Winning the War in Afghanistan

[jmm99]

The example I gave:

What if your indigenous valley folks hate the Karzai governmental like poison; dislike the "Taliban" (different herds of them), but don't hate them as much; don't like AQ at all (a bunch of intervening Arabs who are nuts); are only interested in the almost complete automony of their little series of inter-connected river valleys; and don't really care about whether AQ or "Taliban" exist in other parts of the country - so long as they do not bother the valley folks.

is much the same as what the CIA and SF found in the Central Highlands.

Their highlands tribes were non-Vietnamese, were treated badly by both the Saigon and Hanoi folks, and harrassed by the VC. The VC were the bigger enemy to those tribes. The project fell apart once the Saigon folks were brought back into the picture and the national government was re-imposed.

The bottom line is that, if the masses (in a region) really dislike the national government and if the foreign assistence forces are constrained to enhance the national government in that region, Mao-type (Saul Alinsky community organizing ) simply won't work.

That is especially so where the anti-government forces, also in that region, have a strong security presence and are more than willing to apply authoritarian methods.

The alternative is then to apply a "population-centric" approach, which has its harder and softer takes in many flavors. They also use much of Mao's 7 steps, but apply them in different orders.

---------------------------
Long Wiki article on 2009 Astan Election. Peter Galbraith (brother of Slap's economics guru) was fired by the UN - I'll go with Galbraith's take on the election.

IEC Election Results (with a nice interactive map). Karzai lost in most "Northern Alliance" provinces; he won in Pashtun provinces (the questioned votes). Very regional and ethnic from all appearances; but a province by province study would have to be made.