Mr Coll, author of Ghost Wars and therefore a point of view that should be respected, weighs in on the situation in Afghanistan. His two main points, if I remember correctly, seem to be that those calling for taking the Afghan war offshore or of just focusing on Al queda do not understand the synergistic relationship that holds between the Taliban and AQ and, closely related to that, do not understand how difficult it will be to get actionable intelligence without a significant presence on the ground. His second point was that Afghanistan will remain hostile to our interests until some semblance of a somewhat unifying and relatively competent government emerges - his point being that, contrary to what many are suggesting, this is only difficult, not impossible, that Afghanistan has had a functioning government, army and constabulary before and can again - it may not prove to be law and order according to Western standards but it will be good enough for Afghanistan.
He doesn't talk military details, force size and disposition etc, I suppose he feels, and no doubt rightly so, that the expertise of military professionals has to be trusted here - but he does seem to endorse the idea of COIN and the potential of nation building but states clearly that a commitment must be long term - and he states that forming a national army is only possible if there's a sense of a national government. My impression is he believes there's no workable option that includes accommodating the Taliban and trying to 'limit' it - my sense he feels it needs to be destroyed and that Pakistan will help once they see it on the run in Afghanistan - although he suggests Pakistan can be a productive partner he also clearly states that it hasn't been in the past and there are no guarantees of how it will behave in the future - he seems to say that there is a significant divide within the Pakistani military about what end state viz Afghanistan and the Taliban will best suit Pakistan's interests - he would say that India continues to loom large in a not particularly logical way for many in the Pakistani military - that is certainly a view point I've read elsewhere.
To wrap it in as discrete a package as possible I'd say this: if one applies an extremely loose conception of what a government is or need be then no doubt you can wrest such a thing out of the inchoate mess that is Afghanistan - but because of the lack of money or any monied future and how that restricts potential I think you're never going to be able to get too far away from a warlord driven, clan driven, tribal/theological diffused dispensation that coheres tenuously but neither significantly prospers nor declines - and therefore you're never going to get too far away from corruption - like Mexico, but much worse and without the nice beaches. Coll suggests Afghanistan was a problematic but manageable country before the Russians invaded - possibly - but I might say the Russians invaded because the defining premise is not quite accurate.
To get conciser and more narrow still and thereby broader and more general [art thou there, Truepenny?] I say this: there are wars with short term objectives and ones with long term objectives; long term wars need to be big, you cannot compromise on that; the problem with both Afghanistan and Iraq is that they were long term wars fought as is they were short term ones; it's hard now to go back and correct those mistakes - but you may not have a choice and Afghanistan will prove harder than Iraq; a military mistake left uncorrected or unaddressed will come back to haunt you.
