I’ve took a lot of criticism from people I respect over my ridicule of Rory Stewart’s plan to “save Afghanistan.” One of my primary criticisms was of his belief that we can somehow steer Afghanistan away from civil war while withdrawing our effort only to successful provinces. From my understanding of the Taliban, that is precisely the way to get them to try for more areas, as putting a district under contention is the surest way to guarantee a Stewartian withdrawal toward an area more likely to concede to Coalition Afghan rule.
So what would Stewart make of this?
KABUL: Dozens of Taliban militants captured a remote district in central Afghanistan overnight, killing one police officer and injuring two others, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.
Local security forces fled “under lots of pressure” after the insurgents stormed into Ghazni province’s Ajiristan district, 200 kilometres southwest of Kabul, shortly after midnight, spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. “Security forces abandoned the district centre after Taliban attacked. They withdrew under lots of pressure,” the spokesman said. “One police was killed and two others were injured,” he said.
“We’re working on a plan to retake the district,” Bashary said, without giving details. Ajiristan was captured by Taliban insurgents in October last year. It was retaken the following day when about 300 security forces moved into the small district centre.
This part of Ghazni is highly contentious, and is the subject of some of that reconstruction money Stewart wants redirected toward the North. Would he sell them out to an armed takeover in the hopes that other areas can be made less susceptible?
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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I believe that the job which is Rory Stewart is Doing in Afghanistan is better than any other NGOs doing, at least people can see what is going on in Rory Stewart’s Projects, We can see he is building something in Kabul, and I as an afghanistani really appreciate what he is doing,