The Afghanistan-as-Lebanon scenario seems real enough
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 12:04AM 
Thoughtful but scary op-ed in WAPO from Daniel Serwer at the US Institute for Peace.
The worry expressed: Obama's West Point speech of two months ago didn't define any endstate. Did so with Iraq but not Afghanistan.
The growing fear: we can clear but the Afghans cannot hold and the Taliban are very effective in killing or terrorizing any builders, despite USAID's quadrupling of talent in-country over the last year (hmm, perhaps four times zero is still zero, but that sounds cruel).
Given those larger realities and the fact that the administration seems to have done nothing to truly regionalize the solution set whatsoever, we're all looking at an attempt to negotiate something that doesn't look too bad when we leave it, and Serwer offers Lebanon as the example:
Hezbollah controls large portions of the country, operates its own military forces and delivers services to large parts of the population, but the United States and other countries have embassies in Beirut, deal regularly with the government and parliament, and try to persuade Lebanese authorities to limit the sway and reach of Hezbollah.
In effect, we're back to remapping a fake state, dividing it between the unconquerable south (like Pakistan's unconquerable NW territories) and the rule-able north.
Problem is, says Serwer, the Taliban show no signs of wanting to come to the table.
Why? Again we're back to Obama's announced deadline of the summer of 2011, which no decent strategist (to include Kissinger) likes.
It will be interesting to see if Petraeus can yank on the rudder hard enough to effect a real course change.
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