I am curious to hear other opinions about the analysis of the Af/Pak insurgency published by Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason in the Nov/Dec edition of Military Review:

The point they made that leaped out at me was this:

Insurrections are hardly new phenomena in Afghanistan.10 Previous Afghan leaders have had varying degrees of success in subduing rural religious insurrection. The degree of that success depended on how much of the population viewed the regime as legitimate and how much it stayed out of the daily lives of the people. And Afghan history demonstrates conclusively that legitimacy of governance comes exclusively from two immutable sources: dynastic (monarchies and tribal patriarchies) and religious, or sometimes both.11 These equate to the traditional and religious sources cited by noted sociologist Max Weber.12

Unfortunately, the Karzai government owes its only claim to legitimacy to Weber’s third source, the legal one (e.g., western-style elections and the rule of law). This has no historical precedent as a basis for legitimizing Afghan rule at all, however, and the notion that the West can apply it to Afghan society like a coat of paint is simply wishful thinking. In essence, the Karzai government is illegitimate because it is elected.13

...This problem of illegitimacy is especially acute at the village level of rural Pashtun society, where dynastic and religious authority has been unquestioned for over a thousand years.14 The widespread perception among Afghans that the Karzai government is illegitimate—because it lacks any traditional or religious legitimacy—predates Karzai’s August disgrace by five years.
This explains a lot, in my opinion, and does not bode well. What I would like to know is how accurate his analysis is. Anthropology and sociology are not my specialties. Johnson is Director of the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School and did not pull this assessment out of thin air. There is a page on NPS linking to a long line of his publications that show the evolution of his analysis of the Pashtun insurgency, which is the most sophisticated that I have yet seen. I specifically recommend "No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan - Afghanistan Frontier" and "The Taliban Insurgency and an Analysis of Shabnamah (Night Letters)."

Cheers,

Yadernye