The United States' decision to arm anti-communist factions in Afghanistan during the 1980s inadvertently facilitated the emergence of transnational jihadism, which over the decades has spread across the Middle East. Nearly two generations later, Washington and its European allies are considering doing the same thing in Libya to fight the Islamic State. It is not clear that Western powers will follow through with the plan. Libya's problems have less to do with waging war than with the inability to make peace. Whether it is Libya (in its fifth year of conflict) or Afghanistan (in its 37th) they share the same conundrum: the absence of a social contract.
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