How Insurgencies End

[Dayuhan]

A portion of my country is now "rebel held" or in other words, the "offical governance" from the capital has been at least supplemented, and perhaps totally supplanted by a new "legitimate" government (recognized by the populace, who bestow legitimacy, but outside the law, so therefore unofficial)

Just because an area is "rebel held" doesn't mean the populace recognizes or approves of rebel control. They might just be more afraid of the rebels than of the government. More likely than not the populace is divided, with some supporting the Government but afraid to say so, others supporting the rebels, and others (likely a majority) just trying to keep their heads down and avoid getting messed up.

In Afghanistan most of the populace would prefer not to be under Taliban rule. That is a fact. It is also a fact that the majority of that same populace believes that they receive greater JUSTICE from the shadow Taliban legal system than they do from the Offical GIROA legal system. To disempower the Taliban GIROA must address the perceptions of poor governance; and that has very little to do with the multi-Billion dollar programs of services that the west is providing. You cannot buy your way out of an insurgency. Sometimes you must fight, but alway you must address the four causal perceptions I lay out above.

I have to wonder who's the "you" in that picture. Also, as in so much of the discourse I read on Afghansitan, if I didn't know better I would walk away with the impression that the GIROA was a pre-existing entity and that we intervened to help it manage an insurgency. That's not the case, something we forget at our peril. I doubt very much that the failings of the GIROA are the core issue in this fight: the core issue is us, our presence, our attempt to impose conditions on Afghhan governance, and the reality that the GIROA is, for better or worse, our creation.

It was recently said somewhere on SWJ (I think on this thread, not sure) that the days when we can simply install a dictator and be done with it are done. I agree, those days are gone and well gone. I suspect that we're in the process of discovering that we can't "install" a democracy either, and that our problems with installing dictators didn't happen only because we were installing dictators, but because it's not always possible for one state to install a government of any sort for another.