The coming (postponed) Afghan civil war

[davidbfpo]

A long article in the New Yorker magazine by Dexter Filkins, which I have just discovered and not fully absorbed yet.

I usually like this expert's views:

Antonio Giustozzi believes that the moment of maximum danger will come after 2014, when the Americans have all but certainly withdrawn the last of their combat forces. At that point, the Taliban will likely begin to make substantial territorial gains, particularly in remote areas. When that happens, parts of the Afghan Army—particularly its Pashtun segments—could dissolve.

“I think we lose maybe a quarter or a third of the Army—people will run away..If the soldiers see a civil war coming, or big Taliban gains on the battlefield, then I think the Army will lose most of the Pashtun troops. The troops would probably think they are on the wrong side of the divide. The only thing that could really stop a civil war is a strong Afghan Army.”

Maybe I'm quibbling, what Pashtun segments? I've seen nothing to suggest the Pashtun make up a significant part of the ANA.

There is much to take in here:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...urrentPage=all

There is a shorter piece by Ryan Evans:http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts...in_afghanistan

That too has a passage that makes one ponder, now this is proposed:

The trouble is, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has not been systemically mapping these factional conflicts down to the local level and incorporating this information into their planning. ISAF, the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, and the US Embassy in Kabul should create a large and mobile cell of officers, diplomats, aid officials, analysts. This cell would be tasked with traveling around Afghanistan and achieving a granular understanding of the local conflicts that are driving the war and threaten to tear the ANSF and the country apart.