War links
About the parallels between the anarchist surge and the jihadi surge:
From the 1920s on, the anarchist attacks began to dwindle, and by the late 1930s they were over. Why? What happened? Nobody is entirely sure - but most historians suggest a few factors. After the initial wave of state repression, civil liberties slowly advanced - undermining the anarchist claims. The indiscriminate attacks on ordinary civilians discredited anarchism in the eyes of the wider public: after a young man blew himself up in Greenwich Park in 1892, his coffin was stoned and attacked by working class people in the East End. The anarchists' own cruelty and excess slowly deprived them of recruits.
But, just as importantly, many of the anarchist grievances were addressed by steady reforms. Trade unions were finally legalised, and many of their demands were achieved one by one: an eight-hour working day, greater safety protections, compensation for the injured. Work was no longer so barbaric - so the violent rejection of it faded away. The changes were nowhere near as radical as those demanded by the anarchists, but it stripped them of followers step-by-step.
Could the same be done with Islamism? The lesson from the death of violent anarchism is that the solution lies beyond blanket violent repression of them or its polar opposite, capitulation to their demands. The answer is gradual reform that ends some - but not all - of the sources of their rage. Clearly, many of Islamists' "grievances" should be left unaddressed: we must never restrict the rights of women or gay people or end the freedom to discuss religion openly, as they demand. But there is plenty we can do.
About not experiencing the end of history:
Movements of Rage are violently desperate, magical, and utopian responses to failure - failure to create economic development, social justice, and political dignity in and for their country. They are a response to and expression of the desperate and often hysterical sense that no existing political program or ideological designation has worked, to a history of failed monarchy, military rule, fascist, communist, or attempted democratic rule. In the 20th century, most of these movements appeared in small, peripheral countries: the Iron Guard in Romania; Sendero Luminoso in Peru; the Taliban in Afghanistan; and the most nihilistic and murderous third world Movement of Rage, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But one, the most powerful of all, the Nazis, appeared in the center of Europe. The Nazi phenomenon suggests that the most powerful Movements of Rage, those that pose the greatest danger to Western civilization, are most likely to occur in marginally Western countries.
If state mercantilism in Russia and China should fail, then the absence of robust democratic movements in each country, the presence of xenophobic elements within society and, undoubtedly, the military would facilitate the emergence of a Movement of Rage and its transformation into a regime of rage. Add to this the level of technological development, education, and military power in Russia and China and the West would face a threat that, like the Nazis, combined a perverted heroic ethic and military technology that the Nazis could have only dreamed of.
How a dysfunctional State Department is encouraging the expanding role of the Pentagon in US foreign policy.
The Iranian regimes appears to be hanging protestors.
Looking the Syrian-Iranian axis from Lebanon:
Iran has a smart savvy propaganda machine that knows what to sell at the right time. In Washington, in think tanks, I heard people on panels -- Jews from the far right and left of Israel, as well as Americans -- advocating talking to Iran and Hezbollah.
MJT: You can't even talk to Hezbollah. I mean, Jimmy Carter of all people came here and Hezbollah snubbed him. If they're not going to talk to Carter, who are they going to talk to?
Eli Khoury: It's a dangerous game these people are playing, but I think it's only a matter of time until the newcomers burn their fingers with the same realities that we've seen over and over again. I mean, somebody my age, 48 years old...I've seen it all when it comes to Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.
I've seen every strategy: Kissinger's step-by-step approach, full engagement -- which means sleeping with the enemy, basically -- and the solid stand as with the Bush Administration. I've seen them all. The only one that works so far in my opinion has been, aside from some real stupid and dumb mistakes, is the severing of relationships.
The precarious state of Pakistan (an article published in May this year):
Pakistan is close to the brink, perhaps not to a meltdown of the government, but to a permanent state of anarchy, as the Islamist revolutionaries led by the Taliban and their many allies take more territory, and state power shrinks. There will be no mass revolutionary uprising like in Iran in 1979 or storming of the citadels of power as in Vietnam and Cambodia; rather we can expect a slow, insidious, long-burning fuse of fear, terror, and paralysis that the Taliban have lit and that the state is unable, and partly unwilling, to douse.
