Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
Maybe we should be asking "What does the Taliban offer to these remote towns and villages that the government does not? What is their appeal to the people?"

I doubt it is the Taliban’s liberal mindset or their equal rights for women. I also believe that, if the remote villages were so inclined, they could remove the Taliban themselves or at least would accept and support our efforts to rid the Taliban from A'Stan.

I don't think traditional COIN doctrine will work here because it assumes the people are the center of gravity. I saw the people in the remote regions I travelled to as pragmatic. They did not care about governments. They cared about living from day to day. And a new building or a well does not impress them. A road might. But in the end, life will be the same miserable existence it was yesterday no matter who is in charge.

I am going to way oversimplify, but... life in remote A'Stan is harsh. The Taliban are harsh. Kind of reminds me of the Amish and the strict rules they live by (with the difference being that the Amish do it by choice). The Taliban mindset is more closely aligned with the mindset of the people - thier answers make sense.
Another way to vote...

From the WSJ by YAROSLAV TROFIMOV Warlord's Switch to Taliban Shows Rising Afghan Threat

HERAT, Afghanistan -- Ghulam Yahya, a former mayor of this ancient city along the Silk Road, battled the Taliban for years and worked hand in hand with Western officials to rebuild the country's industrial hub.

Now, Mr. Yahya is firing rockets at the Herat airport and nearby coalition military headquarters. He has kidnapped soldiers and foreign contractors, claimed the downing of an Afghan army helicopter and planted bombs in central Herat -- including one that killed a district police chief and more than a dozen bystanders last month.

Mr. Yahya's stranglehold over the outskirts of Herat has destabilized a former oasis of calm and relative prosperity. "The security situation here is critical," said Herat's current mayor, Mohammed Salim Taraki.
Unlike Mr. Khan, the water and power minister, Mr. Yahya failed to secure another government job. He retreated to his ancestral stronghold in the Gozara district, a densely populated expanse of mudbrick villages that straddles the road between Herat's airport and the city itself. There, he quietly built up a militia that now numbers hundreds of men. "He was forced to go and take up arms," said Mr. Khan, who said he still maintains contacts with his former protégé.

According to area residents, Mr. Yahya hasn't enforced in Gozara the kind of harsh Islamic restrictions that are implemented by the Pashtun Taliban elsewhere in the country: Girls' schools remain open and youths in the villages are allowed to listen to music and watch television and pirated DVDs. But, like the Taliban -- whose ascent in the 1990s was welcomed by many Afghans tired of lawlessness -- Mr. Yahya has been ruthless in cracking down on crime.

"People love him. He has punished all the thieves: now, not a single thief is left in our area," said shepherd Saif ud-Din as he tends his flock of sheep near the airport road in Gozara. "The only people who fear Ghulam Yahya are the criminals," adds local flower grower Noor Ahmad.

It is hard to find anyone in Gozara -- and even in Herat -- willing to openly criticize Mr. Yahya. The insurgent levies taxes on peasants, and forbids them from paying land rent to the government or absentee landlords. Local youths are conscripted into his force. Some people who disparage Mr. Yahya in public have turned up dead. "Everyone is afraid of him. No one can speak out," said Mr. Taraki, the city's mayor.