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You are here: Home / Middle East / The Flawed Logic of “Stay the Course” in Afghanistan

December 21, 2012

The Flawed Logic of “Stay the Course” in Afghanistan

On the Center’s website, John and I have published a long piece on what’s in store for the last two years of NATO-led combat operations in Afghanistan. In the essay, we focus on the effort to build up the Afghan National Security Forces, and point at a number of troubling signs that highlight the difficulty of building up a self-sufficient Afghan army.

Here’s a short excerpt:

“…if we have not succeeded so far, why does that mean we should stay longer and continue a failed strategy? Why should we not instead reevaluate whether it is, indeed, plausible to build a foreign army in Afghanistan? Indeed, a close look at what ISAF is up against suggests that training the Afghan army isn’t just a matter of having enough troops and time – it may simply be a fool’s errand.

Read the rest of the piece, here.

Posted in: Middle East, Nukes of Hazard blog

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