pakistani342
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I'm not a fan of Sarah Chayes -- her interview here.
Basic take away is that she thinks it's too late for the US to be able to help Afghanistan.
...
The Taliban has since charged that Afghan intelligence purposely gave the U.S. the hospital's coordinates. Even the possibility that such an accusation is true -- and the duration of the sustained attack suggests that something unusual happened -- points toward the reason that Afghanistan is headed back toward Taliban control: The government is thoroughly corrupt, and the U.S. has been unwilling to take measures to address the situation. While a handful of civilian and military leaders identified corruption as an existential threat to the country, the problem remains unsolved.
...
Chayes turned her experience into the groundbreaking book Thieves of State, which forecasts that corrupt governments will continue to be the targets of insurgents who win public support. Like the Iraqi army did in Mosul and elsewhere a year earlier, the Afghan army and police in Kunduz simply melted away.
...
Reporting from the region makes it clear that the Afghan government lost the population as a result of its corruption. The way it erodes public support is intuitive: Imagine that you are an Afghan civilian generally opposed to the extremism of the Taliban. Yet for nearly everything you need to do -- travel to and from work, transport merchandise, enroll in school, open a business -- you get shaken down, often by somebody of a different ethnicity. The Taliban, with all its piety, at least might not be corrupt, you start to think. As The New York Times reported last week:
How can the U.S. respond?
This context means the almost exclusive focus of U.S. debate on whether or
On the other hand, as far as Afghanistan is concerned, I think the window of opportunity to exert real leverage on governance and corruption is closed. So, I'm afraid I don't see how the U.S. can helpfully respond in Afghanistan, at this point. We had more than a decade, and we squandered a remarkable moment in history.
Basic take away is that she thinks it's too late for the US to be able to help Afghanistan.
...
The Taliban has since charged that Afghan intelligence purposely gave the U.S. the hospital's coordinates. Even the possibility that such an accusation is true -- and the duration of the sustained attack suggests that something unusual happened -- points toward the reason that Afghanistan is headed back toward Taliban control: The government is thoroughly corrupt, and the U.S. has been unwilling to take measures to address the situation. While a handful of civilian and military leaders identified corruption as an existential threat to the country, the problem remains unsolved.
...
Chayes turned her experience into the groundbreaking book Thieves of State, which forecasts that corrupt governments will continue to be the targets of insurgents who win public support. Like the Iraqi army did in Mosul and elsewhere a year earlier, the Afghan army and police in Kunduz simply melted away.
...
Reporting from the region makes it clear that the Afghan government lost the population as a result of its corruption. The way it erodes public support is intuitive: Imagine that you are an Afghan civilian generally opposed to the extremism of the Taliban. Yet for nearly everything you need to do -- travel to and from work, transport merchandise, enroll in school, open a business -- you get shaken down, often by somebody of a different ethnicity. The Taliban, with all its piety, at least might not be corrupt, you start to think. As The New York Times reported last week:
How can the U.S. respond?
This context means the almost exclusive focus of U.S. debate on whether or
On the other hand, as far as Afghanistan is concerned, I think the window of opportunity to exert real leverage on governance and corruption is closed. So, I'm afraid I don't see how the U.S. can helpfully respond in Afghanistan, at this point. We had more than a decade, and we squandered a remarkable moment in history.
