Afghanistan Special: How the US Kills Its Allies and Helps a New Taliban Generation (Fitzgerald)

Certainly, the killing of Sahib Jan and the rise of a new generation of more militant Taliban  both point to a severe lack of "granular understanding of local circumstances". What is curious is that American officials and observers have been talking about granular understanding in Afghanistan for years. The author of the Times piece, Scott Atran, is an anthropologist, and it was anthropologists such as Montgomery McFate and David Kilcullen who advocated aid to intelligence-gathering by sending social scientists to map the "human terrain" in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Four years into the "human terrain systems" programme, why is it still possible for special forces to target a "reconciled" Taliban? Why is ISAF inadvertently killing off those Taliban with whom it is possible to negotiate?

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Afghanistan Analysis: My Oh My, What to Do About Corruption? (Kaplan)

Writing before yesterday's Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, Fred Kaplan of Slate ponders, "What Can We Do About Corruption in Afghanistan?"

The analysis is not as notable for insight as it is for the utter resignation in the conclusion:

For now, Karzai seems to think that the United States has a bigger stake in the war's success than he does and, therefore, that he's the one with the leverage in this relationship. The Obama administration's challenge is to convince Karzai that if he doesn't clean up his act, he really will pay a price—we really might leave or, short of that, funnel arms, money, and other resources to provincial chiefs whose elevation would pose a challenge to Karzai's authority. This is easier said than done, and carries its own risks for Afghanistan's stability. But the alternative is to write "a blank check" and "blindly stay the course," as Obama once said he wouldn't do, and that way seems to lie a quagmire or worse.

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