http://rt.com/news/britain-plan-afghanistan-taliban-718/
A Tory MP proposes hacking up Afghanistan into separate “kingdoms”, each ruled by a foreign power, and to include members of the Taliban.
The plan is the brainchild of conservative MP and Foreign Office aide Tobias Ellwood, a former army captain in the Royal Green Jackets, and is already under discussion in London and Washington, according to a report which was seen by the British newspaper The Independent on Sunday.
The report puts forward a regionalized state under a powerful new prime minster and would attempt to deal with weak government, corruption and tribal disputes, which have plagued Afghanistan.
The blueprint – which has been labeled Plan C – is to split Afghanistan up into eight zones based around the economic hubs of Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Jalalabad, Khost and Bayman.
The areas would then be governed by a council representing different ethnic groups and overseen by one or more foreign countries; in the same way that Berlin was run after the Second World War.
Other options being considered include Plan A, to turn Afghanistan into a smoothly functioning democracy and Plan B, to hand the war over to the Afghan security forces, which would be overseen by American military advisors.
Ellwood warned that Afghanistan faces a bleak future once the International Security Force (ISAF) withdraws at the end of 2014. He also said that “The Taliban will not enter into a meaningful dialogue if there is no feasible political strategy within which they can participate.”
But experts on Afghanistan were critical of the plan, which they view as a colonial attempt to impose a democratic system. Instead, Western powers should think about a military exit strategy that would enable them to withdraw their forces by the 2014 deadline.
"The best way to bail out the economy is with liberty, not with federal reserve notes." - pairunoyd
"The vision of the Austrian must be greater than the blindness of the sheeple." - pairunoyd
The British should know better than this. The Second Afghan War was an example of how a great power should deal with Afghanistan: get in, obtain your military laurels and get out as fast as you can. The war would have probably ended in another disaster as the one of 1841 had it not been for General Roberts' insistence of getting his troops out as soon as the Kandahar garrison was relieved and Ayub Khan defeated. Roberts had a long experience on the North West Frontier and he managed to hammer the point home with both the government officials accompanying his expedition like Louis Cavagnari and the more "politically oriented" generals like Primrose and Burrows (the men responsible for the Malawand "last stand of the 66th" and the siege of Kandahar): get out of here as soon as possible.
Regarding Afghanistan, right now there's not a single figure with Roberts' experience and vision. As we saw in the past ten years mission objectives have shifted continously: first it was capturing Osama bin-Laden, the destroying al-Quaeda, then it was the pipelines, then the raw materials, then safeguarding democracy and women's rights... we can say right now there's no clear objective apart from kicking the can until the US presidential elections are concluded. This plan of "splitting" Afghanistan, something both the British and Russian Empires tried doing in the XIX century with debatable success given the peculiar nature of the local society, is just another example of the lack of long term plans and clear objectives that became evident when Osama bin-Laden was nowhere to be found (most likely because he was already dead: either killed "by accident" during a bombardment or by one of his numerous physical ailments).
Also it's pretty obvious the successor groups to the Taliban have little interest in "negotiating" right now: why bother when you are winning the war? Differently from Vietnam there's no Hanoi to carpet bomb here to bring the enemy to the negotiating table to arrange an orderly withdrawal. You can kill a single insurgent leader but there are hundreds more out there and hundreds more ready to take his place: killing a single leader doesn't hamper operations. They know all they have to do is keep up the pressure (and the recent "friendly fire" attacks hint at the fact they have a better knowledge of the American military than anyone expected) and wait. In Pashtun society war is not seen as a destructive endeavor: it's the best thing a man can do and the US military is providing plenty of opportunities to kill or be killed.
It's also debatable how US allies could provide assistance to these eight zones: it's very well known apart from British and Australian troops, the US see their allies for what they really are, namely unwilling and often poorly trained soldiers (for example German soldiers sent to Afghanistan can barely operate their vehicles and have little knowledge of targeting procedures) sent by dragooned, cajoled and bribed governments to give the impression there's a "coalition of the willing".
If heavy foreign intervention must continue in Afghanistan, I find this plan the best option.