The only thing worse than the current Northern Alliance government or the previous Taliban government to the future stability of Afghanistan would be to force upon them some highly Westernized concept of governance and expect it to work.
The Taliban government was in synch with a portion of the populace, so had stability with them, but was out of synch with an equally large portion of the populace is so significant of a way that that portion felt compelled to fight for change. It was a stalemate.
The Northern alliance government of today is equally in synch with one portion of the populace (though one sees fractures within the Northern Alliance as well...) so has stability with them, but is so out of synch with the still equally large segment of the populace that supported the Taliban government so the fight continues.
(A side lesson the US should learn from this is that it was relatively easy to conduct UW to tip the balance of power and enable the challenging party to prevail with relatively low cost, small numbers, over short time; but that when that new solution is every bit as out of synch with the populace as what it replaced that virtually NO amount of money, troops, or time can force a true stability where the situation is inherently out of balance.
The only true path to stability is for a new government to form that merges and balances the equities of the entire populace. GIRoA has no interest in such compromise, and has no necessity to act so long as we subsidize and protect their failure to do so.
We have two choices.
1. Stay and force such compromise and drive a reconciliation process and the formation of a new constitution that creates the mechanisms of trust required for such a reconciliation to work. (This shifts the impossible task from the military back to the civil aspects of our intervention where it has always belonged);
or
2. We simply recognize that we really have few interests in the region, and even fewer risks of any real threat from the region, and pack up and leave an let a self-determined naturally selected process take its course. (Yes, of course Iran and Pakistan would employ agents to shape events, why would they do otherwise?)
But to simply stay and attempt to force the illogical, the inappropriate and the impossible is not our best course. We have fallen prey to a false perspective of the nature of the problem and the risks due to the flawed context in which we view the situation.
Either solution would have to be tempered to the will and culture of the collective populace, so would not look much like any form of modern Western democracy, and to attempt to make it such only creates new and equally dangerous conditions of instability. This must be a government designed for this complex populace, not one designed for ours. We have no corner on what "right" looks like, and in fact the secret of our success is that we designed a system that the populace could continually tweak or kick the government as necessary to where they wanted it to go. Where we are now is ok for us (though many Americans are ready to give the system another kick or two), but is highly unlikely to be right for anyone else.
We need to change our context for how we view the "problem" of Afghanistan first, and then the rest will follow.
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