On target Pappy, as you very often are.

A mostly free, mostly stable Afghanistan will happen when one power (internal or external) imposes its will at the point of a gun and then willingly pays the blood price to put down insurrection after insurrection for 40-50 years until cultural changes favoring a truly stable democratic republic take hold. On the bright side, the casualties should decrease after about 25 years as the newer generations start to supplant the old.

Know any democratically-inclined power willing to pay that price?


Our last best hope was an internal power taking up that role. Unfortunately, the one person who might -- I stress might -- have had the barakah to actually pull it off without the NATO mission was the fellow who was heading up the Northern Alliance in early 2002. Unfortunately, the AQ/Taliban folks used the Stalin rule about problem solving.

No internal power that favors real democracy appears to be present and none of the Western powers are willing to bleed for two+ generations to accomplish it.