Gloomy US intelligence assessment coming or Let's hear from the spies

[jcustis]

From the couple of Afghans I know and the reading I’ve done my guess would be that the Taliban and GIRoA are conceived of by the majority of Afghans as rival Pashtun factions contending for control of centralized government power. One of the factions relies heavily on the aid of a distant foreign power whose date of departure is already set. The other faction just seems like the better bet to come out on top eventually. Does that sound reasonable to those who have been there?

I think that is a totally reasonable conclusion. I also think it's important to recall the rise of the Taliban and the fractured state of Afghanistan at that time. We demonized the Taliban for going into league with Al Qaeda, and seemed to be in a bit of disbelief that AQ could be harbored within the country, but the past bears a lot of reflection.

Through either ideological satisfaction, or pay, or both, the Taliban's ranks swelled for a reason, and a lot of that had to do with the governance situation at that time. The footsoldier of today probably fights for a different range of reasons, but we continue to kill them and they continue to join and fight.

Afghanistan has been too brutalized, too fractured, and is too split along tribal lines to be able to embrace a central government unless a terribly broad range of issues (poppy, ISI, the Af-Pak border area, etc.) can be resolved to a level of compromise for the largest affected groups. I think the greatest issue we have is that we don't know how to establish that compromise, and worse, we cannot get the Karzai government to build those bridges and resolve the causes of instability.

The bureaucrats and localized ANSF leadership know what's up, and a look at their behavior in some of the far flung districts, like Rig and Garmsir, is telling.