Few know more about Afghanistan than Marin Strmecki. He has been involved with bloody events there for the last 20 years. He was a policy coordinator and special adviser on Afghanistan with the defense secretary and is a member of the Defense Policy Board, the defense secretary's think tank. Critically important, his recent congressional testimony was overlooked by mainstream media.
Director of Programs at the Smith Richardson Foundation, a private foundation that supports public policy research and analysis, Mr. Strmecki sees Afghanistan as both opportunity and challenge at a time when experts begin seeking ways to exit from what a growing number see as a Vietnamlike quagmire.
For Mr. Strmecki, the vast majority of 30 million Afghans oppose Taliban as they experienced their pseudo-religious excesses for four years in the late 1990s. Afghans have also known nothing but war for the last 30 years. But local communities cannot defend themselves from Taliban intimidation and attacks.
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