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I suggest a book by Stephen Tanner AFGHANISTAN A Military History From Alexander The Great To The War Against The Taliban especially the chapter on the Soviet Invasion and their strategy to secure their gains.
The ". . . suggestion is that we scale back our aims, for Afghanistan is not going to be a shining democracy any time soon. We should keep our existing troops to protect the cities (but not the countryside), looks particularly soviet. Afghanistan has a central government only because the rest of the world insists upon it. Everything in Afghanistan is local what isn't local is family and tribe. We need the military to stay the hell out of the main cities -- Herat, Kandahar, Kabul and Mar-i Sharif and concentrate on the countryside to deny the bad guys access and freedom of movement. We need to win over the people in the countryside. The resistance to the Soviets was not a city movement.
Give over the cities to the Talban? Not hardly. All the Taliban have to do to lose support in the cities is kill civilians, especially kids. Seems that's the only tactic they know. It won't work. The Taliban was welcomed in the mid 90's as an alternative to the destruction caused by War lords. The Afghans have not forgotten their abuses. The Afghans are tired of their kids being killed! It's not going to matter what uniform a kid killer wears. We really don't want the Afghans to look back on US involvement as another example of "we thought it couldn't get worse but, guess what? It did!"
.02 I'm getting the urge to get back over there . . .
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