Beetle:

I think this is where we really stalemate on these "threat assessments"---by focusing on things like the stability of a central government as measured by protests, attacks and opposition movements.

Somewhere down the road, Afghans will confront the problems of how they are to govern themselves---within a very conflicts and highly-differentiated political/economic/societal landscape bounded by certain physical geography.

The answers will, in all reality, move to the likes of regional special government considerations and reconstituted maps, boundaries, authorities and allegiances (ala Iraq's Article 140/123 issues). It is complicated stuff, does not result from outsider decisions (and there are many winners and losers) where, through underlying conflict, there are many unresolved grievances.

Economics plays a big role, too, but usually is represented by allocational challenges of the very kind in debate in the US (rich, middle class, poor; who gets it?).

For me, the Arab Spring, in its early stage, is still a debate about who sits in the seat of power, and has not yet reached the meaningful issues: How do we govern ourselves differently to achieve a different result?

Monitoring military threats, and driving responses to metrics related to military threats does not solve the underlying problem, answer relevant societal questions, etc... In fact, maybe the opposite---creating them.