Spencer Ackerman:

Rory Stewart compares the Obama administration's twinning of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy to a policy of dealing with "an angry cat and a tiger," after Council on Foreign Relations' Steve Biddle reiterated his argument that the U.S.'s interests in Afghanistan are primarily about Pakistan.

"We're beating the cat," Stewart said, "and when you say, 'Why are you beating the cat?' you say, 'It's a cat-tiger strategy.' But you're beating the cat because you don't know what to do about the tiger."

Tom Streithorst:

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its needs are straightforward. Building roads, digging wells, and providing irrigation would make peoples' lives much better at minimal cost. Hiring Afghans to do the labour would put money in their pockets, stimulate their economy, and improve their infrastructure. And yet, despite huge western expenditures, the average rural Afghan is probably no better off today than he or she was five years ago.

Our NGO and government officials are responsible not to the people of Afghanistan, but to their masters in Washington or Brussels or London. So they pepper their policy papers with cliches that will play well at home and remember not to mention that they really don't know what is going on. What they provide our governments is the illusion of understanding and so the illusion of control.

Alex de Waal:

Both Karzai and his opponents know that the surge of 40,000 extra troops proposed by US General McChrystal is unsustainable, and that any agreements dependent on battlefield advances will be short-lived at best. Underneath the old model remains: a political souk where buyers and sellers haggle over the going rate for renting allegiances.

Today, it would be more cost-effective to ditch the extra troops and revert to funding patronage.

The Big Picture:

As casualties mount on both sides, 2009 is shaping up to be the deadliest year yet for coalition troops -- twice as deadly as 2008.

Richard Beeston:

The occasional middleman might be picked off, but the drug barons sleep safely at night in their "poppy palaces", the garish villas that have sprouted up in Kabul. Ask any Afghan politician or journalist and they will readily reel off the names of ministers, generals and businessmen involved in the trade. Many are the same people supp... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]