In northern Pakistan, where the Taliban and their allies are largely in control, the situation is critical. State institutions are paralyzed, and over one million people have fled their homes. The provincial government of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) has gone into hiding, and law and order have collapsed, with 180 kidnappings for ransom in the NWFP capital of Peshawar in the first months of this year alone. The overall economy is crashing, with drastic power cuts across the country as industry shuts down. Joblessness and lack of access to schools among the young are widespread, creating a new source of recruits to the Taliban.
… In return for the Pakistani army withdrawing, the Taliban agreed to disarm, then promptly refused to do so. The accord followed the defeat in Swat last year of 12,000 government troops at the hands of some three thousand Taliban after bloody fighting, the blowing up of over one hundred girls' schools, heavy civilian casualties, and the mass exodus of one third of Swat's 1.5 million people. The Taliban swiftly imposed their brutal interpretation of sharia, which allowed for executions, floggings, and destruction of people's homes and girls' schools, as well as preventing women from leaving their homes and wiping out the families that had earlier resisted them.
Despite dire warnings by experts and Pakistan's increasingly vocal commentators in the press and elsewhere that the accord was a major capitulation to the militants and a terrible precedent that contradicted the rule of law as stipulated by the constitution, Zardari and the national parliament approved the deal on April 14 without even a debate. Within days the Taliban in Swat moved further, taking control of the local administration, police, and schools. On April 19 Sufi Mohammed, a radical leader who the government had released from prison in November 2008 and termed "a moderate" and whose son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, is now the leader of the Swat Taliban, said that democracy, the legal system of the country, and civil society should be disbanded since they were all "systems of infidels." Having won Swat, the Taliban made clear their intentions to overthrow the national government. …
What has shocked the world is not just the spread of the Taliban forces southward, but the lack of the government's will and commitment to oppose them and the army's lack of a counterinsurgency strategy. This disarray makes them all the more vulnerable in view of the apparent cohesiveness of the Taliban's tactics and strategy. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban.
… Both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and their Punjabi extremist allies were seen as potentially useful counters against India-both in any future struggle for the contested region of Kashmir and also to tame the growing Indian influence in Kabul. George W. Bush seems, at least, to have gone along with this Pakistani strategy, urging action against al-Qaeda but never pushing Pakistan to deal with the Taliban threat. …
None of these groups could have survived if the military had carried out a serious counterterror strategy; but the Pakistani army never shut down any of them. Even though they were all openly opposing the Pakistani state, the army still considered them part of the front line against India and continued to stay in touch with them.
The army has always defined Pakistan's national security goals. Currently it has two strategic interests: first, it seeks to ensure that a balance of terror and power is maintained with respect to India, and the jihadis are seen as part of this strategy. Second, the army supports the Afghan Taliban as a hedge against US withdrawal from Afghanistan and also against Indian influence in Kabul, which has grown considerably. Containing the domestic jihadi threat has been a tactical rather than a strategic matter for the army, so there have been bouts of fighting with the militants and also peace deals with them; and these have been interspersed with policies of jailing them and freeing them-all part of a complex and duplicitous game.,,,
Despite US military aid, anti- Americanism has flourished in the army, public opinion, and the press and television, fueled by the idea that Pakistan was being made to fight America's war, while the Americans were unwilling to help Pakistan regain influence in Afghanistan. The US is accused both of helping India gain a strong foothold in Kabul and of declining to put pressure on New Delhi to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Bush's signing of the nuclear deal with India last year was the last straw for the Pakistani army. In military and public thinking, Pakistan was seen as sacrificing some two thousand soldiers in the war on terror on behalf of the Americans, while in return the Americans were recognizing the legitimacy of India's nuclear weapons program. Pakistan's nuclear weapons got no such acceptance. …
In the NWFP, the Awami National Party failed to stand up to the Taliban after they began an assassination campaign against ANP ministers and members of parliament, forcing the ANP leaders to disappear into bunkers while capitulating to the Taliban. The Swat deal was initiated by the ANP, which naively believed that the Taliban could be contained within Swat. The party is now divided, weakened and unpopular among the Pashtuns who voted for it in overwhelming numbers just a year ago. Its failure has wider consequences, for the ANP is the only Pashtun party that could counter the Taliban claim that the Pashtuns are pro-jihad and extremist. The ANP version of Pashtunwali-the tribal code of behavior-is nation-alistic but moderate and in favor of democracy. Right now the extremist Taliban ideology is winning out as Pashtun cultural leaders, aid workers, teachers, doctors, and lawyers are cowed by the Taliban adherents.
