I also agree with IntelTrooper and Entropy. A while back I posted a comment on another forum expressing my concern that we might not be able to accomplish our mission of establishing a strong self-sustaining central government in Afghanistan because the people don’t have the sense of national identity that we westerners have. That kind of national identity has to be developed organically over a very long period of time and cannot be forced upon nor gifted to. In fact I think a western style national identity is the exception and not the norm in former colonial territories where the borders were drawn across tribal lines haphazardly by departing European powers.

My vote is for a bunch of semi-autonomous states which are loosely linked by a central government that can coordinate matters of “collective security.” Undoubtedly as Uboat suggested somebody will try to seize power but that’s when these semi-autonomous states come together.

Just my 2 cents.