Well, as I told MG Carter this morning, we are really dealing with two insurgencies. The rank and file fighter is primarily fighting a resistance movement. They fight because we are here and because they can draw an honest wage for an honorable Pashtun profession to do so. I would like to think that I would be an insurgent if I were Afghan.
This is the bulk of the insurgency, but it is not the aspect of the insurgency that the COIN effort must focus on to resolve. The COIN effort must go after the top of the insurgency, the senior leadership that are much more the Revolutionary insurgents; who believe they have a superior legitimacy than Karzai does. Once this is resolved, and no amount of population centric tactics nor killing of insurgent fighters will resolve it; you can then take a much more palatable position in support to the emergent, legitimate government, and reduce presence in a manner that takes the steam out of the larger, rank and file, resistance insurgency. Not "go after" as in KILL (though some may well just have to eat that bullet); but go after as in targeting the causal factors of illegitimacy and lack of mechanisms recognized and trusted by the populace for shaping government.
Just like the key to the problems in Southern Philippines lay in manila; the problems in Southern Afghanistan lay in Kabul. All of the outside parties in both who like or hate the conditions in those respective captitals (the FID and UW actors) conspire to shift focus to the manifestations of violence among the affected populaces. Smoke and Mirrors.
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