The insurgency in Pakistan is perhaps even more deadly than the one in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there is only one ethnic group strongly opposing the government-the Pashtuns who make up the Taliban-and so fighting is largely limited to the south and east of the country, while the other major ethnic groups in the west and the north are vehemently anti-Taliban. Moreover, more than a few Pashtuns and their tribal leaders support the Karzai government. In Pakistan, the Pashtun Taliban are now being aided and abetted by extremists from all the major ethnic groups in Pakistan. They may not be popular but they generate fear and terror from Karachi on the south coast to Peshawar on the Afghan border.
… Education and job creation have been the least-funded policies of Pakistan's governments, whether military or civilian, and literacy levels are abysmal; there are now some 20 million youth under age seventeen who are not in school. The justice system has virtually collapsed in many areas, which is why the Taliban demand for speedy justice has some popular appeal. Moreover, the Pakistani public has to deal with the differing versions of Pakistani policy put out by the army, the political parties, the Islamic fundamentalists, and the press and other components of civil society. There is confusion about what actually constitutes a threat to the state and what is needed for nation-building. …
The Obama administration can provide money and weapons but it cannot recreate the state's will to resist the Taliban and pursue more effective policies. Pakistan desperately needs international aid, but its leaders must first define a strategy that demonstrates to its own people and other nations that it is willing to stand up to the Taliban and show the country a way forward.
About the Taliban’s war on Peshawar and Pashtun culture:
The Taliban systematically destroyed Afghan and specifically Pashtun culture by banning music, the arts and any kind of artistic expression.
Their hand was visible when last month they bombed the tomb of the 17th-century Sufi Pashtun poet Rahman Baba just outside the city. His devotional and romantic poetry inspired and gave spiritual sustenance to many generations of Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe only in the austere and harsh Wahhabi Islam and they are committed to destroying anything that comes in its way, including the tomb of an ancient poet-saint that stood as a symbol of religious tolerance and brotherhood of mankind. I wept when I saw the desecrated tomb.
… One wishes things were different. For me there is the escape of flying home to America. That can't be said about millions of people who are being terrorized by these self-appointed, self-anointed, uneducated, and uncouth custodians of my faith.
A Pashtun woman studying in Oslo on what is happening:
The Taliban hang up dead bodies of local people in public places to deter those who might think of standing up to them. The Taliban have destroyed educational institutions, for both girls and boys, and health centers. They have banned music and dance, which are some of the most cherished Pashtun traditions. The Taliban Shariah courts harass people every day.
The al Qaeda terrorists are alien Arabs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Afghans and even Africans. The Taliban also consist of many criminal gangs from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Taliban have replaced the Pashtun culture with the Wahhabi way of life - the violent and intolerant interpretation of Islam sponsored by Arab sources in the Middle East.
Why Hezbollah is not a model for Afghanistan:
The fantasy that the Taliban might someday become more like Hezbollah and less like al-Qaeda is based on misunderstandings of all three. Hezbollah isn't half as moderate as some analysts think, and the Taliban is more bound up with al-Qaeda than many of these same people want to admit.
On Hezbollah as a very bad pattern for Afghanistan, including a sensible comment, as one would expect, from Carl Philip Salzman:
The American military has had recent success in allying with once-insurgent Sunni tribes in Anbar province of Iraq, and other tribes elsewhere in Iraq. They did this, in part, by dealing directly with the tribes, rather than through the framework of the Iraqi government. There is a good reason that such direct ties were successful: tribes are by their nature not units of states, but alternatives to states; tribes detest interference, and strongly prefer independence to state control.
As long as the intervention in Afghanistan places state-building as its highest priority, tribes will naturally lean toward resistance. So what is more important: building a state apparatus, or stabilizing the region and removing threats to external parties? In the short- and medium-run, treating with the tribes may be the most effective way to stabilize and neutralize the region.
A far as I can see, that is the only path that provides something that is not a choice between the corrupt and the fanatic.
