Understanding Afghanistan enough to leave

[Banquo's Ghost]

Listen to the mountains? Maybe the mountains of dead Taliban. We are beating them to a bloody pulp, clearing out Helmand province for the elections later this year while training the Afghan army so they can do the job themselves in a few years time. And yet we should leave before the job is done because everything down there is not entirely Kosher?

Indeed. It's practically a paradise.

Exactly what's on my mind. I honestly don't know why people are freaking out over a war with such a low casualty rate.

Perhaps because it's not a video game and the bodies are not those of computer sprites? I've lost comrades in war, but wars with a purpose. I fume (freaking out is not something one tends to) at the loss of any soldier for no point.

I'm ready to be convinced by a clear mission statement, a battle plan and measurable milestones for this nation-building operation. So far, in the face of contrary evidence, all I've seen is ad hominems and vague platitudes that all will be well.

Pannonian is doing his usual good job of focussing us on the realpolitik. There is a problem, in that Afghanistan is not a nation in any sense that we understand it, and the Taleban is also somewhat borderless. The Taleban utilise the one unifying factor in that region, militant Islam. This is not a weapon available to NATO. Pakistan is indeed the key to that strand.

Warlordism and tribalism characterises much of the region and the "power" structure of the Taleban - and has done for hundreds of years. It is not a single enemy. This is the point the article was trying to make. Developing a centralised government structure based from Kabul is doomed to failure without imperial levels of troops - and probably not even then (the Russians tried this and came unstuck).

Dispute this assertion by all means. But please persuade me with timetables, troop numbers and specific measurable outcomes. Seven years is a long time of dying - how many more and to what end?