Quote Originally Posted by MikeF View Post
I don't know. My takeaway is that this particular host nation was unable to protect itself once the intervening/occupying force left.
Mike,

This happens all the time (not every time) when a foreign power intervenes to elevate one side artificially to the top, and then dedicates itself to the preservation of that solution against internal challenges for some time, and then ultimately tires of those duties and leaves that illegitimate regime to its own fate.

Not unlike planting some species of plant in your yard from a totally different ecosystem. Through hard efforts you can create an artifical environment and keep it alive against the attacks which will naturally arise from the environment you placed it in, but left to its own devices it cannot endure.

Most of the Northern Alliance that we work with are of the same group the Soviets worked with. I see no reason whey they would be any more sustainable on their own now than they were then.

The fact that we have been as dedicated to keeping one segment of the populace down and out as we have been to elevating another segment up and in is what doomed our efforts. With a better understanding of Pashtunwali we could have worked a deal with Mullah Omar to get access to AQ without all of this. With a better understanding of Pashtunwali and the nature of the historic agreement between the Pak government and their largely self-governing Pashtun populace we could have conducted some number of precise raids into the Pashtun region of that country to exact revenge on AQ members hiding there with little push back from the Pashtun hosts and little disruption to the nation of Pakistan. Instead we tried to do it all on our terms by our rules IAW our doctrine. No amount of good tactics and hard effort is likely to overcome that contextual reality.