The overthrow of the Taliban was a masterpiece of special ops. Despite the inevitable “quagmire” defeatism from the NY Times and others, the light footprint of American forces in Afghanistan successfully avoided the pitfalls that befell the British and the Soviets. With the notable exception of Tora Bora, this flexible strategy allowed an incredibly fast denial of Afghanistan as a safe base of operations to Al Qaeda, under extremely challenging logistic conditions. (Think of how long it took to prepare both times we fought Saddam Hussein.)

Once the Taliban was evicted, we initiated a strategy of national development with the primary goal of avoiding becoming occupiers. As the government of Afghanistan was reconstituted under Hamid Karzai the only Afghans with the knowledge and expertise to staff the various ministries were veterans of Najibullah’s Soviet puppet government. (To this very day when we work with Afghan specialists, business is conducted in Russian. The civil war was a black hole that left a lost generation. Only now are we beginning to see newly educated specialists joining those trained in Soviet Union during the 70′s.)The perceived task was to assist the Afghans in creating a benign central government, with a “peace dividend” after our intervention in the civil war and large doses of aid to jump start the economy.

With the poppy wars this happy scenario was stillborn.

Now, we are increasingly reverting to the British and Soviet precedents of attempting to pacify the country through occupation. Even worse, we are conducting “death from the skies” air strikes that are increasingly viewed by the Afghans as arbitrary and reminiscent of the Soviet way.
It has become common for mid-level Afghan officials to seek emigration as their most rational career move. (State no longer allows Afghan technical experts to come to the US for training because so many of them have fled to political asylum in Canada.)The legitimacy of the Afghan government is piggybacked on the legitimacy of the “Mayor of Kabul,” Hamid Karzai. The bureaucracy, with its ties to the Soviet occupation and lack of mujahedeen credentials, With a vacuum at the top, and possibly growing in the middle, this critical summer may very well spell the end of the effort to erect a civilian government in Afghanistan.

With the closure of Manas, and, threats against the Khyber pass and staging areas in Pakistan, occupation is becoming even less tenable.

The mission has changed and our ability to fulfill it without expanding the war is questionable.

I dearly with that I could suggest any answers, but I can’t. We are living in dangerous times and I doubt that the current US administration is capable of solving these problems.