Sylvan:

That's exactly right.

From what I can figure out, Afghanistan has always had a very complex form of decentralized concensus based governance which is consistently contrary to the desires and interests of external parties.

But none of those external parties has, to date, figured out how to centralize things, and those who have tried, even with internal Afghan "national" figures has not been successful.

The remainder issue for us is what basic formats need to be in place in order to assure our realistic objectives, given the reality of a decentralized Afghanistan.

I remain of the opinion that many Afghans do, in fact, want the international community to do many things for them. So, when and how can they build a concensus around trading between what the international community wants as a floor for doing what they want. That discussion, concensus needs to be addressed, with or without the Mayor's input---for them to decide.

Hard to imagine that a well-focused and realistic military mission can not be accomplished in the next year provided we don't get lost in chasing the windmills in Afghanistan.