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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (126142)	12/3/2009 12:06:37 AM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543209

J: But, simultaneously, because of the tribal structure, Afghanistan is also a much harder place to maintain an occupation. V: Yes, easy to occupy. Very hard to control. To my knowledge really hasn't ever been done to any meaningful degree. We agree. J: The US trick is to side with the tribal structure against the more modern military structure of the Taliban. Role reversal." V: This, to my way of thinking, covers a bunch of complications. Maybe siding with the tribal structure, i.e. Chieftains, is what we should be doing, but that is not what the plan is I think. I think the plan is to work with a nationalized police force governed by central command out of Kabul. If so, this puts us in conflict with the Chieftains who, IMHO, will cut deals with whomever will give obeisance to their Chieftain status. Early on the Taliban made alliances here in order to help the Chieftains continue the opium trade in the teeth of a US eradication program. I may be wrong about this--and even hope I am because working with the Chiefs, I think, is, as you identified, probably the only way to go. From my reading of news reports I think the US hopes to wean villages out from under Taliban control, and maybe even Chieftain control, with rings of security around the villages so that within that ring they are "free" to engage in commerce without fear of retribution. But will national policeman train up and die for villagers? Within our political time frame? We hope they will, but I skeptically see the "Abdoul" stereotype prevailing. I hope I'm wrong about that also. To me, Obama is trying to politically fineness the complexities of the task with what he thinks will work with all interested parties both here and abroad--which is consistent with his political history. But for the soldiers on the ground I don't think this strategy will be a winner. The Taliban and "modern" military structure. I'm not exactly sure what you mean here by "modern", but to me they are not modern in any Westernized sense of the word. Its more, I think, a loose amalgamation of parties with similar interests on both sides of the border with different leaders on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border controlling different factions.