MSG Proctor,

By coincidence, timely maybe, the daily book reading on BBC Radio Four is from the new book on the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842), which ended with an appalling disaster in the retreat from Kabul. My book is the old classic 'Kabul Catastrophe: The Retreat of 1842, by Patrick Macrory (paperback 1986).

Concern exists here, within government, over as you wrote:
We are running out of geopolitical capital to squander on hasty exits.
The history of Afghanistan and external involvement has plenty of lessons on display, I do wonder if those immersed in Afghanistan today have learnt much from them - even the latest Soviet exit.

Understandably there is political and military weight behind an orderly, phased exit; far better than a hasty exit, but there are other possibilities. The Second Afghan War (1878-1880) gave the British more bloody lessons (incidentally a historian of that war is giving a talk @ Oxford University next month, on how the British conducted their exit).

A US SOFA sounds horribly like "saving face" alongside maintaining a capability for coercive action - for national US reasons - within Afghanistan, maybe next door too.

You being in Kandahar is appropriate, stay safe.