ARTICLE: “A charter in London, troops for the badlands: After painful prevarication, NATO gets serious about peacekeeping in Afghanistan,” The Economist, 4 February 2006, p. 37.

ARTICLE: “Heading south: Despite much recent progress, Afghanistan is intolerably insecure,” The Economist, 4 February 2006, p. 12.

Big London donor conference on Afghanistan still ends up being more about security than development, so we certainly haven’t come close to finishing the job in Afghanistan, although, much like in Iraq, we seem to have a tripartite outcome.

Northern Afghanistan is like Kurdistan: pretty lawful and open for trade. The central region is more like Shiite Iraq: government formed and reasonably stable. Southern Afghanistan remains like the Sunni Triangle: lawless and without any appreciable economic development, other than the resurgence of poppies.

Up to now, the NATO contingent in Afghanistan has stayed to the north, keeping the peace in the areas with no Taliban, so nice work if you can get it. In the south, the U.S. keeps killing significant numbers of Taliban each year, seeming to win the battle by winter, only to have more appear in the spring, or the basic cycle the Sovs went through for so long.

Now we see NATO committed to sending down several thousand troops into the south, meaning there will be fighting ahead, especially once they go after the poppy trade.

Still, this is historic stuff: NATO deciding to go into combat outside of Europe--a serious first. This is a big milestone in the formation of the Core’s SysAdmin function and force.