A number of posters have bought up the willingness to meet the capital cost of a program without adequate provision for the running costs. Also there have been a number of examples illustrating the need for security prior to infrastructure needed for economic activity. Our destabilisation of the Soviet backed regime and Pakistan’s destabilisation of the US backed regime (and plenty of other examples elsewhere) have shown it is much cheaper to destroy than build. Putting these all together I have been surprised not to see more discussion of the viability of building an Afghan security force (police and army) in a country that could not afford to sustain either. Looking at the country, even assuming a miracle occurred and the central government had a firm grip and security of half the territory, would this be an adequate tax base to sustain a force defending it?

Going back to the question of ‘is a cleptocracy a necessary step on the path to a less corrupt form of government?’ and the excellent notion that it might be a good idea to look at the existing political systems, which the population are used to and understand, and try and build on these. In Afghanistan we seem to have setup a top down model in direct completion with the tribal shura model. The traditional model seems to have evolved to cope with an inbuilt level of endemic ‘corruption’ while our model has not, as yet, found a working balance. Corruption is, to a degree, in the eye of the beholder. In the US the political system has an ‘accepted’ balance in laws are passed by inducing Congressman to support a bill – he does not really care about – by promising some pork for something he does. It is the cost of doing business as is a bit of backshish in other parts of the world, in each case there are norms and there are unacceptable excesses.

The discussion has touched on legitimacy and I have real problems with NATO or ‘coalitions of the willing’ being legitimate arbiters of which countries should be invaded or what individuals/governments are created and empowered. This is a very dangerous precedent and I suspect Western publics would have a serious problems if Venezuela formed a coalition of the willing including Cuba, Iran and its friends and decided to do something about the failed state of Haiti. Which brings me to the UN, which I am unfashionably fond of, baring the Security Council which brings the rest of the organisation into disrepute. The fact that it has representatives from countries with high levels of corruption that are in it for personal gain is just another cost of doing business. Single nation states, with comparatively homogeneous political views, have enough trouble reconciling the wants of very red and very blue states when most countries could not spot the difference. For an organisation that needs to accommodate Myanmar, KSA, Israel, China and the US it does a remarkable job and, despite the weaknesses caused by this width, it can confer a level of legitimacy among the community of nation states that a military superpower and a few like-minded friends can not.

Looking at the latest batch of polling data – going back to ascertaining what the people actually want/think – I was surprised by the level of support the Karzai government received. Faith in the coalition forces has been slipping, year-on-year, and the only saving grace is the Taliban is even less popular than we are.