From the 1920s on, the anarchist attacks began to dwindle, and by the late 1930s they were over. Why? What happened? Nobody is entirely sure - but most historians suggest a few factors. After the initial wave of state repression, civil liberties slowly advanced - undermining the anarchist claims. The indiscriminate attacks on ordinary civilians discredited anarchism in the eyes of the wider public: after a young man blew himself up in Greenwich Park in 1892, his coffin was stoned and attacked by working class people in the East End. The anarchists' own cruelty and excess slowly deprived them of recruits.
But, just as importantly, many of the anarchist grievances were addressed by steady reforms. Trade unions were finally legalised, and many of their demands were achieved one by one: an eight-hour working day, greater safety protections, compensation for the injured. Work was no longer so barbaric - so the violent rejection of it faded away. The changes were nowhere near as radical as those demanded by the anarchists, but it stripped them of followers step-by-step.
Could the same be done with Islamism? The lesson from the death of violent anarchism is that the solution lies beyond blanket violent repression of them or its polar opposite, capitulation to their demands. The answer is gradual reform that ends some - but not all - of the sources of their rage. Clearly, many of Islamists' "grievances" should be left unaddressed: we must never restrict the rights of women or gay people or end the freedom to discuss religion openly, as they demand. But there is plenty we can do.
About not experiencing the end of history:
Movements of Rage are violently desperate, magical, and utopian responses to failure - failure to create economic development, social justice, and political dignity in and for their country. They are a response to and expression of the desperate and often hysterical sense that no existing political program or ideological designation has worked, to a history of failed monarchy, military rule, fascist, communist, or attempted democratic rule. In the 20th century, most of these movements appeared in small, peripheral countries: the Iron Guard in Romania; Sendero Luminoso in Peru; the Taliban in Afghanistan; and the most nihilistic and murderous third world Movement of Rage, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But one, the most powerful of all, the Nazis, appeared in the center of Europe. The Nazi phenomenon suggests that the most powerful Movements of Rage, those that pose the greatest danger to Western civilization, are most likely to occur in marginally Western countries.
If state mercantilism in Russia and China should fail, then the absence of robust democratic movements in each country, the presence of xenophobic elements within society and, undoubtedly, the military would facilitate the emergence of a Movement of Rage and its transformation into a regime of rage. Add to this the level of technological development, education, and military power in Russia and China and the West would face a threat that, like the Nazis, combined a perverted heroic ethic and military technology that the Nazis could have only dreamed of.
How a dysfunctional State Department is encouraging the expanding role of the Pentagon in US foreign policy.
The Iranian regimes appears to be hanging protestors.
Looking the Syrian-Iranian axis from Lebanon:
Iran has a smart savvy propaganda machine that knows what to sell at the right time. In Washington, in think tanks, I heard people on panels -- Jews from the far right and left of Israel, as well as Americans -- advocating talking to Iran and Hezbollah.
MJT: You can't even talk to Hezbollah. I mean, Jimmy Carter of all people came here and Hezbollah snubbed him. If they're not going to talk to Carter, who are they going to talk to?
Eli Khoury: It's a dangerous game these people are playing, but I think it's only a matter of time until the newcomers burn their fingers with the same realities that we've seen over and over again. I mean, somebody my age, 48 years old...I've seen it all when it comes to Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.
I've seen every strategy: Kissinger's step-by-step approach, full engagement -- which means sleeping with the enemy, basically -- and the solid stand as with the Bush Administration. I've seen them all. The only one that works so far in my opinion has been, aside from some real stupid and dumb mistakes, is the severing of relationships.
The precarious state of Pakistan (an article published in May this year):
Pakistan is close to the brink, perhaps not to a meltdown of the government, but to a permanent state of anarchy, as the Islamist revolutionaries led by the Taliban and their many allies take more territory, and state power shrinks. There will be no mass revolutionary uprising like in Iran in 1979 or storming of the citadels of power as in Vietnam and Cambodia; rather we can expect a slow, insidious, long-burning fuse of fear, terror, and paralysis that the Taliban have lit and that the state is unable, and partly unwilling, to douse.
