I agree with you, WI Crippler.
IMO, helping each region in terms of infrastructure improvement, education, economic development, and formation of credible local security forces would probably promote an improved outcome.
While I agree with Crippler, and Don on this point I think people are being a bit removed from the actual hardships that are going to be faced.
- The majority of the Afghan population has never attended school, nor can many of them read; Who teaches the teachers?
- Whenever there is an established series of schools, whose History do they learn? What is the "Afghan Nationality"? How do you compensate the differences between the nationalities that probably have not always been on the best of term? The United States, whether anyone wants to admit to it or not, has become a highly integrated facet into their modern-history... How are they to non-subjectively teach recent history?
- Why should the tribal leaders give up their local armies and local militias for some larger security force? This would seem, to the tribesmen, as if we are trying to get them destroyed-- They remember Soviet Tanks, they remember the Taliban, they remember AC-130s; Their history is rich with the British lion and the Russian Bear using the Afghan lands as an exaggerated battlefield. How can they obtain a sense of genuine security, when the people who are providing the security are just as volatile as their enemies?
- I know the northern part of Afghanistan is known for hand crafted "Persian" rugs, and the southern fertile lands for their wheat and opium, but are those really foundations for which to build a strong and stabled economy? I've read articles about the Afghanistan pipe-lines, and how they could be a potential source of economic income for the Afghanis-- but I wonder how much it could.
- Nobody seems to be taking into account the refugee problem. On all sides of the Afghanistan, disputed, borders lie millions of refugees; dirt poor, homeless, war-torn, and exponentially pissed off. We see many of the refugees (especially on the Pakistan border) joining with the clerics who promise riches they've never had, and all they have to do is die for it. Seriously, you have to think how a refugee could not think "well, I've suffered every other fathomable woe"...