TW: Again describing the mess is easier than judging alternatives. But this could almost be a "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" piece. The piece asks why the Taliban can impose more stability, the answer I do not think is complex. They are authoritarians with all benefits and even more of the negatives associated with authoritarianism. But right now when combined with some of the tribal angles and authoritarian beats an anarchic void which is frequently the alternative in southern Afghanistan.
From Economist:
"THE other day I had lunch with a guy whose first job out of college was as a foreign service officer in the American embassy in Saigon in 1965...Basically he was present at the formation of American counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine. So I asked him what he thought the prospects were for applying COIN to Afghanistan.
What happens when America gets involved, he said, is that we bring in this immense amount of infrastructure and personnel. And the first thing you see is that inflation goes through the roof, which destroys the local economy right off the bat. So nobody in the government can survive on their salary. And then we complain that they all turn corrupt.
...as in South Vietnam, the economy and revenue flows in Afghanistan are being entirely driven by donor aid. Two-thirds of government spending is financed by donors. The country's GDP in 2008 was $23 billion; American aid, excluding the cost of combat, was $9.3 billion. The cost of combat operations in 2009 will be $60 billion. One hears a lot about the corrupting effects of the heroin trade, but it amounts to just $3 billion a year. You don't have to be William Easterly to surmise that this vast quantity of aid money sloshing around in one of the poorest economies in the world is guaranteed to create unmanageable corruption problems.
...The erosion of the state, and its contestation and capture by different factions, meant that in effect the public sphere (and public positions) were appropriated (and misused) for private (including factional) gain through most of the period of conflict. Hence it is not very meaningful to try to delineate a concept of “corruption” within this nexus of state capture, state failure, and “privatization” of state functions.
Why the Taliban is doing a good job of governance is not yet clear. But why the Afghan government is doing a bad job of governance is pretty obvious. And it just doesn't seem likely that pouring in more aid will solve the problem, rather than exacerbate it."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/09/outgoverning_the_government.cfm
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