Afghanistan would support Pakistan in case of military conflict between Pakistan and the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview to a private Pakistani TV channel broadcast on Saturday.
"Our" man says this even as we try to get Pakistan to stop supporting jihadis who plague Afghanistan. Granted, this was just bravado. But as I've said before, we need to bypass Karzai and Kabul by strengthening local Afghan governance and security. Afghanistan needs stronger government but it needs to be decentralized to exploit the tribalism that makes a modern state impossible in the near future. Afghanistan can continue to have a UN seat with whoever holds Kabul controls, but Kabul most only reign over the regions rather than rule them. We can't trust the center, the center can run the periphery, and the periphery doesn't trust the center anyway.
Remember, unlike Iraq where developing democracy can have positive repercussions throughout the region, Afghanistan is peripheral to the war over the future of Islam. Our objectives in Afghanistan are purely local in preventing Afghanistan from becoming a launching pad for future 9/11s and to keep the country from destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan. The Long War to defeat Islamo-fascism will not be won or lost in Afghanistan.
We owe Karzai--who has betrayed all the hope he initially embodied--absolutely nothing. Remember that.
