Afghans and U.S. Plan to Recruit Local Militias

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/world/asia/24afghan.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=plan%20to%20recruit%20local%20militias&st=cse

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 9:06 AM
Subject: Afghans and U.S. Plan to Recruit Local Militias
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
 If Afghanistan is indeed an irredeemably failed state, then local
warlords may be the only allies who can help us against the Taliban.
Such a judgement mustn't be made lightly; to empower these warlords is
to undercut the central state in which we have invest so much hope and
so many lives. As we put weapons into the hands of local sectarian
forces, we abandon any future in which the U.S. can withdraw to leave
an Afghanistan at peace. Rather we  will have set up a house of cards
that will collapse into bloody civil war on our departure.
Barry Levine