpired since then. I know it's a lot more than just this quote, but reading this takes me way back, to a time when I was just coming off my second Iraq deploy and thinking about my third. Afghanistan was a distant blip on my radar. And then, there it was.



This ties in to the recent postings about the grim NIE, and I think we'd all stand to gain something from re-educating ourselves about what was going on during the 2006-2008 window.

Welcome to my world. Afghanistan has always been my theater and my cynicism is fueled by the strong sense that Afghanistan policy is just like the movie "Groundhog Day" except we don't get a clean start at each iteration yet we still forget everything we've done before.

[davidbfpo]

A short comment on KoW blog by a Human Terrain analyst who has been in Helmand Province for the Spring and Summer, which opens with:

I spent my spring and summer in southern Helmand conducting research. The population’s prescience was unnerving.

Right or wrong, unfounded or founded, the locals overwhelmingly saw the war with the Taliban as yet to come. The tired and sometimes clumsy argument in London and Washington that the Taliban will pour over the Afghan borders upon NATO withdrawal is alive and well around the town centers, wells, and mosques of Marjah and Garmsir. The locals truly believe that Pakistani Taliban—madrassa students and patient trainees ready to die—will storm across NATO-built highways in civilian trucks wave after wave, undaunted by death.

Which ends with:

...NATO should focus precious assets on countering-radicalisation to stave off the effects of impending Taliban expansion. Empower indigenous resiliencies. The ideological Taliban will probably return again strongly. Afghans at every level of society—not just in the security services—must be ready.

Link:http://icsr.info/blog/Counter-Radica...he-War-to-Come

From this faraway armchair I do wonder if the legend or customary dislike of all Pakistanis by Afghans has changed. Secondly, whatever local or national security forces are in place say by 2014 they will carefully observe which "way the wind is blowing" and decide what they will do. Empowering indigenous resiliencies could be very temporary.

[Ray]

Here is one of the way to win:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVuI4A1ka6U

Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy (born 2 August 1945) is an Indian social activist and educator. In 1972 he founded the Barefoot college in Tilonia, Rajasthan. The Indian non-governmental organization was registered as the Social Work and Research Centre.

Bunker Roy was born in Burnpur Bengal, present-day West Bengal. His father was a mechanical engineer and his mother retired as India's trade commissioner to Russia.

He went to the Doon School from 1956 to 1962 and attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi from 1962 to 1967. Both institutes are the Ivy League of India.

He earned his master's degree in English. He then decided to devote himself to social service, to the shock of his parents.

He has trained Aghan and even African illiterate women to electrify their villages with solar energy and other village help amenities!