In failed states where any capacity for governance has to be grown (ie Afghanistan and Somalia where there is no functioning police, civil service or education system as we would recognise it, nor the educated middle classes to establish one) and intervention is measured in years, probably decades it occurs to me that the District Officer model could well be a successful model to follow.
Pakistan continued the political officer model in the FATA. As a model of low-cost governance that allowed Pakistan (and the British) to maintain the illusion of control over the Frontier, it worked whenever the tribal system was not in flux. However, it utterly failed to integrate the FATA into Pakistan or convince any of the inhabitants of the FATA that they had any stake in Pakistan at all. When confronted by masses of refugees from across the border, the growth of a violent mass movement, and the collapse of the tribal system, the District Officer model failed utterly. The result is today's FATA, which is under the dominance of al-Qaeda, the TTP, and associated Taliban, criminal, and jihadi networks.

Rather than a discredited colonial system that will simply require repeated combat deployments as it fails over and over again, a more extensive state building model may be appropriate.