In northern Pakistan, where the Taliban and their allies are largely in control, the situation is critical. State institutions are paralyzed, and over one million people have fled their homes. The provincial government of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) has gone into hiding, and law and order have collapsed, with 180 kidnappings for ransom in the NWFP capital of Peshawar in the first months of this year alone. The overall economy is crashing, with drastic power cuts across the country as industry shuts down. Joblessness and lack of access to schools among the young are widespread, creating a new source of recruits to the Taliban.
… In return for the Pakistani army withdrawing, the Taliban agreed to disarm, then promptly refused to do so. The accord followed the defeat in Swat last year of 12,000 government troops at the hands of some three thousand Taliban after bloody fighting, the blowing up of over one hundred girls' schools, heavy civilian casualties, and the mass exodus of one third of Swat's 1.5 million people. The Taliban swiftly imposed their brutal interpretation of sharia, which allowed for executions, floggings, and destruction of people's homes and girls' schools, as well as preventing women from leaving their homes and wiping out the families that had earlier resisted them.
Despite dire warnings by experts and Pakistan's increasingly vocal commentators in the press and elsewhere that the accord was a major capitulation to the militants and a terrible precedent that contradicted the rule of law as stipulated by the constitution, Zardari and the national parliament approved the deal on April 14 without even a debate. Within days the Taliban in Swat moved further, taking control of the local administration, police, and schools. On April 19 Sufi Mohammed, a radical leader who the government had released from prison in November 2008 and termed "a moderate" and whose son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, is now the leader of the Swat Taliban, said that democracy, the legal system of the country, and civil society should be disbanded since they were all "systems of infidels." Having won Swat, the Taliban made clear their intentions to overthrow the national government. …
What has shocked the world is not just the spread of the Taliban forces southward, but the lack of the government's will and commitment to oppose them and the army's lack of a counterinsurgency strategy. This disarray makes them all the more vulnerable in view of the apparent cohesiveness of the Taliban's tactics and strategy. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban.
… Both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and their Punjabi extremist allies were seen as potentially useful counters against India-both in any future struggle for the contested region of Kashmir and also to tame the growing Indian influence in Kabul. George W. Bush seems, at least, to have gone along with this Pakistani strategy, urging action against al-Qaeda but never pushing Pakistan to deal with the Taliban threat. …
None of these groups could have survived if the military had carried out a serious counterterror strategy; but the Pakistani army never shut down any of them. Even though they were all openly opposing the Pakistani state, the army still considered them part of the front line against India and continued to stay in touch with them.
The army has always defined Pakistan's national security goals. Currently it has two strategic interests: first, it seeks to ensure that a balance of terror and power is maintained with respect to India, and the jihadis are seen as part of this strategy. Second, the army supports the Afghan Taliban as a hedge against US withdrawal from Afghanistan and also against Indian influence in Kabul, which has grown considerably. Containing the domestic jihadi threat has been a tactical rather than a strategic matter for the army, so there have been bouts of fighting with the militants and also peace deals with them; and these have been interspersed with policies of jailing them and freeing them-all part of a complex and duplicitous game.,,,
Despite US military aid, anti- Americanism has flourished in the army, public opinion, and the press and television, fueled by the idea that Pakistan was being made to fight America's war, while the Americans were unwilling to help Pakistan regain influence in Afghanistan. The US is accused both of helping India gain a strong foothold in Kabul and of declining to put pressure on New Delhi to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Bush's signing of the nuclear deal with India last year was the last straw for the Pakistani army. In military and public thinking, Pakistan was seen as sacrificing some two thousand soldiers in the war on terror on behalf of the Americans, while in return the Americans were recognizing the legitimacy of India's nuclear weapons program. Pakistan's nuclear weapons got no such acceptance. …
In the NWFP, the Awami National Party failed to stand up to the Taliban after they began an assassination campaign against ANP ministers and members of parliament, forcing the ANP leaders to disappear into bunkers while capitulating to the Taliban. The Swat deal was initiated by the ANP, which naively believed that the Taliban could be contained within Swat. The party is now divided, weakened and unpopular among the Pashtuns who voted for it in overwhelming numbers just a year ago. Its failure has wider consequences, for the ANP is the only Pashtun party that could counter the Taliban claim that the Pashtuns are pro-jihad and extremist. The ANP version of Pashtunwali-the tribal code of behavior-is nation-alistic but moderate and in favor of democracy. Right now the extremist Taliban ideology is winning out as Pashtun cultural leaders, aid workers, teachers, doctors, and lawyers are cowed by the Taliban adherents.
