A third way in Afghanistan - bottom up, Karzai sidelined

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/04/a-third-way-in-afghanistan/

excerpts:

“It may be time to explore a third option between abandoning Afghanistan and enduring Karzai’s ungrateful and demonstrably corrupt regime.

…There is a harsh reality here. We Americans have done better at supporting insurgencies in Afghanistan than we have in building a competent government in Kabul. We helped eject the Soviets, but we created Karzai. Maybe it is time to support a legitimate civil opposition complete with its own combat power so that it cannot be intimidated by the militias of Karzai’s warlord allies, or the Taliban.

Faced by a loose coalition of relatively competent local government officials and their own self sufficient security forces Karzai would have two choices. First, he could try to crack down on them. Without our support, he would fail. In the end, he would become what, in reality, he is today; that being the mayor of metropolitan Kabul. A second option would be to undertake real reform in order to survive and that is what we have been asking from him all along. "

- Col. Gary Anderson

by teru kuwayama at 2010-04-17 17:57:11 UTC | Bookmark | | Report spam→