Outsiders cannot win a counter-insurgency war if local leaders are not committed to winning.
If the local leaders are ambivalent, or play both sides, or are distrusted by their populations, outsiders are in for long-term trouble. Welcome, therefore, to Afghanistan.
President Hamid Karzai was once a hero in the United States. He sat in the front row of the U.S. House of Representatives during a State of the Union address by former president George W. Bush. American fashionistas swooned over his cape and cap. He was a Pashtun, as the U.S. needed to represent that set of tribes in the new government of Kabul.
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