This doesn’t address the central issue of the Kabul government’s weakness, but it’s probably better than the Big Expeditionary Force strategy we’re pursuing now. As long as everyone understands that this isn’t a cessation of the war, but just turning down the heat.

I have to wonder just how much appetite there is going five years from now to fund a U.S. presence (let’s say 2,000 trainers, plus another 5,000 logistics and security). If we don’t have leverage to negotiate a deal with the Taliban now, I can’t see why we’ll have more later.

As always, the devil is in the details. It is easy to say “we want another option”, which in this case one which would not involve large numbers of troops. The tough part is figuring out what the consequences of those other options are and are they better or worse than what what is happening now or what would happen if more troops poured into Afghanistan. I outlined one possible outcome, another would be for Afghanistan to turn into another Somalia, a region with no government at all.

Now maybe those outcomes, bad as they are, are still better than sending more troops or maybe the current program of strategic stalemate is better. What is still missing is a strategic political objective, what is it we want to achieve in Afghanistan. If we had such a goal, we could then do the math, do we have the resources, both political and military, both indigenous to Afghanistan and imported from abroad, to achieve that objective. Without that goal, what is the point of 100,000 or 200,000 more troops to be used as target practice for local fighters?

It seems we are currently using counter insurgency tactics that rely on a hearts and minds type of strategy to win the support of locals. In Vietnam this failed because we could not discern the loyalties of the local population, the same problem exists in Afghanistan. To counter this the military is using the oil spot tactic of taking an area and holding it. So far it seems to work but the insurgents just melt away or are in plain sight waiting for the military to move on. So to keep this up we need the Afghan army to hold or we stay in place. It seems the US has little faith in the local army and thus need more troops.

The fault in this idea is that one grabs more and more territory they then become an occupying army and history tells us that the Afghans find that situation offensive, normal but offensive non the less.

This is of course a military strategy not a political solution. So here we are at cross purposes. Unless the military success becomes so offensive it forces a political solution. If not it all becomes a very expensive and deadly exercise for both sides.

In my humble opinion the Taliban represent a culture, though a foreign one and as a homegrown culture there is little chance an outside force can change things. If we were not so emotionally involved with the tall guy with a beard we would have left this mess years ago.

Your point about the FMLN does strike a few notes of similarities with the Taliban. Essentially, what we’re fighting for now is a political solution–this solution is going to have to include an eventual reconciliation that includes or absorbs a large chunk of Taliban-types into the government.

A major part of the solution in El Salvador was reconciliation between the guerrillas (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)) and the government. In fact, the FMLN just got elected to power in El Salvador.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7947378.stm

A major part of the problem is Afghanistan is that there is no “the rebels”, there is no unified political opposition. Rather the a whole range of political forces, most of whom are tied not any ideology or political platform (as the FMLN was) but to local tribal chieftains who are simply interested in protecting their feudal prerogatives and to maintain the heroin trade (the two are obviously connected). These feudal forces will allow the Taliban and al-Qaeda just as much tactical freedom as does not interfere with business.

What holds these disparate forces together is their mutual distaste for a strong central government in Kabul. Such a government would necessarily curtail the local feudal militias and the Taliban & Co and put a serious crimp in the heroin trade. The Pustun drug lords would probably snuff out the Taliban and al-Qaeda the moment they felt safe from Kabul. However what would we really want to make them safe from Kabul? Would dividing Afghanistan up into its feudal opium growing components (along with separate Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, and other non-Pustun regions having their own enclaves) with a tiny “L’Île-de-Afghanistan” around Kabul to maintain international pretenses. That is the closest thing I can think of the “El Salvador” solution.