Well, I agree on that someone has been sleeping at the wheel. Ignoring the reports from the ground outlining what is happening in the NW for years. (Just run through the wikileaks-files)

Some points:
1. Allthough granted the Pashtun areas are the places where the TB is gaining the most ground in the North, they have been picking up speed outside the Pashtun areas. Probably driven by non-pashtun affiliated organizations/movements. The article is about Qeysar, and Uzbek dominated district and a previous Junbesh stronghold. That the TB is able to push through this district without much local opposition is a very bad sign.

2. I disagree on that the North is not decisive. It may not be where we win this war, but can clearly be where we lose it. As fighting an insurgency is about perceptions, the sense of TB gains into "the safe north" may be quite significant for the Afghans sitting on the fence in the East, West and Kabul. (The south is allready gone, so there it hardly will matter)

Instead of turning the TB expansion that has been ongoing in the NW since 2007, we have instead chosen to reinforce failure. Currently 30k coalition troops and everything that can be scraped together of ANSF are trying to hold Helmand together, with a total population of 800.000 people, while one US field artillery bn, 1800 untrained ANP and one and a half ANA bn is trying to stem a TB expansion into Faryab, with a population of 1,2 million where about 300.000 of them are Pashtuns.

In the North, wishful thinking has replaced common sense for several years, now the door is hitting us in the face...