The insurgency in Pakistan is perhaps even more deadly than the one in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there is only one ethnic group strongly opposing the government-the Pashtuns who make up the Taliban-and so fighting is largely limited to the south and east of the country, while the other major ethnic groups in the west and the north are vehemently anti-Taliban. Moreover, more than a few Pashtuns and their tribal leaders support the Karzai government. In Pakistan, the Pashtun Taliban are now being aided and abetted by extremists from all the major ethnic groups in Pakistan. They may not be popular but they generate fear and terror from Karachi on the south coast to Peshawar on the Afghan border.
… Education and job creation have been the least-funded policies of Pakistan's governments, whether military or civilian, and literacy levels are abysmal; there are now some 20 million youth under age seventeen who are not in school. The justice system has virtually collapsed in many areas, which is why the Taliban demand for speedy justice has some popular appeal. Moreover, the Pakistani public has to deal with the differing versions of Pakistani policy put out by the army, the political parties, the Islamic fundamentalists, and the press and other components of civil society. There is confusion about what actually constitutes a threat to the state and what is needed for nation-building. …
The Obama administration can provide money and weapons but it cannot recreate the state's will to resist the Taliban and pursue more effective policies. Pakistan desperately needs international aid, but its leaders must first define a strategy that demonstrates to its own people and other nations that it is willing to stand up to the Taliban and show the country a way forward.
About the Taliban’s war on Peshawar and Pashtun culture:
The Taliban systematically destroyed Afghan and specifically Pashtun culture by banning music, the arts and any kind of artistic expression.
Their hand was visible when last month they bombed the tomb of the 17th-century Sufi Pashtun poet Rahman Baba just outside the city. His devotional and romantic poetry inspired and gave spiritual sustenance to many generations of Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe only in the austere and harsh Wahhabi Islam and they are committed to destroying anything that comes in its way, including the tomb of an ancient poet-saint that stood as a symbol of religious tolerance and brotherhood of mankind. I wept when I saw the desecrated tomb.
… One wishes things were different. For me there is the escape of flying home to America. That can't be said about millions of people who are being terrorized by these self-appointed, self-anointed, uneducated, and uncouth custodians of my faith.
A Pashtun woman studying in Oslo on what is happening:
The Taliban hang up dead bodies of local people in public places to deter those who might think of standing up to them. The Taliban have destroyed educational institutions, for both girls and boys, and health centers. They have banned music and dance, which are some of the most cherished Pashtun traditions. The Taliban Shariah courts harass people every day.
The al Qaeda terrorists are alien Arabs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Afghans and even Africans. The Taliban also consist of many criminal gangs from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Taliban have replaced the Pashtun culture with the Wahhabi way of life - the violent and intolerant interpretation of Islam sponsored by Arab sources in the Middle East.
Why Hezbollah is not a model for Afghanistan:
The fantasy that the Taliban might someday become more like Hezbollah and less like al-Qaeda is based on misunderstandings of all three. Hezbollah isn't half as moderate as some analysts think, and the Taliban is more bound up with al-Qaeda than many of these same people want to admit.
On Hezbollah as a very bad pattern for Afghanistan, including a sensible comment, as one would expect, from Carl Philip Salzman:
The American military has had recent success in allying with once-insurgent Sunni tribes in Anbar province of Iraq, and other tribes elsewhere in Iraq. They did this, in part, by dealing directly with the tribes, rather than through the framework of the Iraqi government. There is a good reason that such direct ties were successful: tribes are by their nature not units of states, but alternatives to states; tribes detest interference, and strongly prefer independence to state control.
As long as the intervention in Afghanistan places state-building as its highest priority, tribes will naturally lean toward resistance. So what is more important: building a state apparatus, or stabilizing the region and removing threats to external parties? In the short- and medium-run, treating with the tribes may be the most effective way to stabilize and neutralize the region.
A far as I can see, that is the only path that provides something that is not a choice between the corrupt and the fanatic.