Afghanistan's unhappy end game.
Michael Hart makes an obvious, if politically uncomfortable, point:
However effective Western military organizations are in transitioning to Afghan control, the countryâ??s future will not be decided primarily by the residual structures and legacies of Western involvement, the current Taliban insurgency or even any formal process of reconciliation. Rather, it will be decided more by the countryâ??s ethnic character, the particular nature of local and national governance, and the influence of neighboring powers with enduring geopolitical and strategic imperatives in the region far stronger than those of the West.In other words, the future of Afghanistan will be determined by forces that antedate the latest Western effort to direct a turbulent areaâ??and which probably will long survive this and future efforts to dominate the country.
The key questions that emerge from this conclusion are whether the U.S. can preserve the ability to deny al-Qaeda safe havens should the Taliban re-establish control over larger portions of Afghanistan and whether a non-Pashtun stronghold can hold out against a stronger Taliban insurgency. Hart makes the case the answer can be a provisional "yes" to both, but the reality is that Afghanistan is going to remain a violent and dangerous state for years to come.
