Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
JMA:

Exactly. Absent an effective federal system, they are at risk. A federal system is not in the offing, and sucking up to the wayward brothers is hazardous.

So, what do you really do?

Prepare for the storm to come, with a substantial possibility for a fault line between the Pashtun control areas and the rest. I'm not sure that civil war is the right term so much as internal partitioning grounded in security imperatives.

Steve
Well we (the West) should know by now how these longstanding ethnic/religious rivalries bubble to the surface periodically.

I would have thought that the West would have learned by now what with Bosnia, Rwanda, Nigeria and Kenya being recent obvious examples. But then again they seem to use "smart" guys who apply "logic" and "intelligence" to these situations yet have less common sense than any given individual you would find in any Afghan village.

So in Afghanistan it will be one more time then. Desperate situation.