That's nice:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed on a cooperation pact with Iran on Sunday, an Afghan official said, while continuing to resist signing a long-term security agreement with the United States. ...
"Afghanistan agreed on a long-term friendship and cooperation pact with Iran," Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi said. "The pact will be for long-term political, security, economic and cultural cooperation, regional peace and security."
This is one reason I never had as our objective reliance on the Kabul government if it meant pretending Afghanistan is a traditional state rather than a collection of tribal centers of power:
The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.
And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves).
Karzai is working on his personal survival and prosperity. We need to work with other leaders and centers of power in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban down and al Qaeda out.
And don't treat the nuclear agreement with Iran the way Syria treats the chemical warfare agreement--a shield against our power under which they can carry out their foreign policy at our expense.
