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 supposed to be trying to stamp it out.
George Gavrilis: Soon after gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Tajikistan collapsed into a devastating civil war. Today, Tajikistan is still corrupt and authoritarian, but it is also tolerably stable. Rather than forcing free and fair elections, throwing out warlords, and flooding the country with foreign peacekeepers, the intervening parties opted for a more limited and realistic set of goals. Privately, many US and UN officials in Kabul concede that the best-case scenario for Afghanistan is that in two or three decades it will arrive at the place where Tajikistan and its other Central Asian neighbors are today. Applying the Tajik model to Afghanistan will not give the United States and its partners the outcome that they want. But if they try it, they just might find they get what they need.
Richard Holbrooke: We're not in Afghanistan to build a perfect democracy. We're not seeking to destroy every person who supports the Taliban, that's not a credible goal. Our goal is to destroy al-Qaida.
Barbara Elias: Since the Taliban won't give al Qaeda up, the United States has little choice but to destroy al Qaeda, and since the Taliban cannot be meaningfully split or co-opted, Washington, unfortunately, has no real option but to prepare itself for a long struggle in the region.
Elizabeth Rubin, from the Korengal Valley: It didn't take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants.
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